Access specific page to specific person
Asked by fabio.dragone:

Hi,

i'd like to be able to assign to a specific user view only permission on a specific page, inside a space.

The user has general confluence access but not direct space access. I could add the user to the space as a viewer, but i need to share only a specific page and not the whole space.

Using page restrictions i can set the permission to the page in "editing restricted", in this way everyone inside the space can see the page, but only some users can edit it. I can add the user outside the space in this way, giving him direct edit permission,

I'd like to give to said user read only permissions and not edit permissions. If i set the page to "editing and viewing restricted" i have to re-add all the components of the space to the viewers, and then add to the specific user read only permissions.

Is there a way to retain the everyone-read permission and add to another user that is not part of the space the viewing permissions?

Thanks


Answers:
author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: To see a page in a space, the person needs to have permission to view the space. You then have to ensure the page is not under any pages that have a view restriction set that would exclude them from seeing it.

The exception to this is if you enable "share page to non user" and send them a copy of the content.

comments: author: fabio.dragone
body: Thanks for the reply. I have shared the pages via export to pdf the pages since i don't want to enable anonymous access to the whole space.

A question remains: why it's possible to add a specific user, that does not have permissions on the space but have access to the corporate confluence tool, to the editors of a page, by setting the page restrictions? Via this procedure the user is added to the editors, but cannot access the page anyway.

Thanks!


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: That is something that's a little confusing, as it is counter-intuitive.

It would not be unreasonable to have coded some checks into it - It is possible to code for "check this user/group you're adding for edit can actually see the page given the current restrictions".

At the moment, Confluence simply lets you add anyone you want, irrespective of whether they'll actually be able to do it. So you can add people with edit rights that they cannot use because they can't see the page.

But I would not want to stop people from adding editors who can't see a page

Imagine people who write like I do - I create a restricted view page at first, so that I don't pollute people's searches with drafted junk, and I tend to add my chosen editors at that point, before they can see it. When I'm ready, I move it to a less restricted place, or open the view permissions up. It would be a faff to have to go back and add the users later after adjusting stuff, and there's an implied check that you'd want to automatically remove editors if view restrictions changed (all the way up the page tree), which would also be a right pain.

But I would like to see restrictions be a bit more friendly in explaining themselves - in the list of people and groups who can edit, a warning sign that "this person/group has edit rights but cannot view the page so they cannot edit it" would be very useful (especially if it explained where the view restriction was coming from - no space permission, or the view restrictions above the page in the tree)


author: fabio.dragone
body: Yes as it is the restrictions are a little confusing, as you say a simple code check to see if an user can actually edit the content would be welcome. Anyway, sharing the article via pdf works too, so it's not a big issue but more of an inconvenience.

Thanks!


Tags: confluence-server

server