What can guests see and do on Confluence?

Not all teamwork happens inside the (sometimes virtual) walls of a single organization. Sometimes you need to partner with other companies to build integrations, work with agencies to bring marketing campaigns to life, bring in contractors and consultants to help get big projects over the line, and so on.

With single space guests, you can do all of that work without leaving Confluence.

For instructions on how to get guests set up on your Confluence site, see Invite guests for external collaboration.

Technically, anyone can be made a guest, whether they’re external to your organization or not. For example, if your organization has multiple Confluence instances, an internal member of your organization could be a guest user in one instance and a regular user in another.

What can guests do on Confluence?

Guests are a different type of user than a regular Confluence user — they can only have access to one space at a time (assigned by an admin) and that access has certain limitations.

Guests have special default space permissions

By default, guests will have the following space permission settings.

Guests can be granted all space permissions except the following:

• Space admin

• Export space

• Restrictions

For more information on what those permissions control, see Assign space permissions.

Guests have limited access to internal user info

Confluence blocks guests' access to the people directory, which contains site-wide user information.

Functions that query the people directory of the entire site include:

• @ mentions

• the People tab in the top nav bar

• user search

• user pickers

These are systemically blocked for all guests.

Apps

Guests are restricted from using Confluence’s system apps, including:

• Analytics (site-level and space-level)

• Team Calendars

• Confluence Questions

Guests can, however, interact with page analytics.

Guests can’t add or manage any apps.

Marketplace apps

Just as guests have free access to Confluence, so will they have free access to all Marketplace apps you’re using on Confluence.

If Marketplace app developers want to, they can block guests from accessing their apps. Learn how

Marketplace apps are not necessarily provided by Atlassian. Learn more about how guests interact with third-party apps below.

Third-party apps

If a third-party app used by your organization is enabled in any spaces or on any pages that guests have access to, then those guests will be able to interact with it.

Your organization is responsible for the information shared into marketplace apps and what access guests would have to this information within the apps.

How guests are identified in Confluence

Guests have limited access on Confluence, but it’s important that you and your internal teams clearly understand who may be external to your organization (guests) and where they have access.

This is critical awareness to have so that the wrong information isn’t shared with the wrong people.

To help you know who is a guest and where they have access, Confluence employs a number of markers in the UI.

Individuals
Individual users who are guests will be identified with a GUEST label next to their name wherever they appear in the UI, whether they’ve left a comment or you’re searching for people in any of Confluence’s user pickers.

Spaces
Any spaces where guests have access will be called out with a combination of persistent content in the UI and helpful in-product messages (for example, when a guest has been added to a space in the time since you last visited it).

Space admins will be notified via email whenever a guest has been given access to their space.

Confluence admins can see all guests that have access to the site by looking in the Global permissions > Guest access tab.

Space admins can see all guests that have access to their space by selecting Space Settings from the sidebar, selecting General in the Space permissions card, and then scrolling down to the Guest users section.