Watching and editing rules

A template can set who watches the new space, and who may edit or see which pages.

Watching

A template can name groups whose members watch the new space. Everyone in them starts watching once the pages are finished — never while they’re being built, so nobody gets a notification for every blank being filled in.

Watch rules only ever apply to a space Space Factory creates. A creation that adds pages to a space you already have sets nobody watching: that space isn’t ours to change.

Who can edit or see certain pages

A template can say that a particular page — “Contracts”, say — may only be edited by certain groups, or only seen by certain groups, or both. The restriction is applied to the copy of that page in the new space.

• Who may edit it. Everyone who can see the space can still read the page; only these groups can change it.
• Who may see it. Nobody outside these groups can open the page, or the pages under it — not even the person who asked for the space, unless they are in one of the groups. The groups who may edit the page can always see it too, because Confluence would otherwise lock them out.

The preview counts the pages only some groups will be able to see, before anything is created.

Space Factory always adds itself to a restriction it sets, because Confluence refuses a restriction that locks the app out, and because the app has to be able to fill in blanks and undo the creation later.

Keeping them in step

Applied once, at creation, those rules go stale: somebody joins the group next month and nobody is watching for them. So Space Factory writes the rules onto the new space, where the other Gold Standard Web apps can pick them up:

• Restriction Rules keeps the edit rules in step today, as people join and leave the groups.
• Group Watch will keep watching in step once its update ships. Until then the watchers are set once, at creation.

Without those apps installed, nothing breaks — the rules are simply applied once, at creation, and stay as they are.

Turning it off

The handshake is a switch on each template: Tell Group Watch and Restriction Rules about the new space. It only ever writes to spaces Space Factory created.