Confluence Knowledge Base Articles - Access from Support Portal

[Kyla Kearns]

Hi there!

I have been browsing articles to try to discover how to make our Knowledge Base for customers easily accessible from our service management portal home page.

I have figured out permissions to ensure that they are able to have articles pop up as they search for topics, but I would love a link to bring them to the actual knowledge base.

Is this possible?  Perhaps there is a work-around or the ability to add a link to the service management page?

I did read something about adding an OAuth link, but I am not sure if that will do the trick as it relates to accessing directly from the portal page.

It seems like a miss to have a Service Management software, but no ability to browse the knowledge base for customers.  I hope I am just missing something 🙂

Thank you so much in advance!

[Brant Schroeder]

@Kyla Kearns 

The Jira Management Portal provides access to a Confluence space through it's search knowledge base integration without requiring a user to have a license to Confluence.  If you link the Confluence space it will require the user to login.  So users will need to search the knowledge base through the portal.  If you would like to add a link to the portal to the knowledge base you can make the space public by allowing anonymous access.  This will allow anyone on the web to find the space and the content of the space.  There are some distinct advantages to have users search in the service desk for answers and not direct them to the knowledge base.  If a user is unable to find an answer to their question in the portal they will be invited to submit a request.  It provides one place for everyone to go for help instead of going to the KB and then to the portal.  

Atlassian is also releasing public links.  In order to use public links the anonymous access feature must be disabled.  So if you do decide to provide anonymous access and want to use public links in other spaces you will have a decision to make.  

[Kyla Kearns]

Thank you for your response!  That is what I have found as well... In most cases, it is optimal to have the suggested articles pop up within the support portal.

The other important thing, however, is that we are hoping to have our FAQs, Video Tutorials, and other more general learning topics available for our paid subscribers to browse.

It sounds like in order for this to happen, I would need to make that specific Confluence space available for anonymous access?  Or perhaps set up public links that could be embedded in our web page (as one example)?

We have just started utilizing internally Jira in the last few months so expanding our tools to reach our clients is our next step.

I will do some research on the Public Spaces option that you mentioned.  One more thing - is it possible to add these links directly to the portal page?  Ideally, it would show up as a separate support group.. eg:  To submit a support ticket and access the Request Types, you click one option, to access the support article Confluence space, you click another.

Maybe I'm just making up options at this point - but I just wanted to clarify what I am hoping to achieve. 

Thanks again for your help!

[Brant Schroeder]

Yes you would need to make the confluence space available to the public through anonymous access or have public links in you KB articles.  If you make the space public the only way to link to the confluence space through the portal would be through an announcement banner using the default application.  You can use an app like refined theme to provide additional customization.  I would suggest using the default delivered functionality and seeing how it goes before making to many changes.

[Kyla Kearns]

Thanks, Brant!

There is one issue with this - We do not want to make our Confluence space public, so if that's the case, could we add our customers to the Confluence space so that they would have access through user permission settings?

If we were able to isolate any group that has a Support Portal Login and allow those persons the ability to view the Confluence space, I think it would work.

I did add the link to the Announcement section which would definitely be sufficient.  It's just a matter of granting the appropriate permissions to those holding a support portal login..

[Brant Schroeder]

You could add them to your confluence space but this will require you to manage who has access and will incur a licensing cost.  The management alone I think would be a nightmare to maintain.  I would still recommend using the portal as designed and see how this works for you.