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Space administration

Users who create a space are automatically space administrators for this space. Group members in the group "confluence-administrators" or users with the permission "system administrator" have access to all spaces by default. 

You can access the space administration by clicking Space Tools at the bottom of the Confluence sidebar:


Overview

  • Change the name of the space (The key can not be changed).
  • Define categories ("Labels").
  • Archive spaces - archived spaces do not appear in lists of spaces by default and are no longer searched unless this is explicitly selected.
  • Deleting spaces.

Permissions

Space permissions can be used to set various levels of access to groups and/or individual users. You can define the default permissions globally - these will then apply to all new spaces. Permissions in Confluence are additive.

The permissions in detail:

  • All
    • View: This permission grants read access to the space. Without this permission, the space is not visible to the defined users or groups, and they cannot access the space's content.
  • Pages
    • Add: Create/edit pages in this space.
    • Delete: Delete pages in this space (all pages).
  • News
    • Add: Create/edit blog posts in this space.
    • Delete: Delete blog posts in this space (all blog posts).
  • Comments
    • Add: Create/edit comments within this space.
    • Delete: Delete comments within this space (all comments).
  • Attachments
    • Add: Upload/edit attachments within this space.
    • Delete: Delete attachments within this space (all attachments).
  • Restrictions
    • Add/Delete: Permissions, apply or delete page-level read and/or write permissions.
  • Mail
    • Delete: This covers the Confluence function that links email accounts to a Confluence instance, and displays email from that account in a special area within a space. The 'Delete' permission allows or disallows a user or a group to delete these mails.
  • Space
    • Export: The rights to export a space to XML, HTML or PDF files.
    • Administrator: Permission to administer a space, allows full access to the space administration.

By default, there are two groups in Confluence that have the permissions as shown in the screenshot. Both groups and permissions need to be defined and modified, i.e. additional groups must be created (or obtained from the Active Directory (AD)) and the permissions these groups should be granted for newly created areas must be defined globally. Permissions can be set manually for each specific space.

Restricted pages

  • Display all pages in a space that are currently restricted.
  • The option to remove this restriction.

Content

Templates / Blueprints

Administrators can

  • edit or deactivate existing templates within this space
  • create new templates within this space
  • promote templates (show promoted templates at the top of the Create dialog when selecting a template) 

This functionality is available globally, for the entire instance. Changes that aren't specific to a space should be made at the global level.

Blueprints can have more functionality built into them than templates. Blueprints are programmed and are often delivered via Confluence apps. Templates are mainly used to specify a layout and recommended or standard content.

You can create a template just like you create a page with the Confluence editor, with the following differences:

  • You can attach files or insert images. These must be attached to an actual page within the space, and then linked to from the template.
  • You can work with simple variables as form fields (see here), to insert text fields that will be be displayed and filled in once when a user creates a new page based on this template (in the created page, the fields will be shows as pure text content).
     
  • Instruction text (placeholder text) can be used in the template (only visible in edit mode).

Reorder pages

You can reorder and organize the pages within a space's hierarchy of pages: simply click "Reorder pages". You can also do this from the page menu: "..." → "View in Hierarchy".

Orphaned pages

These are pages that are no longer located under a parent page in the hierarchy. This can happen if you restore a page from Trash, for example.

Undefined pages

When links are inserted to pages that don't exist, they are listed as undefined pages.

Attachments

You can see an overview of all page attachments in this space.

Trash

The Trash contains deleted pages, blog posts and attachments. You can restore deleted pages. You can also permanently delete individual pages/posts/attachments, or completely purge the Trash.

Export

You can export a space as:

  • HTML: To export a space to a static website.
  • XML: To transfer everything within a space to another instance. Restrictions will be lost. 
  • PDF: Export a space to a PDF file.

Sometimes it is necessary to export all pages, or only specific pages or sections of a space's hierarchy.

Import

Import text files from a folder on the Confluence server. These text files will be imported to pages within Confluence. The page title is taken from the filename and the content of the page will contain the entire content of the text file.

Configuration

It is possible to customize the look and feel at various levels (individual spaces and global), but not without the potential for problems. For example, space-level customizations may not survive global updates. Possible customizations listed below are possible both at the space and the global level:

  • Themes: Choose a design/theme; every space can theoretically use their own theme. 
  • Colour scheme: Change the color scheme.
  • Stylesheet: Use custom CSS to change your space's layout.
  • Sidebar, Header and Footer
  • PDF Layout: You can customize the layout used when you export the space or its pages to PDF (Title Page, Header, Footer) to an extent (HTML/CSS).
  • PDF Stylesheet: Custom CSS can be used to modify the layout when you export the space of its pages to PDF to a certain extent.

Configure sidebar

The sidebar configuration can be used to upload a logo for the space and define what should appear in the space's navigation.


Reorder pages

Click "Reorder pages" to rearrange the pages within a space's hierarchy (see above).


(Global) Administration

  • Authorization concept
    • Global Permissions => What are users normally allowed to do within Confluence.
    • Space Permissions => What are users allowed to do within a specific space.
    • Page Restrictions => Read and/or write restrictions on a specific page or page tree.
    • Permissions can be granted to individual users, groups or the anonymous user (except for page restrictions). Where possible, permissions should always be granted to groups.

  • Managing users and groups
    • Groups
      • Based on sensible characteristics, users should be assigned to appropriate groups (organizational, permissions, ...). Groups can be imported from a user directory.
      • Default group "confluence-users": The standard group for all users with permissions granted for all essential functions.
      • Default group "confluence-administrators": A group of 'super users', who have access to all functions and spaces within Confluence, independent of any other defined permissions. Changes to this group's permissions are ignored and are reset, because permissions important for the operation of Confluence are bound to this group.

        There is no way to hide content in Confluence from users who are either members of the group "confluence-administrators" or who have the "system administrator" permission and can assign themselves to the group "confluence-administrators".

    • Users
      • Manually managing users versus linking to a user directory.
  • Global permissions (https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/global-permissions-overview-138709.html)
    • Use Confluence
    • Personal space (can create a personal space)
    • Create space (can create new spaces)
    • In group confluence-administrator (access the Confluence administration with a few limitations)
    • In group system-administrator (access the Confluence administration, including critical sysadmin functionality)
  • Space permissions (within the Confluence administration)
    • You can define the default permissions applied to all new spaces; it is important to not grant too many or too few permissions to specific groups of users (but you can manually change the permissions for each space after it has been created).
  • Space permissions (within a space's configuration)
    • Grant specific permissions to groups. See above.
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This content was last updated on 10/14/2021.

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