Providing access to Confluence articles in a single space for multiple target audiences

[Graham Campbell]

This might aptly be subtitled: Or, can I single source publish content in a space in Confluence to multiple audiences like I could with something like MadCap's Flare and the way it uses Targets?

Here is my scenario, a summary of the variables I have, and the ideal solution I'd like.

I have a space that is access controlled via permissions (replicated from our Active Directory groups).

The space is arranged to have multiple (a little over two dozen) top-level articles representing subsections, which are containers for their own child articles (potentially numbering hundreds).

My full-time permanent staff have full read and write access to the entirety of this space.

I also have several fixed-term contractors and a couple of external outsourcers who require access to a varying subset of the full content of this space - the articles they are permitted to access depend on things like the specific outsourcer they work for or which internal team the contractor is currently employed by.

Currently, in order to grant a contractor/outsourcer access to a single top-level section I must restrict every other top-level section that they do not have permission to access, leaving only the one they can access unrestricted. That's a bit fiddly. When it becomes a problem is when a different contractor/outsourcer needs access to a different top-level section. It becomes an outright complicated nuisance when a third, and so on.

A couple of key points to note about the space:

1. the top-level sections essentially represent teams working on a project, and each team maintains its own articles.
2. following on from point 1, I cannot simply create an "external/contractor user" top-level section and just direct all access there, as that will break the flow of information for my existing teams.
3. likewise, I cannot create a second space of content just for the external/contract users to view, as again that would break the flow and would otherwise require there to be potential duplication of content between the spaces, which I want to avoid at all costs.

I investigated using Comala's Publishing add-on as a way to have each team's content fully managed from the 'core' project space, and then as needed publish articles out to a separate space that would be provisioned purely for external/contractor access. On the face of it this seemed to address my issue of not duplicating content, and also continuing to leave the management of the content completely in the control of each of my teams.

However, the articles appear to be published at the root of the target space and ignore the page tree, which makes it a muddled mess of a single list of articles that are in no way arranged and make it difficult to direct users.

So, if you made it this far well done! And also, please suggest any alternatives you can think of to help resolve this.