Introduction
In Confluence, you may have the need to make dedicated Spaces accessible for Guest Users.
Those Guest Users must not log in and they do not require a personal Account or Password.
Out of the box you can enable anonymous Access for your Confluence Instance. You than can configure Spaces which shall be accessible by anonymous users. These anonymous users do not consume a license.
Due to security reasons and for better user experience, many Confluence Administartors do not want to open their Confluence Instance for anonymous access. Beside the security considerations, the user experience for normal users is bad, since they do not recognize whether they have to login to access a space/page as a result they become confused.
Guest Access for Confluence is the solution for this use case.
Any user, who is not logged in will be automatically logged in as "Guest". This consumes 1 License in total for all guest Users.
User Guide
A user guide is not required. Users are automatically logged in. Based on the Confluence Configuration/Space Permissions they must have read only access to spaces/pages
Administrator Guide
Before you can use the App you have to setup the App and you have to prepare some configuration.
Administer Confluence
Create a Group called "guests" in confluence
Go to Confluence User Administration
Find the Group Settings on the left
Can you see the "Add Group Option" ?
If yes goto "Create the group" section
if NOT, you need to do some more configuration
More Configuration required if "create group" is disabled
Search for Security Configuration on the left
Here you might see that "external user management" is enabled.
To be able to create a group you do need to disable (just for now, we will reenable later on after we have created the group)
After disabling, go back to the Groups Settings
You now see
Create the group
Click Add Group
The group has been created, there are currently no users in there
Adding the guest user account
Go to Users
Click "Add Users" and fill in the details
Now you can "Edit Groups"
Just put the guest user intu the guests group.
Remove the check box from confluence-user
Select the Guest Group instead
press "save".
Verify that the user inly belongs to group "guests"
Reenabling the External User management
Take Care
Only reenable the External User Management if this has been enabled before!
Edit Global Permissions
You now need to edit Confluence Global Permissions
Go to
Add the guests group to the licensed users, make sure to enable "can use".
Manage Space Permissions
Go to
Make sure the guests group is not listed in the default permissions
Now for the individual Space Permissions, select the space you want to enable for guest access.
Manage Individual Spaces
Click "Manage Permissions"
Scrill down to anonymous access
Enable "View".
Take Care
Do not enable any other option beside "view" since we want to have "READ ONLY" guest Access !
Testing the Guest User Access
Now it is tie to test the guest user access. Either logout or use a different browser and login as the guest user.
After login, go to the space directory
Take Care
Make sure you only see the Spaces you want to allow guest access for !!!
If you see any additional Spaces here you do need to check the permissions and you do need to rerun this tutorial.
Administer the Guest Access App
Yes this was quite some effort to prepare the system.
But the good news is that the App configuration is very easy.
Make sure you are still logged in as an admin.
Now it is time to install the App from the Marketplace.
Request a trial license.
Go to Manage Apps
select Guest Access from the left menu or click "configure" button
You can see that there is just one configuration option. You simply need to select the user name for the guest account.
?
You might wonder why we created the guest group just for the guest user. This is for better security. Even if in normal cases there is just one user in the guests group, this gives us an additional level of control for better security.
Introduction
In Confluence, you may have the need to make dedicated Spaces accessible for Guest Users.
Those Guest Users must not log in and they do not require a personal Account or Password.
Out of the box you can enable anonymous Access for your Confluence Instance. You than can configure Spaces which shall be accessible by anonymous users. These anonymous users do not consume a license.
Due to security reasons and for better user experience, many Confluence Administartors do not want to open their Confluence Instance for anonymous access. Beside the security considerations, the user experience for normal users is bad, since they do not recognize whether they have to login to access a space/page as a result they become confused.
Guest Access for Confluence is the solution for this use case.
Any user, who is not logged in will be automatically logged in as "Guest". This consumes 1 License in total for all guest Users.
User Guide
A user guide is not required. Users are automatically logged in. Based on the Confluence Configuration/Space Permissions they must have read only access to spaces/pages
Administrator Guide
Before you can use the App you have to setup the App and you have to prepare some configuration.
Administer Confluence
Create a Group called "guests" in confluence
Go to Confluence User Administration
Find the Group Settings on the left
Can you see the "Add Group Option" ?
If yes goto "Create the group" section
if NOT, you need to do some more configuration
More Configuration required if "create group" is disabled
Search for Security Configuration on the left
Here you might see that "external user management" is enabled.
To be able to create a group you do need to disable (just for now, we will reenable later on after we have created the group)
After disabling, go back to the Groups Settings
You now see
Create the group
Click Add Group
The group has been created, there are currently no users in there
Adding the guest user account
Go to Users
Click "Add Users" and fill in the details
Now you can "Edit Groups"
Just put the guest user intu the guests group.
Remove the check box from confluence-user
Select the Guest Group instead
press "save".
Verify that the user inly belongs to group "guests"
Reenabling the External User management
Take Care
Only reenable the External User Management if this has been enabled before!
Edit Global Permissions
You now need to edit Confluence Global Permissions
Go to
Add the guests group to the licensed users, make sure to enable "can use".
Manage Space Permissions
Go to
Make sure the guests group is not listed in the default permissions
Now for the individual Space Permissions, select the space you want to enable for guest access.
Manage Individual Spaces
Click "Manage Permissions"
Scrill down to anonymous access
Enable "View".
Take Care
Do not enable any other option beside "view" since we want to have "READ ONLY" guest Access !
Testing the Guest User Access
Now it is tie to test the guest user access. Either logout or use a different browser and login as the guest user.
After login, go to the space directory
Take Care
Make sure you only see the Spaces you want to allow guest access for !!!
If you see any additional Spaces here you do need to check the permissions and you do need to rerun this tutorial.
Administer the Guest Access App
Yes this was quite some effort to prepare the system.
But the good news is that the App configuration is very easy.
Make sure you are still logged in as an admin.
Now it is time to install the App from the Marketplace.
Request a trial license.
Go to Manage Apps
select Guest Access from the left menu or click "configure" button
You can see that there are just one configuration options. You simply need to select the user name for the guest account. For security reasons, you need to add the SpaceKeys of enabled spaces separated by ","
?
You might wonder why we created the guest group just for the guest user. This is for better security. Even if in normal cases there is just one user in the guests group, this gives us an additional level of control for better security.