Groups are collections of users. A group can be used to successfully manage a large number of users. Administrators are allowed to create groups in Confluence and add users to these groups. Permissions are then assigned to groups instead of users to allow easier management.
There are two default groups already available in Confluence, and these are special groups:
- confluence-administrators: This group represents the "super users". The members of this group can access the Administration Console and perform side-wide administrative actions, such as installing plugins or changing the security of your site.
- confluence-users: This is the default group for all new users. Users in this group are allowed to log in to Confluence and add to your license user-limit.
Tip
The Confluence administrator permission and the confluence-administrators group are not related
Although the name suggests they are related, they are not. Granting a user or group the Confluence Administrator permission is not the same as adding the user to the confluence-administrators group. The Confluence Administrator permission gives the user access to only a subset of the administrator functions and not complete access.
You can find more information on the differences between administrator roles in the Global permissions section in Chapter 6, Securing Your Content.
To add a group to Confluence, perform the following steps:
- Browse to the Administration Console (Administration | Confluence Admin).
- Choose Groups in the left-hand menu.
- Select Add Group just below the table with the already existing groups.
- Type the new group name.
- Click on the Save button.
To prepare your Confluence installation for the future within your company, it is good practice to think of a naming convention before starting to create groups. A naming convention that worked for me looks like <product>-<space>-<role>. So all space administrators in Confluence, working on the project MyExample would be in the group confluence-myexample-administrators and all the users in confluence-myexample-users.
To assign users to groups, in order to determine their permissions, you have to be a Confluence administrator. There are two ways of editing group memberships in Confluence. They are as follows:
- From the user details screen
- From the group management screen
One way of editing the group membership of a particular user is via the user details screen. This method only allows you to update one user at the time.
To edit a user's group membership, you have to go to the user details screen for that user. We will dive into finding users in the next section, for now we use the Administration Console.
- Browse to the Administration Console (Administration | Confluence Admin).
- Choose Users in the left-hand menu.
- Select Show all users to get an overview with all the users in Confluence.
- Click on the link on the username you want to edit.
- Select the Edit Groups link below the user's details, then the following screen will be displayed:
- Check the boxes in front of the groups to which you want to add the user, or uncheck the box for any group to remove the user from it.
- Submit the changes by clicking on the Save button.
If you want to add multiple users to the same group at the same time, it is possible to use the group management screen, which allows you to do this.
- Browse to the Administration Console (Administration | Confluence Admin).
- Choose Groups in the left-hand menu.
- Select the group to which you want to add users.
- The Group Members screen appears, displaying all the users who are members of this group. Click on the link Add Members.
- In the Add Members textbox, type in the usernames of the people you want to add to the group. You can also search for users by clicking on the search icon next to the box as shown in the following screenshot:
- When you have added all the users you want to add to this group, click on the Add button to save your changes.
You can delete users from a group on the Group Members screen. By clicking on the icon on the same row as the user, the membership of that user will be removed.