How to better serve users in JSD with Multi-Space Knowledge Base Searcher

[Anova Apps]

Are you ready to have one of the top 20 Jira Service Desk requests being resolved? But really...ARE YOU READY? Great! Then read on...

Finding the right information quickly is crucial to the productivity and success of any team, and is especially critical when serving your customers. But we all know the limitations that are constraining users to only see search results from one Confluence space when seeking for information in Jira Service Desk.

We also know that enabling your customers to search all of the relevant spaces is one of the best ways to ensure that they're getting the support they need. So we're pretty thrilled to announce that our brand new Multi-Space Knowledge Base Searcher app is tackling just that.

With Multi-Space Knowledge Base Searcher, your users can surf seamlessly across your Confluence spaces from one support portal and doesn't require any rearrangements for your Confluence spaces' structure. Win-win!

Here's how it works

It's easy, straightforward, and only takes a minute of your time.

1. Install two apps – one for Jira and one for Confluence. 
2. Select all the public Knowledge Base spaces you want to include in the search.

...and voilà! You're all set.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Make sure that your Jira and Confluence are linked via application links.
• All the spaces that you want to search must be public. 
• Like with any other app, apps work across the entire Jira / Confluence instance but for only one instance. Ensure that all your Confluence spaces are within one Confluence instance.

Time to see it in action

Let's take a simple example:

You provide several services / products, and your documentation is separated for each separate service / product in their own Confluence space. 

Product	Confluence spaces
Product 1	PRODUCT1
Product 2	PRODUCT2
Product 3	PRODUCT3
...	...
Product N	PRODUCTN

Now you create a Jira Service Desk project for your support team to help your customers, but you're stopped with the ever-present dilemma: Your customers need to be able to find help about all three products but you can only link one Confluence space to the JSD project in Jira.

You weigh the workaround's and their disadvantages:

Workaround	Disadvantages
Aggregate all documentation into one giant Confluence space	• Pages with duplicate names now have to have different names • Maintaining such a giant space is the worst • Searching information in a page tree of such space is frustrating
Create an umbrella space that would then re-route users to the relevant spaces	• Creating proxy pages wastes your team's time • Introducing extra clicks for your users brings frustration and click fatigue
Give up and just pick one Confluence space for the users for the strongest product	• Well, there isn't enough time or space here to explain why this is never a good option…

There's no need to give up

Use the Multi-Space Knowledge Base Searcher app to resolve those workarounds.

What makes this so great?

• There's no need to re-organize or merge any pages or spaces, so keep your documentation structured however you want!
• No reconfiguration needed in your Jira Service Desk project. Link them to any of the Confluence spaces that you need. Applying our example use case, let's say PRODUCT1 space.
• In the app settings, you specify all additional Confluence spaces results you want to be shown to your users in the support portal. For our example, PRODUCT2, PRODUCT3, ..., PRODUCTN. The KB Searcher app bridges the gap, and runs through the other spaces to compile all relevant results.
• No extra clicks for the users as they get the information from several spaces all in one place. Less clicks + less effort = happy user.
• When your users can self serve, you save time of your support teams and let them focus on more critical issues.
• You don't need to worry about security as search enhancements are only possible for the Confluence spaces that are already open to public

We have a lot in store for the app so stay tuned for new versions and releases. If you have an idea – let's hear it! Share your idea with us at products@cprime.com, and we'll be in touch.