How To Transfer Content Ownership in between Users
Platform notice: Server and Data Center only. This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms.
Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Important
Atlassian official recommendation is to rename users in LDAP/Directory as needed instead of creating new ones once possible. This workaround is suggested to those who can't follow the recommendation by any given reasons. It is also important to highlight that database manipulation should be thoroughly tested in non-production prior being applied in production and that Support won't be able to help in case anything goes wrong unless a database backup has been taken to restore the application to its original state.
Problem
Let's say that for any given reasons, an user received a new username to access Confluence. However, this very specific user created tons of contents on Confluence using his old account. Confluence does not have an embedded feature to transfer content ownership from one user to another, which means that this user will lose everything created with the old user upon such scenario.
Important
This KB is meant to workaround the above problem when the new user has been created in the same directory as the old user. If we are talking about changing LDAP directories or moving users to a new LDAP directory and transferring content to them, this is not the Knowledge Base article that you are looking for. Please, check How to merge two users' content ownership and permissions in Confluence instead.
Feature Request
Confluence doesn't have any available features to help with this specific scenario. If you feel like Confluence should have it, please, vote and subscribe to the Feature Request below to increase its visibility:
- CONFSERVER-56448 - Getting issue details... STATUS
Workaround
Ensure that both usernames exists in Confluence and that they are part of the same directory.
select * from cwd_user where user_name in ('olduser','newuser') and directory_id = '98305';- If they are not, proceed with using How to merge two users' content ownership and permissions in Confluence instead of this kb.
- If they are, proceed with the steps below.
- Back-up your database.
- Shut down Confluence.
Open your Database Management System and create a temporary table called
tmp_usermigrationto store information about the users that we are going to modify.CREATE TABLE tmp_usermigration ( oldusername varchar(255), newusername varchar(255) );Insert user information on it, please, replace the variables below accordingly:
INSERT INTO tmp_usermigration (oldusername, newusername) VALUES ('usernameOfOldUser', 'usernameOfNewUser');Create a temporary table called
tmp_user_mapping_migrationto store information about the user key of the users that we are going to modify:CREATE TABLE tmp_user_mapping_migration ( old_user_key varchar(255), new_user_key varchar(255) );Pick the user key from the old username and from the new username - Please, be careful, this is the most important of the steps, since every content is related to the user key of an user:
select user_key, lower_username from user_mapping where lower_username in (select oldusername from tmp_usermigration) OR lower_username in (select newusername from tmp_usermigration);Take notes of the values and replace them accordingly in the insert query below - First is the old username key value and second is the new username key value:
INSERT INTO tmp_user_mapping_migration (old_user_key, new_user_key) VALUES ('40288bf465e825770165fd31c7060000', '40288bf465e825770165fd3236980001');Now, execute the following queries to replace contents accordingly - They will pick up contents created by the old username and assign it to the new username:
Last query will replace personal spaces accordingly:
UPDATE spaces SET spacekey = '~' || newusername, lowerspacekey = '~' || newusername FROM tmp_usermigration u WHERE lowerspacekey = '~' || u.oldusername;- Now, bring Confluence back-up.
- Rebuild your Search Index by accessing <Your_Base_URL>/admin/search-indexes.action and clicking on Rebuild.
- With that completed, clear up the application caches by accessing <Your_Base_URL>/admin/cache/showStatistics.action, scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking on Flush All.
- Rebuild your Ancestors Table.
- Once all of this is completed, you may disable/delete the Old Username from Confluence UI, since contents will be already tied to the New Username.