Am I able to make a space available to the public (anonymous != public)?
Asked by Markus Raab:

I want to have a space in Confluence available to the public. My first thought was to give read-permissions to anonymous.

However, I realized that the space is then only visible to anonymous user, but not to logged in users. Usually you would think that you give the permissions also to the logged in users, however this does not work as I am talking about JIRA Service Desk customers that should be able to accesss that space (no matter if they are logged in or logged out).


Answers:
author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: It is counter-intuitive, but yes, anonymous = "people who have not logged in". Service Desk customers are logged into Jira and get access (to kb spaces) via that, so they're not considered to be anonymous.

So we have this strange situation where non-KB spaces can be made accessible to the world, but not existing customers if they've logged into Service Desk.

There's a request out to fix this somewhere, but I can't find it.


author: Christo Mastoroudes _Adaptavist_
body: Hi,

Anonymous users are simply any user that does not log in. So technically any user can view the space. You will explicitly have to add any other groups of logged in users you want to allow access to the space.

comments: author: Markus Raab
body: Hi Christo,

I understand that now ...but I am talking about users that do not count against the confluence license (JIRA Service Desk customers). This means I cannot permit them for the space I think.


author: Fabienne Gerhard
body: Hi [@Markus Raab](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/256837) - but you're users form JIRA Service Desk are not automatically users in Confluence. Depends on where and how you get you're data from.

We had a similar problem - we are using AD for all users - had to create a group in AD and synchronize them, so everyone else stays anonymous.


author: Markus Raab
body: [@Fabienne Gerhard](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/971720) true I did not mention that. Our users are managed in the Atlassian DIrectory now (we will switch in the future to something like Keycloack but for now we will accept to have them in the Atlassian Directory).

The applications are linked. Therefore the customers are available in Confluence as well.

What I basically need is to set up a space that is available to all (no matter if a user is not logged in or logged in). Obviously this is different then "anonymous".


author: Christo Mastoroudes _Adaptavist_
body: If you add any users to confluence as a single user or group and give them the "can use" permission then they will count towards your Confluence licence count.

I am not exactly sure how your Jira instance customers(people who open tickets) would count towards a Confluence instance.


author: Markus Raab
body: [@Christo Mastoroudes _Adaptavist_](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/342865) This means at the end I cannot make a space available for all (no matter if logged in or logged out) without using a license right?

Then public/anonymous access != access for all (as this is what I actually expected when I heard public/anonymous access)


author: Christo Mastoroudes _Adaptavist_
body: From the [documentation](https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/managing-your-confluence-license-313467774.html#ManagingyourConfluenceLicense-usercountUnderstandingtheusercountforyourlicense) it seems if a Confluence user has the "can use" permission it does count towards your license. I don't know if there is a way around that. Perhaps someone from Atlassian more familiar with licences can help.


Tags: jira-service-desk