Since 2009
TELCOMA Global / Seat Reclaim for Confluence / Documentation
Free the Confluence seats nobody is using.
Seat Reclaim lists the licensed users on your Confluence Cloud site who have created or edited nothing for a period you choose, and frees their seats after you confirm by taking them out of the groups that grant Confluence. Confluence confirms each freed seat. Every change is logged and can be undone.
Install
Three steps, all inside Confluence.
Find the app
In Confluence go to Settings → Find new apps and search for Seat Reclaim.
Start the trial
Free for up to 10 users. Larger sites get a 30-day trial that rolls into a subscription unless you cancel from Manage apps.
Approve the permissions
Read permissions, plus one write permission used only to take a user out of a group (reclaim) or put them back (undo).
Confluence administrators can open the app under Confluence administration → Seat Reclaim and see the list. Reclaiming needs a site admin, because Confluence only lets site admins change group membership.
Find inactive users
Pick a period. Press the button. Come back when it's done.
- Choose a period: No activity in 30, 60, 90, 180 or 365 days.
- Click Find inactive users. The scan runs in the background; you can close the page.
- Each user gets a status: Ready (shows the groups they would leave), Can't reclaim (with the reason), or Reclaimed. Their inactivity shows as a band: 90–180 days, 180–365 days, or over a year, or never.
Contributing means creating or editing a page, blog post, comment, attachment, whiteboard or database. The scan sweeps everything modified in the window, then checks each remaining user against their own content and version history before listing them. Reading pages leaves no trace Confluence can report, so a reader-only account is listed like any other.
Enter the yearly price of one Confluence seat and press Save price to see what the inactive seats cost a year, and what the users you select would save. Search by name or email and filter by inactivity or status across the whole list. Download CSV or Download Excel exports it, with the groups each person would leave.
Which groups grant Confluence
The app asks Confluence, and shows you the answer.
Confluence gives a seat to every member of a group that holds the Can use global permission, and to the Confluence admin and site admin groups. The app reads that list from Confluence's own global permissions when the scan starts, and prints it above the table: Confluence is granted through: confluence-users-yoursite, confluence-admins-yoursite (admin, never removed), org-admins (admin, never removed).
A custom group you gave "Can use" to is recognised the same way. On sites where Confluence can't be asked, the app falls back to the standard group names (confluence-users-…, confluence-admins-…, site-admins, org-admins, administrators) and says so at the top of the page.
Reclaim seats
Select, check the summary, confirm. Then Confluence confirms.
- Tick the users to reclaim, or use Select all ready, which covers everyone ready in the current filtered list.
- Click Reclaim seats. A summary lists, for each person, the groups they will leave.
- Confirm. For each person the app first checks live that they are still inactive, reads their groups again and plans again; only then are they taken out of those groups. Anyone who has contributed since the scan is skipped and named in the result.
- After each change the app asks Confluence whether the account can still use the site. The result says Confluence confirms N seats are free. If Confluence still reports access, usually because the person is also in a group the app didn't plan to remove, the row says still has access and the seat is not counted as freed.
Where the app can count the site's licensed users exactly, the result also shows that count before and after. Atlassian bills by user tier, usually from the next billing cycle, so the price may only drop once the count falls below a tier.
History and undo
Every change is written down, and every change can be reversed.
What History shows
For each reclaim: whose seat, who did it, when, which groups they left and whether Confluence confirmed the seat as free. Undone reclaims show who undid them and when.
Undo
Puts the person back into exactly the groups that reclaim removed, which gives them Confluence back. It uses a seat again.
Who can't be reclaimed
The rules are built in, not left to memory.
If a user's access comes from a Confluence admin, site admin or org admin group, the app won't touch them. Remove their admin role in Atlassian Administration first if that's what you want.
The app never removes the person running it.
Click Protect on anyone you want left alone: a service account, someone on leave. Protected users are never reclaimed until you unprotect them.
Groups synced from Okta, Microsoft Entra ID or another identity provider can only be changed there. Confluence refuses the change and the app tells you so. If your provider adds people back on its next sync, remove them in the provider too.
Ask Rovo
Ask about your seats in plain words.
Seat Reclaim includes a Rovo agent. In Confluence, click Ask Rovo, open the agent list and choose Seat Reclaim for Confluence.
Try asking
“How many seats can I reclaim, and what would that save a year?” · “Which groups grant Confluence here?” · “What was reclaimed recently?”
What it won't do
It only reads. It can't reclaim, undo or protect anyone; those happen on the app page, after you confirm. Only Confluence administrators get answers.
Answers come from Atlassian Rovo and count toward your site's Rovo allowance, like any other agent.
Your data
Nothing leaves Atlassian.
User names and account IDs, which groups grant Confluence and which of those each listed user is in, and the author and time of recent pages, blog posts, comments and attachments and their version history. It does not read page text, comment text or attachment contents.
Only group membership, and only for users you confirm: out of the groups that grant Confluence on reclaim, back in on undo.
The scan report, each user's access groups at scan time, your protected list, the history of reclaims and undos, and your seat price, in Atlassian's own storage for your site.
Nowhere. No servers of our own, no requests outside Atlassian. If you use the Rovo agent, Atlassian Rovo writes the answer, inside Atlassian.
Full details in the privacy policy.
Frequently asked
The questions admins ask first.
Does it deactivate accounts?
No. It takes people out of the groups that grant Confluence on this site. Their Atlassian account stays active, so they keep any other products and can be given access again at any time. Their pages and comments stay where they are.
How fast does the seat come back?
Straight away: Confluence stops counting the user as soon as they have left the last group that grants it. The app checks with Confluence after each reclaim and shows the site's licensed count before and after.
The result says someone "still has access".
Confluence still reports the person can use the site, so they are in another group that grants it: usually an admin group, or a group the app could not read. Check their groups in Atlassian Administration. The seat is not counted as freed until Confluence agrees.
A Confluence admin got "only site admins can change group membership".
That's Confluence's rule. A Confluence admin can see the list; a site admin has to do the reclaim or the undo.
Someone is listed who I know reads Confluence every day.
If they only read pages, they leave no trace Confluence can report; no app can see logins or page views. Protect them, or check their last-active date in Atlassian Administration before reclaiming.
What happens if someone contributed after the scan?
The app checks each person's activity and groups again just before reclaiming. Anyone active since the scan, or no longer safe to reclaim, is skipped and the result says why. Lists older than a week also get a reminder to scan again.
How is it priced?
Free for up to 10 users, then per user per month on your Atlassian invoice, with a free trial. The current price is on the Marketplace listing.
Support
Ask the people who built it.
When reporting a problem, include your site URL and what you expected to happen. We never need passwords or tokens.
Get help
One business day, usually much less.
- [email protected]
- Support page
- Known limits, what to include, status
- Response time
- Within one business day