External collaboration in Confluence Premium

[#1]

Check out this short video to learn about external collaboration coming soon to Confluence Premium:

Learn more about Confluence Premium here, and watch the next video in the series - Automation in Confluence Premium

[Gerald Pit]

What is the pricing for external user roles?

[hilarydub]

@Gerald this is still under consideration. Do you have feedback on how we should price these users?

Consider, external collaborators are still able to fully collaborate in Confluence - create, edit, comment - if the admin chooses.

Their restrictions are on user information (people directory, user search, user pickers) and they cannot access content by default - they need to be explicitly added to a space to gain access.

[Gerald Pit]

@Jessica Taylor @hilarydub It is great that this new functionality will restrict user information for external coloborators as you mentioned. 

Will there be options to choose what an external coloborator can see from the people directory/user serach/pickers? The reason is we may want the external coloborator to see our companies users + their own companies coloborators but not other external company's coloborators.

For our use case, external coloborators are usually only granted "read only". I think an additional pricing structure/role should be offered for this. Companies may not want to pay for a premium license for every external read only coloborator. If this new external read only role is created, I think it will really help expand Confluence's usability.

[Martti Ahtola]

@hilarydub we are considering using Confluence for documentation and sharing the documentation with external users and also training them (using a add on). However, for us it would be a challenge if the pricing of the external (read only) would be similar to a regular user because of the large amount of external users compared to internal users. 

Do you have additional information regarding the schedule? 

[John Price]

We need to share with external users for read-only as well.  Example use case:

* We have a product with a bunch of version release notes and other KB docs
* Jira Service Management lets clients search docs, but does not provide space navigation the way Confluence does, nor can we use UI plugins to achieve custom look/feel.
* We can't let the whole internet view the Confluence spaces.

Right now we accomplish this with Confluence Server (unlimited users tier) but it's going away and paying a full Cloud or Data Center license for 10k+ client users just so they can view docs is not feasible.

This could be quite exciting if free (or very cheap) read-only users are supported.

[Bas Kierkels]

Great feature. We would like to start using this to let our customers read documentation on their projects. Basically just like @John Price wrote earlier.

About the price: we would like to have all our clients have one or more logins. We won't be paying a few dollar per user. That way, it would become too expensive.

Really looking forward to when this can be used.

Thanks,
Bas

[Henryk Lippert]

Can await this feature comming. Please work asap on it Atlassian :) ... then I am willing to upgrade into "premium" 

[Sonya Petkunas]

@hilarydub do you have a link to a ticket we can watch for this?

[Joseph Farrar]

@hilarydub Is these feature close to releasing? Wonder if the pricing would work like X number of external collaborators per licensed confluence user, bulk pricing for additional in blocks of X number.

[Tracy Walton]

@Sonya Petkunas I found this issue to follow for updates about this feature, but I'm not sure its THE issue to follow as it is currently in a status of "Gathering Interest"... CONFCLOUD-68428

If someone from the Atlassian team ( @Jessica Taylor ) could comment and let us know, that'd be great. 

Otherwise, it is on the roadmap here where you can keep tabs on if it has shipped yet or not: Atlassian Roadmap

[hilarydub]

Hi all, we’ve been hard at work on external collaboration and are excited to announce that we’ll be opening up an Early Access Program very soon.
We’ll post the sign-up form right here in the community so be sure to keep an eye out!

With regards to pricing: for our first version of external collaboration, it was important to us that these users were truly collaborators, and not just view only readers, so they will use a paid license. We are considering an additional user role for view-only guests in the future, so be sure to give us feedback in the EAP if this your preferred guest type.

Thanks so much for your continued interest and feedback.

[Bas Kierkels]

Great to hear you guys are making progress on this. 

We keep documentation on all software projects we have with customers. We want them to be able to login and check that documentation in Confluence. Also, we make proposals for clients in Confluence. Right now, we print documents to PDF and send them via e-mail so the client can give a permission for new work.

