Jira service management Knowledge base spaces visible for confluence licensed users.
Asked by Dennis Dolman:

Hi,

Currently, we have a situation where we have knowledge bases for customers and customers with Confluence licenses. The customers with confluence licenses are able to see all knowledge base spaces. Is there a way for me to restrict that? It does gives me the following notification:

This space is linked to a project in Jira Service Management so users can view knowledge articles when they raise requests.

If you disable this permission, it can only be enabled again through Jira Service Management.

While i understand that, i would like to have confluence users not see these spaces. Is there any way i can restrict this?

tldr: I want confluence licensed users not being able to see knowledge spaces.

Kind regards,


Answers:
author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: There's a bit of a complex explanation to this, but I believe you can do it, in some cases.

Imagine you have two people - a customer and a developer. (I'm going to talk about your "customers with licences" as developers to try to simplify the writing)

Your customer has a customer account with your Jira Service Management system, and because they are a customer there, they get (read) access to Confluence knowledge base articles. They do not really log into Confluence directly.

Your developer does have a Confluence log in and can be granted (or refused) all sorts of permissions in there.

So, the very simple obvious thing to do is make sure your developers do not have "use space" permission in the Knowledge Base spaces.

Now, if your developers are also customers of the service desk, you'll find they can only read the KB via the Jira Service Management route, because their developer rights do not let them in.

comments: author: Dennis Dolman
body: Hi Nic,  

I like your example. Let's continue on that.

We have groups setup in Confluence for permissions. The developer is in Group 1.

There is a Confluence Space 1 and Confluence Space 2.

Space 1 is the knowledge base.

Space 2 is the documentation of the DEV.

The Developer needs to have access to Space 2 only. We don't want him added to Space 1.

What i did:

- Add Group 1 to Space 2 with View permissions in confluence.

- Don't have Group 1 added in Space 1 in any way.

In the above, the developer can still see space 1. Is there another place to set permissions?


author: Rilwan Ahmed
body: Check global permissions what groups are added and their permissions.


author: Dennis Dolman
body: [@Rilwan Ahmed](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/716861) The groups Developer 1 is member of, has no global permission specified.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Global permissions don't have anything to say about space access beyond "can log in".

I think you've run into the "in some cases" thing here - because your developer account is also the customer account, and Jira and Confluence both know that, it is thinking "well, they can see it as a customer, and they have logged into Confluence as a developer, so they can see it there too"

I would not expect the developer to be able to do anything in the space other than read though, can you check that?


author: Dennis Dolman
body: Hi Nic,

The developer is indeed not able to write. Reading only. The developer is not added as an customer or as Agent to the JSM Project. . So that's why i don't see why it should allow to read (knowledgebase) spaces as it shouldn't even see them to begin with.

Kind regards,


author: Pramodh M
body: If your customers can see the space, there's no way to restrict the space or pages

Below are screenshots for reference

This is a page view from JSM

![1.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/178513iFEEDD0710E93FF8E/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "1.png")

This is a page view from Space permissions in Confluence

![2.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/178510iCFF31B84971C4420/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "2.png")

And when you restrict the page, it doesn't allow you to perform the same ![3.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/178512i7A10B4298EFA388D/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "3.png")

Thanks,  
Pramodh

comments: author: Dennis Dolman
body: Hi Pramodh,  
Thank you for your reply.   

I also noticed these, But it almost feels I'm missing something as i should be able to restrict knowledge bases from regular confluence users.

Perhaps a feature request?

Kind regards,


author: Rilwan Ahmed
body: Space visibility can be restricted by the permissions of that space in confluence. Only users with view permission, can view the space in confluence or in JSM.


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud

jira-service-management