Knowledge Base Sharing option and Confluence space restrictions

[Jean W.]

We are using a Confluence cloud knowledge base in combination with projects in Jira Service Desk.

The idea here is that support agents will be able to save time by finding article suggestions matching issues in incident tickets. 

The plan is to use several hundreds of knowledge articles to match incident cases, which are often quite similar. Hence we are dependent on the performance of the AI suggestions. 

After setup in production mode, I have ran into a permissions issue, where knowledge articles cannot be directly shared as a comment in tickets in case the permissions are set strict. Only if I allow Jira Service Desk to overwrite Confluence groups permissions, am I able to see the share option. We do not want to open up the knowledge base space for all of our Confluence users, as this poses a security risk. 

After linking a Confluence cloud space to a project in Jira Service Desk, the permissions are overwritten (according to this article), so all Confluence users can see the space. 

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Configuration settings 

Jira Service Desk knowledge base settings 

Confluence

The space permissions were set so only groups of Confluence cloud users have access. 

Hence, the main page (overview) of the Confluence space needed to be restricted using the same confluence user groups:

Jira Incident Ticket - knowledge article sharing

With these settings, however, the article sharing option in the Jira tickets changes to a lock. 

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Questions

• Are there configuration settings which will display the share button while ensuring limited Confluence space viewing permissions?
  • If this is not the case, we would likely need a separate confluence instance for a limited user group to solve the issue.
• If I understand correctly, the AI suggestions of knowledge articles are strongly dependent on sharing article links as an internal comment. How does this work, and would it be effective if our support agents post links to matching knowledge articles as comments manually? 

[Jean W.]

Hello @Dave Mathijs I am aware that there are only two options, and we have solved the issue already. The issue is that even though users might have a Confluence cloud license, they can't use the sharing option anymore for posting links to knowledge articles in Jira tickets. This is limiting the use of the knowledge base, as support agents frequently search for comments in tickets.

[Dave Mathijs]

Hi @Jean W. , I understand your question and what you're trying to achieve.

However, when selecting a knowledge base space, there are only 2 choices: Restricted (no license) or private (license required).

Once you decide that a KB article from a private space can be used to serve for your customer, you cannot make it public.

In that case, you need to move/copy the KB article from the private space to the restricted space.

The idea behind this is that you may have 2 KB spaces at your disposal: One with public KB articles for your customers self-service in the portal, and another internal/private KB space with articles for your agents (e.g. procedures to restart a service, fulfil a request etc.).

One alternative would be to have a single public KB and restrict only the internal articles to your agents.