Is there a way to share content between Confluence pages and Jira issues?

Question

Our software team needs to keep the acceptance criteria in our Story tickets up to date and synced with the functional design doc in Confluence. Is there a way to single-source content between the two so that we don't have to manually update both? My hope was to create a field in Jira that can be synced with specific content on Confluence pages (a Multiexcerpt macro or something like it), but I can't find anything like that.

rolland_vandersluis_hel82j · Answer

I don't know how to implement "automation". Linking pages from Jira issues to Confluence pages does not satisfy our need to collect all details about a feature in Confluence for safe keeping. Think of it as having a "Single Source of Truth" after the work is done, the dust settles, and we've moved on to other work on our plate. Once the work on Jira stories is complete, they disappear from sight and it's hard to go back on get a comprehensive picture of what was implemented and why (aka: "requirements traceability").

I discovered that I can use the Jira Issue/Filter macro in Confluence to pull content from relevant Jira Issue fields into a "requirements" Confluence page. So this is what I did:

* Create a Requirements page template in Confluence.
* Work on templates for Jira Epic and Stories, such that the Description fields have a template that prompts the Product Owners to satisfy the requirements doc. For example, Epics (Description field) capture the who, what & why, and Stories (Description field) capture the detailed acceptance criteria for each bit of work that, when completed, arrives at a completed feature. 
* Back to the Confluence page, I added the Jira Issue/Filter macros to pull from Jira:* Epic details (Description field) for the who, what & why are pulled into a "Big Picture" section.
* Story acceptance criteria (Description field) are pulled into a list of "Detailed Requirements".

The main challenges were:

* Get the Product Owners to use the Confluence template.
* Add new Story links to the "Detailed Requirements" in the Confluence page, so that all of the feature's requirements are visible after the work is done.
* Discipline the Product Owners to update the Story description to reflect changes (and do NOT just put tidbits about changes in the Comments!).

Now, the Product Owners consider it "magical" when they update Epic details and Stories details (details change a lot during the process of getting the developers and UX team to understand what's needed, and to navigate technical trade-offs) and the Confluence page automatically shows the updated content.

Brant Schroeder · Answer

@rolland_vandersluis If this was helpful can you accept it to help others?

Brant Schroeder · Answer

@rolland_vandersluis The only thing I can think of would be to use automation on the Jira and Confluence side.  I don't think this is the greatest solution but you should be able to get it to work.

We had a similar issue and we ended up just adding linked pages to our stories and maintaining the Confluence page.  It made it easier than keeping everything in sync.