Feedback Request Confluence Public Links

[#1]

Hi folks!
I’m a Product Manager for Confluence Permissions, working on the Public Links feature.

Public links allow Confluence users to generate a URL to share a view-only version of any Confluence page to anyone on the internet with the link.

We had released the feature to some customers in 2021. Since then we have received some great insights on feature enhancements that are underway. Now we are looking to improve the feature specifically informed by your needs!

Help shape our feature:
Is this something you would see value in? We know that trust and security might be top of mind for you, what are the basic must-have security controls that could give the confidence in using the Public Links feature?

[Aaron Morris]

Hi @Nidhi Raj -- I've been thinking about this and have a few thoughts:

Use case

My primary (most desired) use case would be to distribute meeting minutes to attendees and stakeholders without Confluence site access.  Especially for my third-party stakeholders such as customers, partners, and vendors.

I think most other use cases I might have will be better served by the new guest licenses feature. (IMO)

Important features

Security

• Ability to toggle this feature at the space-level.
  • In my current (very small) company, a site-level configuration is fine. 
  • But in my previous (slightly larger) employer, we would have needed space-level configurability.  For example, sharing public links from a sales, marketing, or delivery space would have been fine, but sharing links from a private R&D space would have been restricted.
• Ability to view a list of pages with public links.  This feature will be much easier to control and manage if we can generate a consolidated list, across the entire site, of pages with active public links.  It will make it easier monitor the feature for misuse or abuse, conduct maintenance by deactivating old public links, etc.
  • For comparison, Google Drive and Dropbox both provide this same sort of public sharing. Google does not provide a way to view all your documents with an active public link (AFAIK); rather, you have to view the sharing on each individual file to find your public shares.  Dropbox, however, provides a nice, easy-to-access, consolidated list of things you've shared.  It's a much better user experience.

Functionality

• Ability to configure which macros are useable in a public share...especially third-party macros.
  • Going back to my primary use case:  sharing meeting minutes.  I use a Marketplace app for generating my meeting minute templates.  This means my minutes won't actually render correctly if I were to share them publicly.  Thus, my primary use case is already defeated. ;-)
  • It would be great if as an admin, I could allow-list my meeting minute macro (app) to render on public pages.  I suspect there will be lots of situations where third-party macros are important for the rendering of the page.

Hope this helps!

[Nidhi Raj]

@Aaron Morris Appreciate how much thought you have put into this, it certainly helps, thank you!

[Nidhi Raj]

Check out this update on Confluence public links!