Why can't people search without licenses on the Confluence site but they can on the customer portal?
Asked by Andrew Lee:

Hi All,

My company uses Confluence as a knowledge base but only some users have a license in order to create and edit articles. We have been running into an issue where users without a license are unable to use the search bar function in order to find articles in our knowledge base. I have a license and I am able to use the search bar to find articles perfectly fine.

Is there a reason that people without licenses are not able to use the search bar or is this an issue with Confluence?


Answers:
author: Kishan Sharma
body: Hi [@Andrew Lee](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4550949) If the anonymous access is not enabled, the KB articles can't be seen by users who don't have confluence license. If its an internal knowledge base and your employees (without confluence license) needs access to it, you will need to enable anonymous access.

comments: author: Andrew Lee
body: Hi Kishan,

Thanks for your response.

From the complaints I've gathered, employees already do have access to the KB articles, but they aren't able to utilize the search box to find content.

Is there a way to enable anonymous access but still restricting the KB to internal users only?

and if we do enable anonymous access, will the employees who are logged in as JSM customers be able to utilize the KB or will they need to open an incognito window (not logged in) in order to use the search bar and view the KB?


author: Kishan Sharma
body: Hi Andrew,

The knowledge base recommends articles to customers and agents using keywords it pulls from the **Summary** field of a request. So when a customer types something in the Summary field of the request type, they will be shown articles based on the keywords they type. Refer below screenshot -

![Xnip2021-09-14_20-06-18.jpg](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/160217i4F7B594E4011B839/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Xnip2021-09-14_20-06-18.jpg")

As per [this link](https://confluence.atlassian.com/servicemanagementserver/knowledge-base-settings-and-permissions-956713322.html), Users who don't have a Confluence license can't read knowledge base articles unless you allow anonymous access in the knowledge base space.

So if you allow anonymous access, any user can access the KB article and clicking on the KB suggestions link will open the article in new browser tab.

If the customer doesn't have view permissions (ie if you have set page restrictions) they won't be able to view the KB article. You can also restrict articles with labels. Refer [this link](https://confluence.atlassian.com/servicemanagementserver/write-and-search-for-knowledge-base-articles-956713329.html) for details.

Hope this helps.


author: Andrew Lee
body: Hi Kishan,

Thank you for your quick responses. Is enabling anonymous access really the only solution to this?

I was checking my settings in Space Settings - Permissions, and it states this:

### Any active user can view this space {#toc-hId-1282080686}

Any active user can view pages in this space, including users who don't have a Confluence license. This was enabled through Jira Service Management so people can view knowledge articles when raising a help request.

![2021-09-14_16-09-27.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/160256i705EB40BC8102674/image-dimensions/468x185?v=v2 "2021-09-14_16-09-27.png")

Shouldn't this allow unlicensed users to access and search in the KB?


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: This message is a little unclear, as it doesn't explain "active user" - that actually means "people who have logged in", and not "anonymous" users.

Knowledge base spaces allow for "accounts without a confluence licence, but logged in via a Jira service management customer account"


author: Andrew Lee
body: Hi Nic,

If I am understanding what you said correctly, then shouldn't all the employees have access to and be able to search in our internal KB? As all employees have JSM customer accounts and only a select few have licenses.

Sorry if my questions are becoming longwinded, but I want to make sure I have the most optimal settings for the KB


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: I know this all sounds counter-intuitive, but no.

When Confluence is in use as the Jira Service Management knowledge-base, it allows customers **some** access to the articles in the KB, by virtue of them being Service Desk customers. This does not mean they can "use" confluence, it only means they can read kb articles and use the "search" built into the portal on the Jira side that tries to deflect requests by suggesting articles.


author: ERIK GAUDIN
body: I got the same issue.

We are using Confluence Cloud, but only provide acces to our gSuite user.

They all can browse our Wiki, but can't search at all.

If we enable Anonymous, I presume any Atlassian user will be able to search on our Wiki?

We want to give user ability to search content, as we have lot of licenses users who populate note and guideline in our internal Wiki. Some of the information there need to be restricted to only our Employees (gSuite).

How can we achieve that without needing to assign licenses to user for giving them ability to search?


author: Rob Horan
body: Have you enabled anonymous access?

comments: author: Andrew Lee
body: Hi Rob,

Anonymous access is disabled because this is an internal knowledge base.

All employees are JSM customers and have accounts.


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud