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Permission Audit

The Permission Audit gives you a tenant-local map of who can access each Confluence space and how they got that access. It crawls space permission grants across your site, flattens group memberships to show effective access, and presents three analysis views derived from a single scan.

The audit reads permissions only — it never modifies any access grants, restrictions, groups, or group memberships.

What is Permission Audit for​

Confluence's native space settings show permission grants per space, one row per grant, with no flattening or cross-space aggregation. Permission Audit answers the governance questions that native tooling leaves unanswered:

  • Who really has access to this space? Not just which groups hold grants, but which individual users are effectively reached through group membership.
  • How did they get it? Direct grant or access via group membership? Which group?
  • Is any grant risky? Which spaces expose content to anyone logged in, or to anonymous users?
  • Who has elevated access across the site? Which users or groups hold space-administration rights?

What is collected​

For each space, the audit reads which users, groups, and public principals hold permission grants. For group grants, it enumerates group membership to map effective access: the individual users who can reach that space because they belong to a group with a grant.

Only stable Atlassian account IDs and group IDs are stored in the audit results. Display names (user names, group names) are resolved transiently in the UI for readability and are never persisted in the audit data. This keeps results compact and privacy-focused.

The audit records:

  • Space identity — space ID, key, and name
  • Permission grants — the principal (user, group, or public), the operation they were granted (for example, "read" or "administer"), and whether it is a space-administration right
  • Grant source — direct assignment to the user or group, or assignment to a group that the user belongs to
  • Effective membership — for group grants, which individual users are members of that group

The three analysis views​

All three views are derived from the same crawl—no re-scan is needed to switch between them. You load results once and explore all three perspectives.

Space Permissions​

A principal-aggregated table showing one row per (space, principal) combination. This is the foundational view that shows all permission activity in a cross-space, consolidated format.

Each row shows:

  • Space — the space name (linked to Confluence) and key
  • Principal type — user, group, anonymous, or all logged-in users
  • Principal — the user account ID or group ID (display names appear in the UI only)
  • Permissions — all operations granted to this principal in this space, shown as labels
  • Risk — a flag indicating whether this grant involves public exposure or privileged access

Click the inspect icon on any row to open a detail modal. The modal shows exactly which operations were granted and, for group grants, which users are members of that group and therefore effectively reach the space through that grant. For public principals, the modal explains the scope (who "anonymous" or "all logged-in users" represents).

Public Exposure​

A filtered view showing only grants to anonymous and all-logged-in-users principals. This answers the high-impact question: what content is reachable without a specific account?

Each row groups all grants for a given space and public principal type:

  • Space — the space name (linked to Confluence) and key
  • Principal type — anonymous or all logged-in users
  • Permissions — all operations granted to that principal in that space

A healthy outcome is an empty table—no public exposure. Any matches warrant review.

Privileged Access​

A table showing every principal with space-administration rights. This view surfaces elevated access across your site by identifying each user or group that holds administrative access and in which spaces.

Each row shows:

  • Member — the user or group holding administrative access (display name shown in the UI, with account ID available in a tooltip)
  • Space — the space name (linked to Confluence) and key
  • Via group — the group conferring the access, if the member is an admin via group membership rather than direct assignment
  • Operation — the type of administrative operation granted (for example, "administer")
  • Admin — a flag indicating administrative rights

Note: Global or site-level administrative access is not included in this view—only space-level administrative access. This limitation applies when your Confluence instance's global permission configuration is not accessible to this app.

Coverage gaps and limitations​

If the app cannot read a space—due to app-access restrictions, permission limits, or a fetch error—that space is recorded as a coverage gap rather than silently excluded. A Coverage notes section at the bottom of the results lists any spaces that were not scanned and the reason.

Common reasons for coverage gaps include:

  • App-access restrictions — an administrator has blocked this app from accessing specific spaces.
  • Fetch errors — a temporary error prevented the app from reading the space.

When coverage gaps exist, you see:

  • A Spaces not scanned count visible on every view for transparency about the results' denominator
  • Explanatory notes in the Coverage notes section describing why spaces were not scanned

If global permission access is not retrievable on your instance, the Privileged Access view includes a note explaining this limitation.

Configuring audit scope​

You can audit all spaces or select a specific subset. The scope applies to all three views.

  • All spaces (default) — the audit scans every space on the site, including archived spaces.
  • Select spaces — you pick specific spaces. Use the scope picker to choose one or more spaces, and the audit scans only those.

Running a Permission Audit​

  1. Navigate to Audit 360 for Confluence in Confluence Settings.
  2. Select Permission Audit from the top navigation.
  3. Click Run New Audit.
  4. On the Configure screen, choose your audit scope:
    • To scan all spaces, select All spaces and click Start Audit.
    • To scan specific spaces, select Select spaces, use the picker to choose one or more, and click Start Audit.
  5. The audit runs in the background. The Execution screen shows progress as a percentage and current phase:
    • Reading space permissions — crawling each space's permission grants.
    • Mapping group membership — enumerating groups and flattening membership to compute effective access.
    • Analysing access — deriving the three analysis views from the cached data.
    • Finalising — completing the scan.
  6. You can navigate away and return to check progress.
  7. When the audit completes, the results load automatically.

Understanding the results​

Audit Overview​

The starting point after an audit completes. It shows:

  • Execution details — when the audit ran, who ran it, which spaces were in scope, and how many spaces were scanned
  • Summary cards — key metrics across all three views:
    • Spaces scanned
    • Groups enumerated
    • Effective members resolved
    • Total permission grants found
    • Spaces with broad (public) access
    • Space admins
    • Coverage: spaces not scanned
  • Coverage notes — any gaps or limitations in the scan results (omitted if no gaps exist)

Audit Details​

Three nested tabs inside Audit Details—one for each analysis view. Each tab contains a searchable, sortable table:

Space Permissions tab — the full principal-aggregated table. Sort by space, principal, or risk. Filter by:

  • Text search (space name, principal ID, principal display name)
  • Risk level (broad/public exposure, elevated/privileged access, informational/direct grant)
  • Principal type (user, group, anonymous, all logged-in users)

Public Exposure tab — the filtered view of public principals. Sort by space or principal type. Filter by text search or principal type.

Privileged Access tab — the space-admin roll-up. Sort by member, space, or admin flag. Filter by text search or member type.

All tables show a count of filtered rows (for example, "5 of 42").

Inspecting a row​

Click the eye icon on any Space Permissions row to open the Inspect modal. The modal shows two sections:

Granted permissions — a table of all operations granted to this principal in this space, with the operation name, target type, and whether it is a space-administration right.

Who gets access —

  • For direct user grants: the user with "Direct grant" notation.
  • For group grants: a table of all members of that group (flattened). Each row shows the member's account ID (display name in the UI), their access path (direct member of the group), and any space-administration rights they inherit.
  • For public principals (anonymous or all-logged-in-users): a note explaining who the principal represents and the scope of their access.

Audit Library​

Every completed Permission Audit run is saved automatically and appears in Audit Library. Use Audit Library to:

  • Load a previous audit to review its results again
  • Pin a run to mark it as important and keep it easy to find
  • Rename a run with a custom name
  • Trash a run you no longer need (trashed runs are permanently deleted after 60 days)

Loading a previous run shows the stored results from when that audit ran. It does not re-run the audit or refresh data from Confluence.