How do I include excerpts and pages from private spaces?

[Per Carlén]

We have an inclusion library in our public documentation space from which we include commonly used excerpts and pages. We would like to hide the inclusion library itself from our users but still be able to show them the excerpts/pages on the pages they are included on. How do we do that?

[Barbara Szczesniak · Accepted solution]

@Per Carlén If you follow the guidelines on this page (https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/use-confluence-for-technical-documentation/ ) to create your inclusions library, the pages are not visible in your page tree.

You have to go to Space settings > Manage content  > Reorder and click a link to open a page in your inclusions library to make that part of the tree visible. If you refresh the page, that part of the tree disappears again.

Space settings is only available to Space Admins for the space, so the average user will never see those pages in the tree.

[Per Carlén]

Fantastic! Thank you very much.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You still have to make the pages you want to include publically visible, this only hides them from the page tree (which could be a pain for your authors trying to find inclusions that need updating)

[Barbara Szczesniak]

This is true, @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-. I am not working with a public space, so I haven't needed to set restrictions on any of my pages. I am also the only author in my space, so there's no one else to be annoyed by my inclusions library. 😊

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That's the ideal way to do it, in my opinion :-)

I've always had a space set aside as an inclusions library, with "anyone can read it" (logged in, and anonymous usually) permission so you don't have to worry about permissions when using it elsewhere.  And then a very limited set of people who can edit it.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Hi Per,

Simple answer - you can not. 

If a page cannot be seen by someone, then you can't bypass that security with an include or excerpt-include.  You need to make your inclusion library public (at least to your end-users)

[Per Carlén]

Thank you for clarifying!

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

Years ago, I saw a pattern used by many which relied on using page names starting with underscore for those content that are used only through inclusion, not on their own. I am not sure if the underscore made any difference, like not being indexed by the search, but I have seen it many times.

Another trick you could try is if you place your includes in a space that is in the "Archived" space status. Maybe include works, but "Archived" spaces are less visible, not searched (by default), etc.

Just two quick ideas to consider.

[Per Carlén]

Thanks for the advice! I will try them out.