Confluence Authentication with Active Directory
Asked by Amarendra Thakur:

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We are planning to integrate our Confluence with Active directory.Our Confluence instance have around more than 10000 users. We would like to get some answers for few of our questions

1 - Once we integrate confluence with active directory what will happen to the existing 13000 users?

2 - How the authentication mechanism will work keeping in mind the current users?

3 - Will it import all the users from AD to confluence.

Regards

Amarendra Thakur


Answers:
author: Septa Cahyadiputra
body: Hi Amarendra,

Regarding your queries, hopefully the following information will clarify yoru doubts
> 1 - Once we integrate confluence with active directory what will happen to the existing 13000 users?
>
> 2 - How the authentication mechanism will work keeping in mind the current users?

Confluence 3.5 and above use "[User Directory](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Configuring+User+Directories)" feature to manage your users on your Confluence instance. The rule of thumb is, the higher order directory will take precedence compare with the lower order directory. For example, if you set your AD to be at the top (higher than your current directory that contain 13000users), Confluence will search your AD first and ignore the lower order directory if there are any duplicate on the lower order directory.

So, if there is a username named "admin" on your AD directory and "Internal Directory" Confluence will ignore the "admin" user from your "Internal Directory" and authenticate against your AD. If there are no "admin" on your AD directory, Confluence will still authenticate agains its own "Internal Directory".

So to answer your first question, the existing 13000 users are still available depend on how you configure the directory order and the retrieve AD users.
> 3 - Will it import all the users from AD to confluence.

In regards to this query, it is definetely depend on how you configure your Confluence integration. In a nutshell, there are two option on how you want to configure your AD directory

* [Connector](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Connecting+to+an+LDAP+Directory)

Will synchronize the users from your LDAP directory frequently (default: 60minutes). User and group retrieval depend on how you configure your Base DN and [search filter](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CROWD/Restricting+LDAP+Scope+for+User+and+Group+Search)

* [Delegation](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Connecting+to+an+Internal+Directory+with+LDAP+Authentication)
  * You can choose to let your AD users to be copied into [Confluence during first authentication](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Connecting+to+an+Internal+Directory+with+LDAP+Authentication#ConnectingtoanInternalDirectorywithLDAPAuthentication-CopyingUsersonLogin)
  * You can manually add the users trough Confluence
  * How Confluence search and authenticate users and groups depend on how you configure your Base DN and [search filter](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CROWD/Restricting+LDAP+Scope+for+User+and+Group+Search)

Highly recommend you to review the above method documentation to get a better idea on the integration method.

Hope it helps.

Cheers,  
Septa Cahyadiputra


Tags: active-directory