User Management - Atlassian Confluence 5 Essentials - page 44

The effect of directory order
When you have more than one directory configured, the order of those directories is
important and affects a couple of things within Confluence.
• Login : The directory order is significant during the authentication of the
user, especially if the user exists in multiple directories. During login, the
application will search the directories in the specified order, and will use the
password of the first occurrence of the user to validate the login.
• Permissions : In the same way as the login mechanism, Confluence will
look for group memberships only in the first directory where the username
appears, based on the directory order.
For example:
° You have two directories: the employees directory and the
customers directory
° The employee directory is first in the directory order
° A username arthur.dent exists in both directories
° The user arthur.dent is a member of group G1 in the employees
directory and group G2 in the customers directory
° Based on directory order, the user arthur.dent only has permissions
based on group G1, not G2
• Updating users and groups : If you update a user or group via Confluence's
administration screen, the update will only be made in the first directory
where Confluence has write permissions.
For example:
° You have two user directories: a read/write LDAP directory and the
internal directory
° The LDAP directory is the first directory
° A username arthur.dent exists in both directories
° You update the e-mail address of the user arthur.dent via
Confluence's Administration Console
° The e-mail address will only be updated in the LDAP directory,
not in the internal directory