Confluence permissions for users for specific topics?
Asked by Markus Polzer:

Hello,

we have a huge and well working confluence plattform which is used mostly internaly from approximately 100 hundred users. Everything is fine due the reason everbody is off course allowed to see everything in confluence. Overall we have more then 500 bullet points / topics with a structure with sometimes more then 10 levels.

No we have the problem, that we must give permissions for some single topics to specific (external) persons. It is absolut not possbile to give them rights for alle topics!

For example:  
User A is allowed to see one specific topics on the deepest level.  
User B is allowed to see a specific topic with all childs from this topic.  
User C...  
User D...  
...

Everything my confluence experts told to me ("making different confluence instances for every user" or "give permissions to every single topic") are not making sense (of course i want to have all informations for most of the people on ONE place not on different instances \& i is not manageable to give permissions to every single topic...)

Is there any possible solutions for this situation - i think we can?t be the only community which is confrontated with such a need...?

The only thing i want to do is to give specific persons specific topic permissions?

One thing i tried was also not helpful...  
(give permissions rights on the highest topic and more rights for more users on the detail topics see my exmaples above - according to my confluence experts this is only working cause it is a bug (!) in the current confluence version...)

I and all community like confluence very much - but this is a serious issue for us...

Every help would be very appreciated... :=)


Answers:
author: Jeremy M
body: Dear Markus,

So you need to give acces to certain pages to external (anonymous?) users. Am I right? You cannot enable public acces when the space is not accessible for the public. You will have to create a dedicated space to make it public.

If you do not want any public spaces but only for a certain set of users.. you will need to limit certain pages to internal groups and other pages to external groups. However it might be a quicker step to just make a dedicated space for them.

comments: author: Markus Polzer
body: Thanks for the fast reply!

No this are not anonymous users - we are all in the same company - with "internal" i mean persons which are located in a specific unit from the company (= 100 users see above) - and with "external" persons i mean also persons from the company.

So at the end the 100 users should see all 500 topics - an different specific users should see only specific topics (topics are different from user to user). But we are all in the same company.


author: Steffi Frank
body: wrote this, because you corrected: you're not talking about internal and external users, but all internal from different units


author: Steffi Frank
body: Hi Markus

create a new group for external users

don't restrict the highest level in your instance e.g. page A

create page B and restrict it with viewing permission to your internal user group

create page C and restrict it with viewing permission to both, internal and external, user groups

Move all pages (trees), which external users are not allowed to see, underneath page B and the rest underneath page C

Hope, this fits your needs

Steffi

comments: author: Markus Polzer
body: Thanks for the reply!

B and C are childs from A - is this right?

Maybe this solutions works but with that i loose the whole organized structure - and for most of the people (100 users) it makes no sense that we divide the information to different pages - an the single only reason is the permission...

I don?t undestand why it is not possible to give simply additonal permissions for specific points - an the majority of the users can see all nevertheless...

Is it realy the only solutions to destroy my well organized structure for the majorty of the users - from my point of view this is a serious drawback from confluence when i understand it right...


author: Steffi Frank
body: regarding your last post: create group_b and create group_c

;-)


author: Steffi Frank
body: yes, B and C are children of page A


author: Markus Polzer
body: Hallo @Steffi

can?t follow you with your last comment - what do yo mean with

"regarding your last post: create group_b and create group_c"?