Jira Image of the Day: Jira and Confluence Differences

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Concept Relates To

Application Type	Jira Work Management, Jira Software, Jira Service Management, Confluence
Deployment Type	Jira Cloud

What is shown?

A screenshot of a dashboard in Jira Cloud, a request form in Jira Service Management Cloud, and a Confluence Cloud home page.

What can we learn?

Jira and Confluence are both Atlassian products. While the applications have many similarities and even some overlapping features, they are intended for different purposes. Here’s a quick comparison and when to use each.

Jira is built for business teams and development teams. Business projects are great for teams like Marketing, Human Resources, Legal, Sales, and anyone interested in tracking initiatives, processes, or tasks. Software projects help development teams track new features, improvements, and bugs. Software projects include dev-specific features like: sprints, story points, backlogs, and integration with tools like Bamboo and Bitbucket. Jira includes issues, workflow, and reporting features.

Jira Service Management is designed for service and support teams. JSM adds additional support-specific features on top of Jira like queues, service level agreements, a simple customer portal, and integration with Confluence as a knowledge base.

And finally, Confluence content is organized into spaces. It’s intended to help teams make decisions, plan, collaborate, share information, and document work.

Different Atlassian Tools

When there’s a lot of software, sometimes it’s unclear which to use for which purpose. To track work from conception to completion, use an issue tracker like Jira. To track requests and provide support, use help desk software like Jira Service Management. And to document or organize information, use a collaboration platform or repository like Confluence.

User Types

The applications all have different user types, licenses, and default access groups. Jira and Confluence has users. Jira Service Management has agents and customers.

Definitions:

• User  – works in Jira and Confluence

• Agent – resolves support requests in JSM

• Customer – requests support in JSM portal

Here are the different user and license types across multiple Atlassian applications.

Users and agents are licensed. Anonymous users and customers are not. Additionally, JSM customers can see Confluence knowledge base content in the customer portal, but they don’t need a Confluence license. In Confluence, you only need to license users who create and edit content or manage the application.

Default User Access Groups

Here are some of the default user access groups.

• Jira → jira-users, jira-software-users, jira-core-users, jira-administrators, and more

• Jira Service Management → jira-servicemanagement-users, jira-servicemanagement-customers, jira-servicedesk-users, and more

• Confluence → confluence-users, confluence-admins (Cloud), confluence-guests (Cloud), and more

Keep in mind that the names have changed over the years, so you might have some of these or others. Additionally, administrators can also add custom groups to segment users for granting permissions, sending notifications, and more.

Tip: Even Cloud applications have naming differences depending on when a site was created. For example, my Jira Cloud application created in 2014 has jira-users, one created in 2020 has jira-core-users, and another created in 2021 has jira-workmanagement-users. They all mean the same thing and are used in the same way.

Admin Areas

Finally, the admin areas differ between the applications. In Jira, login as an application administrator and click the gear or cog icon at the top right. A menu of options appears. Depending on your permissions, you’ll see links for personal settings at the top, global Jira settings in the middle, and user management and billing permissions at the bottom.

For Jira Service Management, there are additional settings in the “Products” menu to be aware of.

In Confluence, there are fewer settings to configure, so there’s just one general admin area. Login as a Confluence application administrator and click the cog or gear icon at the top right. This takes you straight to the admin area.

What other Jira and Confluence things are different? Post what you’ve noticed below!

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