Is it possible to restrict access right to attachments?
Asked by sjiang_407etr:

Is it possible to allow a group of users to read a page and its attachments but another group of users ONLY to read the page without reading the attachments?

For example, Group-A creates a confluence page for everyone with an attachment only for this group. When a user from out of Group-A opens the link of this confluence page, he/she can read the text content on the page, but cannot open or download the attachment. When a user from Group-A opens the link, he/she can both read the page and access the attachment.

Any idea or solution about achieving the above requirement is appreciated.


Answers:
author: Patrick Cartier [Candylio]
body: I would suggest creating an extra page, with all the attachments you only want group A to have access to. Give only group A permission to view this page.

Then on the page where you are creating your content, link the attachments from the restricted page.

For the rest of your attachments (that you want everyone to see) you can directly embed them in the page.

comments: author: sjiang_407etr
body: Appreciated for your advice, Patrick.

We already made this way: One page in one space could be read for everyone, and link with another page in a restricted space for limited accessibility. However, some of my coworkers think that's a sort of workaround. Well, I understand making two pages breaks the usual habit of users and isn't very convenient, so I asked the question here for some brainstorm.

What I am trying to do is:

- We have a network file share drive which access is controlled by Active Directoy via LDAP, so I am trying to mount this file drive on a RedHat Confluence server.

- Next, I want to change the Conflunce's Attachment Storage to a directory on the file drive, and the directory can Only be accessed by Group-A.

- Next, setup Conflunce to connect to LDAP so that people need to log in Conflunce by their AD credential.

- Finally, hope users from Group-A can access the attachment storage Automatically, and other users can't access the attachments. This step is most questionable to me, because I am not sure whether Confluence is able to restrict the attachment's accessibility according to the accessibility configuration of the network file drive.


author: carolyn french
body: Hi Scott,

Replying to your comment- "However, some of my coworkers think that's a sort of workaround."

I just took the Atlassian Training Badge- Confluence Content Management- and in fact, the instructor recommends keeping the attachments on one page as a Best Practice for managing attachments in a space. That way, you can see if they need updating and everything is easy to see, ensuring that you don't have duplication by people uploading the same document twice, etc.

I'm with you where I don't think this is a particularly convenient solution for the users that contribute documents in some cases (in other cases, yes, or a modified version of this).

From a usability standpoint, your users that are viewing shouldn't notice any difference though. Your user group that is uploading documents needs to be trained how to link directly to an attachment on another page or use Content by Labels macros (and label the attachments that they would like to show up) or use the Attachments macro and specify Attachments from the other page.

I'm not sure about your other proposed solution, but it sure looks like a lot of work.


author: sjiang_407etr
body: Hi Carolyn,

Thank you very much for your guide!

I am very interested in "Confluence Content Management" that you mentioned. Could you please provide me the link of the training document?


author: carolyn french
body: You're welcome- glad you found it useful :)

Here's the link to the training. It's free and inside the course, there are PDF resources too. There may be some other ones that you are interested in too.

<https://training.atlassian.com/skill-builders>


author: Thomas Deiler
body: Dear [@sjiang_407etr](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1184959),

short answer: No

EDIT: The plugin was for Jira.

So long

Thomas


Tags: attachment