We would like them to be able to do that in Confluence so we can skip the PDF and mail part.

But we are not interested in paying for all of our customers. We would keep using PDF and mail in that case.

Looking forward to your actual setup.

Thanks,
Bas

[Corne van Dijk]

@hilarydub We've been eagerly awaiting this feature and very much looking forward to the release.

However, making external collaborators taking up a paid license defeats the purpose of this feature and is no different then what's already possible by just adding a user.

An option to consider is e.g. to allow up to 5 external collaborators per confluence user.

We work a lot on proposals and need the ability to collaborate with external vendors and clients (often on a relatively short term basis). If we need to pay for these licenses, we will simply continue to use email or other collaboration tools.

I seriously hope this is being reconsidered. If not, my organisation may consider moving away from Atlassian altogether.

[David Turner]

@Corne van Dyk totally agree, my use case is somewhat similar to yours.

The costing of clients would blow our licensing fees up a lot where it will be cheaper for us to spin up a base camp instance which has unlimited seats and meets our project needs.

While we won't be moving from Confluence it has stop us looking at upgrading to the premium plan vs the standard we are on. 

@hilarydub 

[Deleted user]

Requiring a full paid user is a show stopper. Other tools in the market that are used for a similar purpose (Collaborating with external parties) for the most part change for users with the organisation and make external users/guests free. E.g. Basecamp, Asana, Monday etc.

[George Lasater]

Does the feature here, allow hosting Space Contents from Restricted Page to Publis Page and have NON-Confluence User be able to see and read the Page information?

What about the Child pages too?

[Ronny Tobler]

Same use case as many here, we'd like to have our employees as users that can edit, our customers should use the Wiki Read only.

I'd recommend either for free like Microsoft does it or a small monthly fee for external access. 

[Henryk Lippert]

Adam is right. A full paid user for an external user is an absolute show stopper! 

If this is the case I see no reason in upgrading into premium... as we are paying the double price for our internal users + an extra price for external users! This is complete nonsens Atlassian!

External users must be cheaper than internal users as they are limited to just one project (space) and they have no comparable rights to full users (no option for adding spaces, no option for connection to Jira tasks, users, rights...).

Read only isn't enough as our external users (which are regular users at the moment > nonsens as well but no other option) are using the comment function + editing (for example function wish list).

I would be fine with an extra price for externals (with writing rights in their space) but they must be cheaper than full users! For example $3 instead of $7/14 for full user. Read only should be completely free as they can't do anything.

Please turn into the right direction ;)

[Alexander Ryan]

We would only consider upgrading to premium for this feature but NOT if the collaborative users are at a cost. I can not see how this is a benefit when it would be cheaper to stick on standard and buy extra licences then permission restrict them? Please do not restrict this feature in this way. Surely it would be better to limit the number of included collaborative users in premium as x number of free users per paid user licence and if you need a block more add another paid licence?

[Ross Paquette]

Agreed, also no one else charges for guests.

[George Lasater]

Also, There is an APPs that can be used Free of Charge for similar usage

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1220562/external-share-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

[Bas Kierkels]

Hi George: i could be mistaken but i believe this software will enable users to share specific pages. For our company we would need a tool that would allow us to share an entire space with specific users. Including internal links, new pages, etc. Such a tool does not seem to exist yet on the Atlassian platform.

[George Lasater]

@Bas KierkelsYes it it pages and Sub Pages, Would have to check with Author, who is very responsive, if it can share the Main Page and all SubPages, basically the Space.

Yes may be Cloud only

[Bas Kierkels]

Thanks for that tip George. But ehm: might be me but i did not understand your message completely. What app are you talking about? Perhaps the followers of this topic could use that app.

Thanks,
Bas

[Henryk Lippert]

Sorry the app is not the solution. It needs to be done by Atlassian... so go for it and just solve it asap ;)