How to make public just a single page from private space?

[Damian Śliwa]

I want to share only a single page from my private space with someone who does not have a Confluence account (just for viewing).

How should I configure the access / permissions settings to share only this single page in:
- Global Permissions
- Space Permissions
- Page Restrictions

I found information about sharing the entire space, but I do not know how to do it for a single page. Of course, I do not want to show other pages publicly in my private space.
Any hints?

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_ · Accepted solution]

You will need to make the space anonymously accessible to the whole world, and then restrict the pages you do not want the world to be able to see.

The best way to do this is:

Global permissions:  Allow anonymous access

Space:  Anonymous access

Top level Page 1: No restrictions

Top level Page 2: Restricted to the login group

Other spaces - only logged in users (confluence users) can use, not anonymous

[Masco]

This is terrible. Having thousand of restricted pages. Then you should ALWAYS be awake to REMEMBER any new pages to make them restricted as it should be. Where is the new Steve Jobs to think with the head of the customer again??

[Cristian Serb]

Yes! Terrible. It's 2021 and this question pops up for 10 years already and there is no solution. I start regretting advocating confluence for the company.

@Nic Brough _Adaptavist_ is there something on the roadmap for proper sharing?

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

Atlassian have stated they are not going to break the visibilty/restriction system in this way.

[Tomas Sleurs]

Some really basic functionalities missing in Confluence.

Consider me having a Space with over a hundred seperate pages and want to make public 3 of the pages within this Space. I then have to firsst make the entire Space public to the internet (even though it has critical business information and confidential information) and then per page say which page is restricted for all but the 3 pages I want to leave public?

[Vasiliy_Zverev · Accepted solution]

You could try to alloy public access to this space and restict view to all pages exept one.

[rudolf_jurisic]

Isn't there a better way to do this?

To make a single page public within a private space, I would expect the following:

1. default permissions keeps all pages private
2. I can enable public view for a specific page

Not the other way around:

1. set your space public
2. restrict pages you wish to keep private

My team's confluence space is private, and I would love to make just few pages public. I think this is a common use case.

[Paul Weiss]

Me too. I am running into the same need here. Using an explicit allow vs. explicit deny configuration like this is much easier to manage, and safer as well.

[LS]

I'll add my voice to this. Seems wrong way around. Came looking for exactly this requirement just now.

[Kjetil Brekke]

+1 for me as well. This should be easier and safer.

[Nicolas K_]

+1 Export pages just to share them with external workers feels outdated.

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

The problem with "just let any page be arbitrarily  visible" is that it makes a nonsense of performing any form of structured access.  You'd be into maintining the visibility of every single page you have by hand.

It's fine for a small site with a handful of pages, but imagine trying to do that for a site with 150,000 pages (i.e. the one I'm working with now).

It's a tracking, privacy and compliance deathwish as well, let alone the maintenance nightmare you'd create.

[Nicolas K_]

This is a valid argument. I don't think this should be the default, but an option.

It's common in file sharing services like OneDrive, calendars like Google Calendar or other services to offer a "private" link to a single page or object that can be turned on or off, sometimes with an additional timely restriction.

While this might not solve any usecase or fit every privacy regulation, it would fit a lot of real world scenarios which now end in "Export to PDF" (bad format by default) or "Export to Word" (manual formating needed most of the time).

If I could make a wish for an implementation, there should be an option: "Create private link" which has an additional comment field and expiration date. Anybody who has the valid link can view the page. (I'm OK if there's no comment or edit feature, or it should be optional.)

(If that doesn't work for any reason, at least the default PDF Export shouldn't look as ugly as it does.)

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

It could work if you did it at a space level - "allow people to flag public pages in this space" as a flag which you can easily report on and can only be set by system admins.

[Роман Бурда]

I am space admin and struggling with exactly same issue. I need to ensure that I will not loose information accidentally from secured space, so won't make it public as suggested. At same time, particular pages have to be shared with particular people.

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

Please see the accepted answer, it's the only way to structure a secured space.

[Masco]

Having thousand of restricted pages, not a small work to turn all of it and then leave only that few that should be read by everybody. Then you should ALWAYS be awake to REMEMBER any new pages to make them restricted as it should be. There is a need for a new Steve Jobs to think with the head of the customer, not what is the easiest way for the programmers. 

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

I think you need to think it through from the point of view of someone who needs their page restictions to work by default and not have to rely on every single author and editor getting it right every time.

[evanbartlett]

Came here looking for a solution to a similar situation.  Equally shocked this isn't an option, as it's how most modern software works ( you can give permissions on a page level as well as at the space level).  Disappointing.  

[Todd Foley]

Ditto everyone here... community wants this feature, atlassian says no... community shurgs and swears off confluence?

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

I understand that you think you want this, but you don't want the security nightmare it creates.  That's why Atlassian are saying "no", because it's throwing all the security out of the window.

[evanbartlett]

Google docs has worked this way forever, you can have a default setting, and then you can over ride it when you need to.  Maybe for a huge corporation you have to use the more rigid structure that atlassian provides, but its worked fine for me this whole time, and I'd expect atlassian to have this functionality at this point.

[Tomas Sleurs]

@ Nic Brough

The security nightmare is when you first need to make an entire space, full of critical business and confidential information, public before you can start restricting access. Or is this something Atlassian does not see?

There is literally NO security risk in having a space that is completely restricted with certain pages inside it that are public while the rest of the space remains private. Also it would be a very easy thing to visually show which pages are shared by just adding an open eye-symbol to the pages that are public or just the text [PUBLIC] next to it.

[Anton Andreasson]

How about generating a `?secretKey=somehashgoeshere` on a per page basis that opens up the page in question to anyone with the correct URL?

And configurable expiration dates for each key and access management to restrict key generation.

[Will Hall]

Confluence still has many benefits but there are so many low hanging fruit items (features) that Atlassian just continually struggles to provide as enhancements, including this one.  

As users of other applications we have all most likely experienced this functionality mentioned here in other apps for years. Whether it be Google Docs. Or now MS OneDrive 365. 

As well as many of the newer tools continually coming online, Notion.so comes to mind.

And in regards to security concerns of single public page sharing, those can be resolved by notifications in the UI and reporting on the backend - of which pages are public and which are not. The public pages just need the necessary controls.

[Will Hall]

And after some additional research today I just discovered the 'Public Links' feature.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/ge/public-links-979425312.html

Very nice enhancement, I stand corrected.

[Nicolas K_]

This would be awesome. I can't find it yet on my Confluence page (Site Admin, Cloud version) and the page you've linked is part of the Cloud Growth documentation ("This space contains the documentation for features that are still under development. It is not a permanent part of the Atlassian Cloud documentation.").

So I guess we'll have to wait for the release but the feature sounds awesome and would be a solution to our initial request, so I gladly wait some more time if they'll implement it that way.