Don't want to implement Anonymous Access to Confluence Cloud

[Manager - Service Delivery]

I don't want to allow anonymous (public) access to Confluence cloud to allow our non licenced users read only access to Confluence.

I want our domain users to have "read only access" to our articles the way we do now via our server licencing/environment. We are migrating to the cloud and I'm told I have to have a confluence licence for each individual reader regardless, is that correct?

Or go anonymous and whitelist IP's which also is challenging with people working from home.

[Manager - Service Delivery · Accepted solution]

Just to close this one out as my original question should have been clearer - and to provide some context if anyone else is confused by this in the future. Our issue is that we have a Help Centre - JIRA Service Desk and this is where our users log tickets and search our knowledge base for self help. Turns out that this is completely achievable through JIRA Service Management without having to purchase additional confluence cloud  licences. We don't need our users to access Confluence, only through the help centre;

Give access to unlicensed users from Jira Service Management | Confluence Cloud | Atlassian Support

Using Confluence and Jira Service Management together (atlassian.com)

Therefore we can still lock down Confluence and not apply anonymous access to pages or spaces as we don't want our pages to come up in google searches and still provide our 2500 internal users read only access to those articles through our help centre.

Thank you to you both for your input.

[Pramodh M]

Okay 👍

[Pramodh M · Accepted solution]

Hi @Manager - Service Delivery 

Welcome to the Community!!

Allowing unlicensed users is possible with read-only access

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-30161

Just enable anonymous access in Space. It will work

Here's a gist

Thanks,
Pramodh

[Pramodh M]

Reference here

https://confluence.atlassian.com/confeval/confluence-evaluator-resources/confluence-read-only-access-and-licensing

[Manager - Service Delivery]

Thanks Pramodh. We will try that and let you know how it goes. I was actually going to add to this that we have an internal JIRA SD Help Centre Portal and this is where our users log tickets and search articles so if this works then I'm a happy chappy!! 

Will keep you posted!

[Manager - Service Delivery]

Actually quick question, if I assign specific articles to "anonymous" in a space will that also come up in a google search giving the public access to that article also? This is what I also want to avoid. This is company specific info I don't want to share.

[Pramodh M]

No, it will not, there's a separate procedure for that, besides users should log in to get access. So it will not be indexed in Google.

[Manager - Service Delivery]

Ok great thanks again!

[Matt Reiner _K15t_]

Reading through the linked Jira issue, I think it's saying that logged in users will have read-only access to all anonymously accessible content, so that means you're right, the content will be indexed by Google and be available online.

The change in the Jira issue is that logged in users without Confluence licenses can see anonymously accessible content now, which makes sense.

[Manager - Service Delivery]

Thanks Matt, I suspected as much. Will include this in our testing also.

[Matt Reiner _K15t_]

You could also consider my team's app Scroll Viewport.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211636/scroll-viewport-for-confluence

With it, you can publish one or more spaces to a site, which you can set up with a SAML authentication provider.

This may or may not be scalable, depending on how many spaces you have that you want everyone to see and use, but it's an option for doing something similar to what you need.