My confluence space is not visible for logged users, but available for anonymous

[Ivan Hanák]

Hello, 

I am preparing an application to be sold on Atlassian Marketplace.

For the application I prepared full featured documentation only to find out that it is inaccessible for anybody outside my organisation.

The link for the space is here:

https://aldevadigital.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CMFC/pages/286195742/

The problem is:

• when I am accessing the link as anonymous user (e.g. in an inkognito mode), the space and all assigned pages are available to whoever is looking
• but when I try to access the link when I am logged into a different atlassian account (different confluence and different jira), I am getting an error message saying that the current user does not have viewing permissions

Below I am sending permissions' settings on the Confluence space.

I am currently on Confluence Standard plan and I know this problem can be solved, since I've seen some other Marketplace application having documentation on Confluence and I did not encounter the issue when being logged with my Atlassian account.

Thank you for your help.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

This is a bit of an oddity from a human point of view, but it is actually logical.

To make a Confluence space (and page) visible to someone, you have to grant them access to use the space.  We do that by naming users and groups and saying "they have access" with the tick box.  When they visit, Confluence knows who they are, and it matches them to the space permissions to work out if they have access.

It's the same process with "anonymous" access - Confluence does not know who a person is until they log in, but your anonymous rule says "if you don't know who they are, let them see the space"

However, if you then log in, it knows who you are, so it does not apply the anonymous rule.  

This has the somewhat counter-intuitive effect of hiding anonymously accessible spaces from logged in users!  Humans would assume an anonymous space would be accessible to everyone, but actually the hard logic is not that - you're not anonymous when you're logged in, so different rules apply.

You can probably guess what the "fix" is - add the login group(s) to the space permissions, so that logged in people match that rule.

[Ivan Hanák]

Hello Nic, thank you very much for the response.

I totally understand the problem and your proposed solution.

I have tried updating Confluence space permissions and looking for an option to grant permissions to users who are logged in, but I was unable to create or find existing group.

Could you please provide more details on how to create such group for users who are just logged in?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ah, sorry, I missed that step out.  Jira does have an "any logged in user", but Confluence is a little more simple and usually just has a place for "group(s) that can log in to me".  On Cloud, that's defined in the application access for your site.  Almost all Confluence systems I've seen keep this simple - there's a single group called "confluence-users" that does it.  Add that group to a "can use" space, and it should do the trick.

[Laura McWilliams]

My space has a group called "confluence-users" and it is set up to allow them to view. But it still doesn't let them view my pages. I have the exact same problem as the OP.

Anonymous access works- if a person is not logged into Confluence, they can absolutely view the pages.

But if someone is logged into Confluence on some other account (unrelated to my account), they cannot view some of my pages. There is no difference in the permissions between pages that seem to work and ones that don't. I am getting really fed up with Confluence at this point.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Are your users logged in as someone who is in the "confluence-users" group?

[Laura McWilliams]

Hi Nic,

I don't know how to tell what group they are logged in as.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

What group(s) enable people to log into your Confluence?  Can you then check what groups those users are in?