External user directories
So far we have learned how to get users into our Confluence installation. This is very useful but what if your company has its own LDAP server or is already using some other Atlassian products, such as JIRA or Crowd?
Within Confluence we can configure one or more external user directories. A user directory is a place where you store information about users and groups, including some other user information. This information can be the person's full name, e-mail address, or department. When an external user directory is configured, Confluence will also use the directory to authenticate a user.
Confluence has support for the following external directories:
Microsoft Active Directory
Various LDAP directory servers including OpenLDAP, Apache Directory Server, and Novell eDirectory
Atlassian Crowd
Atlassian JIRA
You can add as many external directories as you need. Note that you can change the order of the directories, determining which directory will search first.
