deleting confluence users that are disabled

[Mike Cajohn]

We are reaching our maximum of licensed users.  There are a lot of disabled users in confluence.  Is is ok to delete them?  Will that open those licenses back up? Can we lose anything in confluence by deleting these disabled users?

[Mallmann]

Hello Mike,

Confluence's license count is based on Global Permissions instead of number of users in the instance: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Global+Permissions+Overview. Users will count towards the license in the following cases:
* If the user belongs to a group that has global permissions to use Confluence
* If the user is individually granted global permissions to use Confluence

Within the UI, you can get a list of users and groups that have Global Permissions and will count against your license by navigating to Confluence Admin > Global Permissions. You can click on each group individually to reveal their members.

Also, the following query will return users that belong to a group which has global permissions:

SELECT DISTINCT u.lower_user_name
FROM cwd_user u
JOIN cwd_membership m ON u.id = child_user_id
JOIN cwd_group g ON m.parent_id = g.id
JOIN spacepermissions sp ON g.group_name = sp.permgroupname
WHERE permtype='USECONFLUENCE' AND u.active = 'T';

Also, you're not be able to delete internal users that have created content in Confluence. If the user haven't created any content, there's no problem in deleting them.

I hope it helps!

Eduardo

[Guilherme V.]

Hi there,

Instead of delete them, why don't you remove all their groups? The users only count against your license if they have the "Can Use" permission in Confluence.