How can I give Confluence Knowledge Base direct access with username and password to my customers
Asked by Raphael Dreyfus:

Hi,

I would like to be able to provide a link to the whole knowledge base I have build to my customers.

I do not want "anyone" to have access to this Knowledge Base, so do not want it to be public. I do not want my articles to appear in Google search either, ...

I would like the access to be restricted to my customers, to whom I would either provide a username and password or who may use their username and password they are using to access the service desk.

How can this be done?

Thanks,

RD.


Answers:
author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Do not use "anonymous" in the access permissions for the space, that way everyone will need to log in, including google's 'bots.

comments: author: Raphael Dreyfus
body: Hi Nic,

Thanks a lot for the prompt answer.

How can I manage permission?

What I want is to have my customers access the Confluence Knowledge Base directly, not only through service-desk.

Is there a way to manage permission to the knowledge base independently to service-desk?

Right know, I manage hundreds of different customers divided into 7 different service-desks.

Is there a similar customer management for the knowledge base? A place where I could enter a list of customers who would have read access when they login, while other customers would not have any access?

Like I send to each of my customer a link to the specific service-desk I assigned them, can I send a link to the knowledge base that would be accessible only to a list of customers, who could then access it after login (by the way, no matter if they are service-desk customers or not) ?

Thanks,

RD.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Put your customers into groups, then go to space admin and add the groups into the "can use space" permission.


author: Raphael Dreyfus
body: Hi Nic,

Again thanks a lot, seems to me that we are progressing.

Unfortunately, I may miss something, because I do not manage to do it.

In space settings, I can indeed add individual Jira users (meaning people from my company) but when I try to add customers (not Jira users, or email address of a customer) there is no match and I am getting an error message that the user could not be found (and indeed it is not a user of our organization with a Confluence license), but simply a customer from outside our organization.

So, my question is how can I grant customer (who are not my company employee) a direct access to our Knowledge Base with a username and password?

What I am missing?

Is there another place for granting such access to customers (external to our company)?

Can I grant such permission (direct read access to the knowledge base, not through service-desk) with a username and password to whoever I want? Or should those customers be part of at least one of our service-desks?

Below are screenshot of the space settings, where I cannot add customers, but only users.

I guess I am missing something.

Your help is really appreciated.

Thanks,

RD.

![ConfluencePerm.JPG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/17900i96CE828CC759D7BD/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ConfluencePerm.JPG")![ConfluencePerm2.JPG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/17901i707449116ABEB155/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ConfluencePerm2.JPG")


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: You need to create accounts for them so they can be added.