Include Macro in Confluence Page Makes Linked JSD KB Unsearchable

Amanda Labby

To try to have some semblance of documentation management, I have my knowledgebase articles in one Confluence space & was going to create new pages in the Confluence associated with JSD and use the include macro.

When I create a new page, use the include macro to grab the page contents from my other space, if I search for a term in JSD, no applicable KB page displays.

When I copy the contents of the page into that page & save it (not using the include macro), I can search for the same terms, I see the page.

How can I make JSD search for text within the include macro?

Andy Heinzer

Hi Amanda,

I see that you are using the Confluence / Jira Service Desk integration that allows your Jira Service Desk customers to be able to see documentation within the customer portal.  However when trying to use the include page macro that gathers content from a different space, these users are unable to find any search results.

I think I know why that is. It goes back to the way the include macro works.  In the notes section of that page, it indicates:

To display a page's contents, you need 'View' permission for that page. Similarly, people who view the page will need 'View' permissions for the embedded page as well as the page into which it is embedded. See space permissions or contact your Confluence space administrator for more information.

I know that for users that are only in the Jira Service Desk customer role, their accounts do not have the needed view permissions in Confluence to be able to view content in multiple spaces.  And because these are unlicensed Jira users, you can't give them the view permissions they would need anyway. Which is why the search results return nothing for them when searching this way.  You might have other users on the site that are licensed Confluence users for who this macro might actually work for, but I'm sure you don't want to license all these users in Confluence to make this work.

When you configure this integration, Jira Service Desk requires you to select a specific space in Confluence to link to Jira Service Desk.  Only content in that space is going to be visible to Jira Service Desk customers. That limits the ability for you to try to serve up content from more than one space to this Jira Service Desk.  We do have an existing feature request that seeks to let you integrate Jira Service Desk with more than one space in JSDCLOUD-170.  I suggest voting on that issue to help our teams understand how this impacts site-admins that want to see this feature.

Sorry that there is not a better solution for this right now.  For the time being all the content that you want Jira Service Desk customers to be able to see will have to be inside a single space that is linked.

I hope this helps.

Andy