Spaces Audit
The Spaces Audit scans every Confluence space — global, personal, and archived — and inventories each one with governance metadata and activity signals. The audit surfaces findings that flag spaces which may need attention: empty spaces, stale spaces, missing homepages, or missing descriptions.
What Spaces Audit analyzes
For each space, the audit records:
- Space identity — key, name, type (global or personal), status (current or archived), and web URL
- Ownership — who created the space
- Organization — plain-text description and labels (categories)
- Configuration — whether a homepage is set, and its status
- Activity — current page count, archived page count, number of unique contributors, most recent page update date, and most recent page title
- History — creation date and any previous space key (if the key was ever renamed)
For each page in the space, the audit records:
- Page identity — title, status, version number, and parent page
- Authorship — original creator, last editor, and creation date
- Activity — last-updated date
- Link — web URL to the page
The audit reads page metadata only. It does not read or store page body content.
Governance Signals
The audit computes four independent governance signals per space. Signals are evidence-based findings, not recommendations. You interpret them to decide what action, if any, is needed.
| Signal | Definition |
|---|---|
| Empty space | No current pages other than the homepage |
| Stale | No page has been updated in the last 365 days |
| Missing homepage | No homepage is set, or the homepage page no longer exists or is archived |
| Missing description | Space has no plain-text description |
Finding count — each space shows how many signals fired. A space can have any combination of signals (0 to 4).
Owner Status
The audit detects when space creators or page owners have left your organization or lost their license, flagging content that may need ownership transfer or review:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Deactivated | The space creator or page owner's account is no longer active in Confluence |
| Owner cannot be verified | The account ID could not be checked (lookup unavailable) |
| Unlicensed | The account appears to be unlicensed (best-effort detection; less reliable) |
Active, licensed accounts are not flagged. Owner status is checked after the main scan completes; on large sites with many spaces, the check may be skipped or incomplete due to time constraints. See Coverage notes for details.
Configuring audit scope
Before running an audit, you choose which spaces to scan:
- All spaces (default) — the audit fetches and scans every space on the site, including archived spaces.
- Select spaces — you pick specific spaces using the scope picker. The picker lists up to 500 spaces and includes filters for type (global/personal) and status (current/archived). You can also search by space name or key. Sites with more than 500 spaces show a notice; use the search field to find spaces that don't appear in the initial list.
Running a Spaces Audit
- Navigate to Audit 360 for Confluence in Confluence Settings.
- Select Spaces Audit from the navigation.
- Click Run New Audit.
- On the Configure screen, select your audit scope:
- To scan all spaces, select All spaces and click Run Audit.
- To scan specific spaces, select Select spaces, use the picker to select one or more spaces, and click Run Audit.
- The audit runs in the background. The Execution screen shows progress as a percentage and current phase. You can navigate away and return to check progress.
- 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, how many spaces were scanned, and which spaces were in scope
- Summary cards — metrics including total spaces scanned, pages inventoried, count of spaces with findings, count of each governance signal, global vs. personal space split, and counts of spaces and pages with flagged (deactivated, unresolved, or unlicensed) owners. Most cards are clickable and navigate to the Audit Details table with the corresponding filter pre-applied; some cards (like total pages, global/personal split, and page-level owner count) are informational only. If owner status was not checked for this run, the owner cards show "Not checked" instead of a count.
- Charts — a bar chart showing the breakdown of each governance signal, and a donut chart showing the global vs. personal space composition
Audit Details — A complete table of all scanned spaces. The table includes:
- Key — the space key (in monospace)
- Space — the space name, linked to the space in Confluence
- Type — Global or Personal
- Status — Current or Archived
- Pages — count of current pages
- Last updated — most recent page update date (shown as a relative date, or "Never" if no updates)
- Findings — count of governance signals that fired for this space (warning intent if > 0)
- Creator status — shows if the space creator's account is flagged (deactivated, unresolved, or unlicensed); active creators show no badge. If owner status was not checked for this run, all cells show a dash.
- Inspect — click the eye icon to open the full space record
Sorting and filtering — By default, spaces are sorted by finding count (highest first), then by name. You can sort by any column. Filters include:
- Text search — search by space key or name (case-insensitive substring match)
- Type — show only Global or Personal spaces
- Status — show only Current or Archived spaces
- Has findings — show only spaces with one or more findings
- Signal filters — show only spaces where a specific signal fired (Empty, Stale, Missing homepage, Missing description)
- Review-worthy creator — show only spaces whose creator is flagged (deactivated, unresolved, or unlicensed)
Use the reset link to clear all filters at once.
Coverage notes — At the bottom of Audit Details, non-blocking warnings and notes appear if any. These may include:
- Notices about spaces that could not be fully scanned due to API errors
- Warnings about large scans that take longer due to size
- Owner status coverage — when the owner-status check was skipped, partially failed, or had limitations:
- If the check was skipped due to time constraints: "Owner status was not checked for this run because the crawl reached its time budget." Re-run a smaller scope to include owner-status checks.
- If some accounts could not be checked due to API unavailability: "N owner accounts could not be checked (user lookup unavailable); their content is not flagged."
- If restriction detection was limited: "Restriction checks were limited to the first 200 review-worthy pages." or "Restriction checks detect only restrictions applied directly to a page. Pages restricted via an ancestor are not detected (Confluence API limitation)."
- If unlicensed detection is present: "Unlicensed-owner detection is best-effort and may miss or mis-flag some accounts."
Inspecting a space record
Click the eye icon on any row to open the Inspect modal for that space. The modal shows:
Execution details — when the audit ran, who ran it, and the run name
Space profile — space key, name, type, status, creation date, creator (with avatar and owner status if flagged), any previous space key, labels (categories), and a link to open the space
Governance findings (if any) — for each signal that fired:
- Empty space — shows the count of current pages (excluding the homepage) and a table of those pages
- Stale — shows when the space was last active and a table of the 5 most recently updated pages
- Missing homepage — explains why the homepage is missing or not accessible
- Missing description — notes that the space has no description
Activity — count of current pages, archived pages, unique contributors, most recent update, and most recent page title
Configuration — homepage title (if set and accessible), homepage status, and space description
Pages — a complete table of all pages in the space, including title (linked to Confluence), status, version, last-updated date, page owner, last editor, owner status (if flagged as deactivated, unresolved, or unlicensed), and whether the page has direct restrictions. All tables use relative dates for "last updated" to show how fresh the content is.
Audit Library
Every completed Spaces 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 can be 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.
Limitations and coverage
- Archived spaces are included in all scans (both "All spaces" and selected-scope modes). Archived spaces produce governance signals just like current spaces, and you can filter by status to focus on one or the other.
- Personal spaces are included in all scans and are governed by the same signals as global spaces. Administrators can filter by type to focus on global spaces if needed.
- Scope picker on large sites shows up to 500 spaces. If your site has more than 500 spaces, use the search field to find spaces outside the initial list.
- Slow scans on large sites may be slower than expected. All-space scans are recommended when feasible, but selected-scope scans are available to reduce scan time on sites with thousands of spaces.
- Owner status checks on large sites may be skipped or incomplete if the audit reaches its time budget. If this happens, the audit Overview will show "Not checked" instead of a count, and the Details table will show dashes. Coverage notes at the bottom of the Details tab explain why the check did not run or completed partially.
- Restriction detection on pages only checks for restrictions applied directly to a page; restrictions inherited from ancestor pages are not detected (Confluence API limitation).
- Unlicensed account detection is best-effort and may not catch all unlicensed users, as it relies on name suffix patterns that can vary by Confluence configuration.