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Can Portal only users view linked Confluence Space?

Susi Moser

Hello! :-)

I linked my JIRA service desk to a Confluence Space. (“Everyone with access to your service desk can read articles without a Confluence license. This option is best if you want to share knowledge base articles with your customers.”)

My Question:
Can “Portal only users” only search for knowledge articles (= Confluence Space articles) through the Help Center OR can they also visit/view the “Confluence Space” and browse through the Pages / Blog entries (like an online documentation). I am a little confused on how to do this part.
If it is possible, how can my “Portal only users” navigate to it? I want to add a link in the Help Center like “Read Online Documentation”.

Accepted answers

All comments

Christoph Schötz

Hey - as far as I know they can only access Confluence pages they have a direct link to. But you can just sign yourself up to the service desk using your private email and see what you get by accessing Confluence using the different options?

Cheers

Christoph

Susi Moser

Hello Christoph! :-) I added my private E-Mail-Adress as a "Portal only user". Where can I find the direct login-link to the Space I created?

Christoph Schötz

Hey - first thing I would try is to create a new request and search for kb articles this way. Then you can try to access Confluence if you are logged in with this user to jira service desk. I guess you will see the direct url if you share a kb article as an agent with your test user in a request.

Cheers

Christoph

Susi Moser

Hello Christoph,

my "Portal only user" created a new request and my agent shared a knowledge base article as comment with the "Portal only user". In the Help Center the portal user can view the request, the shared kb-article and also related kb-articles. The URL is like: "mydemo.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/kb/view/3571815"

Additional Information:
I also know which Confluence Space I linked with the Service Desk Project. The URL ist like: "/mydemo.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDIT

But my "Portal only user" can only login in the Help Center but can not login with the same email/password in the Wiki/Confluence Space.

So the question is still: Can “Portal only users” only search for knowledge articles (= Confluence Space articles) through the Help Center OR can they also visit/view the “Confluence Space”?

Is it simply not possible? Did I use the wrong login-link? Or are the permissions set wrong?

Maybe you have another suggestion or recomendation for my problem? Thank you very much for your support! :-)

Christoph Schötz

Hey - as far as I know your test user would need a real Confluence user (which consumes a Confluence license) to be able to access the Confluence space outside of the kb functions in JIRA Service Desk...

What is your use case?

Cheers

Christoph

Randy Hunt

I've been playing a lot with this functionality recently, and the end result is very mixed. You can get users to go directly to a Confluence page that is part of the space you are using for your knowledge base, but it's quite clunky - any search function within the page doesn't work well, many of the widgets don't work because they rely on having a full Confluence/Jira user, and the bread crumbs on the top are still there.

In some words, yes, but I wouldn't.

Susi Moser

Hello Randy, thank you for the information. :-)

If I understand correctly, only the following 3 options are currently possible for Jira Service Desk (Server):

(1) My customers/reporters are set up as „Potal only users“. The users can view and search for Knowledge Base articles through the help center, but can’t login to / view the linked Confluence Space directly. I also can’t restrict access to single articles by user and/or organization.

(2) I could convert my „Portal only users“ to „atlassian accounts“, so that I can give them access to the linked Confluence Space through User Management. But that means, I have to pay for each user (= licensed users).

(3) I could set up the linked Confluence Space as „Public Space“, so that 'anonymous' users (who arenot logged in) can access the Space. But then Google will index my Confluence Space articles and I also can’t restrict permissions for anonymous users. https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/setting-up-public-access-156.html

Can someone please confirm if these information are correct or wrong?

Randy Hunt

Hi Susi,

That all looks accurate to me, though to be clear, portal only access users can get direct access to the KB articles, it's just messy.

Randy

Cosmo Denger

I'm also looking for a solution to this. We have portal only customers and sometimes just want to send them a link to a confluence KB article through email or chat, but they can't view them. Why would there be a difference? They still can't edit the articles or use confluence in any other way.

We also can't allow for public links as some of the information needs to stay within the company. Do we really need to license every user?