Administrator's Guide (v 1.0)

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Introduction

How does it work?

User Anonymization is done by removing all references to a Confluence user and replace them with a new anonymous technical user.

You should first create an anonymous technical user in your own Confluence instance. Then you can use our "User Anonymizer for Confluence" app to change the references of a user to your new anonymous user. Optionally, you may delete the user or remove the user from an external user directory sync after the anonymization process, depending on your requirements.

Where does Confluence store personal data?

There are plenty of places where Confluence does store personal information. The following elements are supported to be anonymized by "User Anonymizer for Confluence".

Pages / Blog posts	creator	replace with anonymous user
	last modifier	replace with anonymous user
	like	remove user
	watcher	remove user
	text mentions	replace with anonymous user
	mentions in inline tasks	replace with anonymous user
Comments	creator	replace with anonymous user
	last modifier	replace with anonymous user
	like	remove user
	text mentions	replace with anonymous user
Attachments	creator	replace with anonymous user
Attachments	last modifier	replace with anonymous user
Macros	mentions in core macros	replace with anonymous user
Macros	user as macro parameter	replace with anonymous user
User Follows	follower	remove user
User Follows	following	remove user
Spaces	space creator	replace with anonymous user
	blog watcher	remove user
	space watcher	remove user
	personal space	remove space

Preparation

Installing the Add-on

The add-on is available on the Atlassian Marketplace. To install the add-on, log in as a system administrator and navigate to the add-on management in the administration console (choose Cog icon > Add-ons at top right of the screen. In the menu on the left, click the “Find New Add-ons” link. Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut: press 'gg' then type 'Find new add-ons'). Search for “user anonymizer for confluence” to display our add-on “User Anonymizer for Confluence (GDPR)”. Click the Buy Now or Free Trial button to install the add-on.

If the installation was successful, a new section “User Anonymizer” appears in the administration. This is where the anonymization of user profiles takes place. If this section is not visible, please ensure that all required modules of the add-on are enabled. To do that, you should select the “User Anonymizer for Confluence (GDPR)” from the list of installed add-ons.

Licensing

The add-on needs a valid license to have all the provided features working. Valid licenses include full licenses, renewal licenses, or 30-day trials and are available on the Atlassian Marketplace. The license model is the same as the one Atlassian uses for its products – for further information, see Atlassian’s documentation on app licensing.

To get a license and provide it for the plugin, please carry out the following:

Go to the license settings page (Administration > Add-ons > “Manage add-ons”: Extend “User Anonymizer for Confluence (GDPR)”)
Use the links to create a new license at the Atlassian Marketplace (use “Free Try” to get a new trial license or “Buy Now” to purchase a full license), or copy a license you got from Actonic.
Enter the license key in the license screen.

Without a valid license, the User Anonymizer shows the message “Invalid or missing license key” instead of the User Anonymizer configuration screen.

Prepare your Confluence System

To use "User Anonymizer for Confluence (GDPR)" you should first create a technical anonymous Confluence user. Go to Confluence User management and create a user, for example with the username "anonymous". Once created, please edit the user properties and set the user inactive.

You may choose the name freely, but it should clearly be identified as an anonymous technical user. It is also possible to create more than one anonymous user with different names.

But remember, every anonymous user should be set inactive to avoid logins. Anonymous users may have advanced permissions (for example, if set as space administrator by the anonymization process).

Anonymization process

To perform the following steps, you need to be in the group confluence-administrators.

You can access the configuration in the Confluence Administration (choose Cog icon > Add-ons at top right of the screen) via the menu item Anonymizer Management ⇾ User Anonymizer in the panel on the left side. Alternatively, you may use the Confluence search. Click into the search field or use the keyboard shortcut: type "gg", then "User Anonymizer".

Image 1: User Anonymizer User Interface

Configure User Anonymizer

Please enter one or more users you want to anonymize (1) in the User Anonymizer form (see Image 1).

Set the technical anonymous user (2) you created manually before.

Optionally, you may decide to include or exclude selected spaces (3) to limit the anonymization process to a subset of Confluence content. If left empty, the anonymizer will anonymize all the spaces.

Test anonymization

Click "Test anonymization" (5) to test the anonymization with the currently selected options. In this step no personal data will be changed, it is safe to click this button.

As a result, you get a list of the elements that matches your selected users that will be anonymized (Image 2).

Image 2: Result table of "Test anonymization"

Execute anonymization

The result table of "Test anonymization" (Image 3) gives you an overview of the elements that will be anonymized. Click "Execute" (6) to anonymize the personal data.

Anonymization cannot be undone. You will not be able to restore previous personal data. Please check your settings twice.

As the anonymization process may take a while depending on the amount of content, the current progress will be shown and updated automatically.

Image 3: Running Anonymization progress

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