Will the site administration global permission give me access to restricted content?

[Carlos Garcia Navarro]

Hi there,

I thought I knew this but I'm a little confused now, and was hoping the Community can help me confirm the right behavior. If I have the site administrator global permission, do I get "automatically" access to restricted content in the site? Or do I need to add myself to the confluence-administrators groups in order to access the restricted content? Thanks

[Michael Kuhl {Appfire} · Accepted solution]

Hi Carlos - You have Confluence admin rights as a site admin if your Confluence instance uses default permission settings. To (re)gain permission on a space by space basis you can Recover Space Permissions.

[Carlos Garcia Navarro]

Hi Michael, Thanks for your reply. I'm not sure this addresses my question. More specifically, I'd like to know if by being a Confluence site administrator I get access to restricted content. I know that if I'm part of confluence-administrators group then I can access restricted content, but you could have the Confluence Administrator or Site Administrator global and not being part of that group. Any more hints? Thanks!

[Michael Kuhl {Appfire}]

Being a Confluence administrator doesn't give you access to restricted content.  You can grant yourself access to restricted spaces, but not to restricted pages and their descendants.  Page restrictions are set by user or group.  So, one can be a member of a group having site admin rights, but not a member of a group having access to certain restricted content.  That said, if you have space admin for the page you can adjust the restrictions to include you.

[Carlos Garcia Navarro]

Thanks, Michael. I thought that if you belong to the confluence-administrators group you get access to restricted access regardless of space permissions or what other groups you may belong.  Isn't that right?

[Michael Kuhl {Appfire}]

Hi Carlos - I corrected part of my answer above.  A space admin cannot see the content, but they can grant themselves access to it.  See this page for details.

Space Admin and System Administrator access to restricted pages 
Users with 'Admin' permissions in a space, or users with the System Administrator global permission can remove restrictions from pages, even if the page restriction prevents them from viewing the page. Go to  Space Administration  >  Restricted Pages.

[Carlos Garcia Navarro]

Thanks, Michael.