Configuring the customer portal in Confluence

[Hari Krishnan]

As part of the product development cycle, we are planning to set up a portal for different stakeholders to see the product-related documents and serve as a knowledge base for them to know more about the product. Also, this will be the starting guide for the new joiners to the team.

To achieve this I am searching for portal capability in confluence and I heard about Confluence knowledge base space.

May I know what will be the best approach, do we have any portal option in Confluence? 

[Matt Reiner _K15t_]

Hi @Hari Krishnan

Confleunce is a fantastic tool for this purpose. It sounds like all your content could be put in just one space, or, if you have multiple products or major modules, you might separate your content into a few spaces.

• Will this content only be accessible internally?
  Also, will your stakeholders be OK with the Confluence UI, or are you looking for a different user experience?

As far as the content creation side goes, you might want to check out our guide for writing documentation in Confluence. Your teams might find the Collaborative Writing and Content Reuse sections particularly  useful.

[Hari Krishnan]

@Matt Reiner _K15t_ thanks for the reply.

The primary focus is the internal users. The new joiners and the other people can go through the documents(pages) and get them an idea about the product. 

If we want to share this with any other stakeholders outside the product & tech team, what will be the issues we may face? Any accessibility issues related to the roles?

 What about Confluence knowledge base feature? 

[Matt Reiner _K15t_]

Hi @Hari Krishnan

I think Confluence is a good fit for your use case. For anyone outside the team, you can give them a Confluence user (at cost) so they can access the content as well. You can use user groups to give all outsiders only read-access to the content in your Confluence spaces. If you only need to share just a few pages, you could consider using public links.

There isn't really a knowledge base feature in Confluence. Really, Confluence is a wiki that a lot of teams use as a knowledge base. Especially if you limit people's editing access, this will feel a lot like other knowledge base apps out there. That said, I always recommend not limiting edit access wherever possible, so anyone can contribute.