Asset objects displayed in Confluence

[Maria Ciobanu]

Assets objects can be displayed in Confluence, but the relationship is one-directional and query-only, correct? There is no way to see, from an object, which Confluence pages document it, and no way to insert objects into a page without writing AQL.

We are moving our ICT infrastructure inventory (servers, network devices, firewalls, VLANs, IP allocations, virtual machines) out of Confluence tables into Assets, and keeping Confluence for runbooks, operational procedures and change documentation. The split works well in principle: Assets answers "what is it, where is it, who owns it", Confluence answers "how do we operate and fix it". Two gaps make this difficult in practice.

Gap 1: no reverse visibility from an object to its documentation
An object view shows connected Jira work items, which is very useful. There is no equivalent for Confluence. When we open a device we cannot see which runbooks, procedures or architecture pages refer to it. The only options today are to search Confluence manually by object name, or to hand-maintain a URL attribute on every object, which goes stale quickly and is not enforceable.

Is there a way to have a "Linked Confluence pages" panel on the object view, populated automatically when an object is referenced on a page through the Assets macro or a smart link, mirroring the existing Jira work items panel?

Also there is no way to put table in the comments of the Activity in an Assets, right?

[Germán Morales · Accepted solution]

Hi @Maria Ciobanu ,

There is currently no documented native Linked Confluence pages panel on an Assets object. The existing Connected Jira work items section is populated when the object is selected in an Assets custom field on a Jira work item; referencing the object from Confluence does not create an equivalent reverse relationship.

The Confluence integration is not entirely AQL-only. A table or list created with the Assets macro requires AQL, but for a single object, object type, or schema you can paste its Assets URL into Confluence and use an Assets Smart Link in inline or card view. Neither option currently records the containing Confluence page against the object.

The closest native workaround remains a URL attribute such as Runbooks or Documentation. URL attributes can contain multiple values, and you can set a minimum cardinality of one to require a documentation link. This improves consistency, but automatic discovery and maintenance of those links would require an app or custom integration.

I also could not find documented support for tables inside Assets object comments. The object comments documentation only describes entering text in the Activity comment box, so structured tables are better kept in Confluence and linked from the object.

[Maria Ciobanu]

Thank you for your reply!

[Marc -Devoteam- · Accepted solution]

Hi @Maria Ciobanu 

you assumptions are correct.

Confluence can only provide assets details based on the macro and the AQL used.

You could add an extra URL attribute on the Asset and provide a Confluence link there to the related documentation.

No you can't add a table in a comment in Assets activity.

Activity tab is your comment section and audit log.

[Maria Ciobanu]

Thank you for your reply. Hope this becomes a point for future improvements.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

We display Assets in Confluence pages as well, and personally, I also like how there's a bi-directional link between the Jira item and the Confluence content.

This is definitelly interesting suggestion (and I don't think there's an open feature for it on JAC).
What I'd suggest, @Maria Ciobanu is to maybe reach out to Atlassian Support with this feature request 👀
It would be interesting to see if they're keen to develop something like this.
*if they do create a new suggestion on JAC, I'd appreciate if you could share the link here

Cheers,
Tobi

[Maria Ciobanu]

I already suggested it under the "Improvement suggestions". But I will reach out to Atlassian support. I think it will be useful especially for the documentation already existing in Confluence spaces.

Thank you for your reply