Add JIRA watchers to Confluence as Watchers with automation

Question

Hello Community,

I would like to use knowledge of other admins as I'm already struggling few days with very specific topic.

We have workflow between Jira Product Discovery and Jira related to very simple Requirements management (RM). Now we would like to move this RM from JPD to Confluence. My idea is that JPD Idea will have linked Confluence page with described requirements from customer. Once everything is aligned, we will put Confluence page to "Read only" to be sure that this aligned requirement won't be changed and based on this, tasks in JIRA Related to this Confluence Page mentioned in JPD will be created.

JPD and Jira tasks will be linked properly for traceability, Confluence link will be carried via Custom field from JPD to end point level of Task/Sub-task if required. I have to be sure that all assignees and reporters are aware of product documentation in Confluence and for this i have to put them as Watchers on Confluence page.

My Bottleneck

I'm not able to manage manually check if all assignees (from Initiative-Epic-Task/Story) are added as watchers on each Confluence page, this will be extremely time consuming. I would like to use automation for this but so far I was not able to build proper flow.

I've tried also Rovo but provided steps has not been accurate.

My Idea for how logic will work is following

Trigger

Confluence link (Custom field) is updated

or

Assignee is updated

or

Reporter is updated

(these are users which have to be aware of documentation in confluence)

THEN

Read link in Custom field Confluence link

THEN

add mentioned users (Assignee and Reporter) as Watchers on Confluence page in link

Rovo provided solution via Web Request, but when i set up this I've been receiving Response 302 and there has been no name or email of user mentioned and basically automation has not been working at all.

I would like to use webhook option it seem logical solution for my situation but I've not been able to find any tutorial how to properly set-up this. (Method, Header, Request body)

Has anybody faced similar workflow and has been able to automate this?

Thank you all in advance.

Igor Medeiros - Modus Create · Answer

Hi @Kristína Salaj

Adding to what Bill and Arkadiusz sent, the exact call is POST /wiki/rest/api/user/watch/content/{contentId}?accountId={accountId}. Two gotchas. Adding a watcher other than yourself requires Confluence admin permission on the account behind the rule. And the accountId has to come from {{issue.assignee.accountId}}, not the display name or email.

If the goal is just making people aware of the page, our app Notification Assistant for Jira can email them the link instead. It fires on assignee, reporter, or custom field changes.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like to learn more.

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Thanks for that information, @Kristína Salaj as it shows the cause of this symptom:

The image you show for the Send Web Request action includes your work item field, and that likely contains the URL to the Confluence page...However, the apparent suggestion from Rovo describes the approach I described, except they list a REST API endpoint to watch the entire space.  Thus, the Web Request URL in your Send Web Request action is incorrect.

To proceed, let's first confirm your need and the scenario:

* What does customfield_11812 contain:* a URL to a Confluence page,
* a URL to a Confluence space, or
* something else?

* To what do you want to add the watcher: a page or a space?

Once that is known, we can consider how to extract the page ID or space name information from your custom field's URL value to use when adding a Watcher.

Also please note well: you likely will need multiple rules...

For your initial scenario, two rules are needed: one triggered on a change to the custom field or reporter, and another on work item assignment.  Both will need special handling if you also want the rule to remove watchers when the custom field, reporter, or assignee change.

But that does not handle other cases:

* When the work item is first created with the custom field already filled in, that would use a different rule trigger
* When the work item is deleted, what should happen?
* When someone manually removes watchers from the Confluence item, what should happen?
* When the Confluence item is deleted, what should happen?

Other than the work item create case, you could consider the other ones as "edge cases", and handle them with manual updates to the Confluence content.

Kristína Salaj · Answer

Hello Bill, I'm providing screenshots based on my workflow from Rovo which is not working properly. As URL I'm using Custom field Confluence link, as page where I'm linking watchers from JIRA item is unique for each item.