Stop a group from viewing a space in search results when anon access is turned on.

Question

Hi Confluence gurus,

I'm trying to manage an instance of Confluence where the number of spaces keeps growing and growing and the original uers are starting to struggle with the search results getting clogged with other spaces.

We are a call centre and we use confluence as a knowledge centre, so quick and easy search results are an absolute must. Recently another team created a space and turned on anonymous access as they want to share their info with the business. Now when the call centre agents use quick search, the other space's content comes up in the quick search results and stops them quickly finding the content they need.

I have a couple of ideas of how to fix this but can't make it work:

1. Can I restrict quick search results (drop down box when searching) to only bring up results from the current space?  Everything I read here suggests not.

2. Can I change space permissions on the other space to stop a group of call centre agents from having permission to view those pages, and still allow anonymous access to that space? When i try and create a goup with no access at all in that space (view, add, comment export etc. all with a red "x") Confluence just automatically deletes this row.

Any help would be appreciated.  I am happy to clarify anything if need be to help nut this out.

Thanks!

Jennifer Hemmens · Answer

Hi @Jim Lindsay,

You asked your question quite a while ago and it seems no-one ever got back to you. I'm not sure if you've already found a solution to your problem, but the easiest way would be to work with groups and space permissions (or page restrictions).

Firstly, the search function in Confluence is depressingly bad, and as far as I'm aware, it's not possible to edit the search results drop-down.

You're correct in when you add a group to the space permissions and deselect all, the group disappears. This is because they have no permissions in the space. Only groups (or individual users) with permissions in the space should be visible in the row(s). And this is where things get tricky: you must be in the "confluence-user" group to be allowed access to Confluence content. There's a good chance that all of your spaces still have the "confluence-user" group as a row with viewing rights (unless otherwise configured, "confluence-user" group members are often automatically assigned space rights when a new space is created).

Another reason that your colleagues are seeing everything could be because they are all confluence-administrators. Make sure this isn't the case! It's best to assign different groups to different "departments", and add them to their relevant spaces. This way they only see the spaces they require access to :)

Lastly, you can also always restrict individual pages if you don't want them to show up. Say you only want a certain page to be seen by its creator and an anonymous user, then restrict the pages viewing and editing rights. This way it won't appear in your colleagues' search results.

I hope your problem was long resolved, and if not, that this helps anyway!