How does the "System Administrator" permission differ from the "Confluence Admin permission" and membership of the "confluence-administrators group"?

[Sam Hasler]

This question is in reference to Atlassian Documentation: Confluence Groups for Administrators

It looks like there should be a 3rd column in the comparison table on that page for users given the system administration permission that are not in the confluence-administrators group.

NB: This is about the permissions config on the /admin/permissions/globalpermissions.action page.

[Josch Bencke]

Hi Sam, 

1) Rolefunctions

I found the JIRA help more usefull here and extrapolated, that Confluence does work similar. Based on that I would say: 

The Confluence Administrator can manage the settings for the application operation itself, so "inside confluence". 

The "System Administrator" can manage settings, which affect the surrouniding and security of the application as a whole, for example : 

• Networkconnections
• Softwarepatches, Supportaccess etc
• Mail Interface
• Systemsettings
• Blacklisting/Whitelisting
• etc

This is my assumed list, make sure to test this, if you need to differentiate. Best have your "businessadmins" start out with "Confluence-Administrator" only. 

2) Group

See answer on https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-32541

The Group "confluence-administrators" has special rights and is not checked against the permission settings. If you need to work differently, you need to create your own groups.