Top 20 Webinar Questions, "How to Use Jira and Confluence Cloud Together."

[Sally Stone]

Hi everyone! Thank you for joining the September 15th How to Use Jira and Confluence Cloud Together webinar. If you missed the webinar, can’t wait to share it with your team, or want to watch it on repeat, knock yourself out - here's the link.

We showed you how to:

• Apply best practices for agile management
• See and share the big picture
• Organize workflows with integrations
• Take Jira and Confluence to the next level 

We had over 700 questions from across the globe, and we couldn’t answer all of them during the webinar. As promised, we’re answering the most popular ones in this post.

Combined Questions

Q1: Is there a Jira/ Confluence plan specific for small businesses?

A: Our Standard plan is designed for growing teams and small businesses. It’s recommended if you have:

• 10+ team members
• Want to limit who can set up workflows and create new projects in Jira.
• Want to limit who has access to spaces and pages (like contractors) or to protect sensitive info like Finance and HR in Confluence.
• If you need audit logs so your admins can review changes for troubleshooting and/or record-keeping.

Q2: Why should we use the sprint planning template? What other information does it add over Jira's boards?

A: The Sprint planning template in Confluence can be used as a meeting template to help set sprint goals, plan team capacity, and kick off each sprint effectively. Here's more information about the template and its intended use.

Q3: If we use a project template (for example) that also records risks per project, is there a way to report on risks across multiple projects using Confluence pages?

A: There's no automated way to report on risks across multiple Confluence pages. However, you can create reports in Confluence based on tickets in Jira. If you use Jira issues to track your risks, you should be able to report on these.

Q4: Will you send information and instructions on how to do the things you showed in this webinar?

A: Check out the Jira product guide and the Confluence product guide to learn more!

Q5: How does Anonymous Access work? Is there a way to show a board or anything from the board to a client who doesn't have a license on our Jira instance? Can information published in Confluence be accessed by people without licenses?

A: Anonymous access works at the project level, rather than the board level. Anonymous access is not assigned to a particular client, rather it involves setting the project level permission for a given project to "Anyone". The permission you need to open up access to your project is "Browse Projects". This will give any user read-only access to all the issues within the project. Partial, assigned access within Jira Software to non-jira users is not yet possible. This page outlines the same process. And this page explains each available project level permission for Classic projects. With our Standard plan on Confluence you can also grant "anonymous access". Details on that are here.

Jira Specific Questions

Q1: How do I know when to use Next-gen or classic projects?

A: Next-gen's project administration is easier than classic because it’s optimized for team autonomy and ease of use; whereas classic (the experience most people know and love with Jira) is optimized for scale and control. There are some trade-offs with both project types. Our recommendation is to try them out and see which ones work better for your requirements. Learn more about Next-gen here.

Q2: How am I able to assign roles in Jira? It looks like everyone is an admin, and that wasn’t the case when I used Jira at my prior company.

 A: In the Free plan, every user is considered a project admin and can control project settings. The ability to create custom roles and permissions is a top reason our customers choose to upgrade to one of Jira Software’s paid plans.

Advanced permissions and user roles allow you to protect the configuration of shared projects and boards; define distinct roles with a set of customizable permissions; and give you the ability to create new roles of your choice.

Q3: What is the difference between Roadmaps and Advanced Roadmaps? Can I print or export the roadmap to share with my team?

A: The top difference is really the purpose for which the features are designed. Advanced Roadmaps is optimized for cross-team planning and roadmaps are optimized for helping individual teams better plan and track their work. Learn more about Jira Roadmaps. 

Q4: What are automations in Jira and how do you use them?

A: Automation allows your team to trigger actions in-line with their processes and workflows. Automation is Jira’s simple rule builder.You can use automation to combat this by auto-assigning issues to members of your team in a balanced fashion.

Automation should show on Project settings > Project automation, but if it doesn't show there, please go to Jira settings > System > Automation rules.

Q5: I would like to disable email notifications for certain events in JIRA so that I don't get an email every time somebody creates an event. How can I do this?

A: Users have the capability to change the number of notifications they receive. They can click on the ‘manage notifications’ link in Jira emails. This links it to their Personal Settings page in Jira. Here, users can customize the kind of notifications they would like to get from Jira. They can even turn off all email notifications, if they like! Something that we use at Atlassian is the Jira/Slack integration. Set it up today!

Confluence Specific Questions

Q1: How do I use the Confluence slash command?

A: Simply type “/” with your keyboard to get a list of powerful macros for creating info-rich pages in Confluence.

Q2: Your demo of the Confluence Template gallery showed it opening in the right panel. Why don’t I see it on my company’s Cloud instance?

A: This Cloud experience is currently rolling out to customers so not everyone has it yet, but you should be seeing it soon!

Q3: Can some Confluence pages remain private or only accessible by certain types of users?

A: Yes with our paid plans, you can completely lock down your Confluence pages, so that they’re only visible to you. You can also pick and choose which users can view and edit your Confluence pages. You can also provide access by group.

Q4: What are the security settings in Confluence so that two teams within a space can edit their own pages (only) and everyone else has read access?

A: On all paid Confluence plans, you can set granular permissions on a space or page level. That way, you can easily set up your pages so that certain users can edit the page, and others can only view or comment.

On Confluence Premium, we also offer advanced permissions features - admin key, inspect permissions, copy space permissions, and external collaboration - for setting up and troubleshooting complex permission schemes at scale.

Q5: For a 5 person company, how would you use spaces vs pages in Confluence?

A: One way to use spaces is to assign a space per team, think HR, Marketing, Engineering, etc…However, if you're all wearing multiple hats then you can assign spaces for projects too. A space per product or a space for a new feature you're building, for example.

Integrations

Q1: Can I integrate x with Jira and/or Confluence? (Microsoft teams, Github, Excel, Miro)

A: Yes! Please check out the Atlassian Marketplace to find the integration you’re looking for!

• Jira Cloud for Microsoft Teams makes collaboration and communication over the backlog easy and smooth. Create tabs with issues and track and discuss your team’s progress in your channel without leaving Microsoft Teams. Learn more about teams for Jira
• Confluence Cloud for Microsoft Teams. This integration allows you to display Confluence Cloud pages or blogposts in the channel tab, create new pages as a sub-page to the displayed in the channel tab, and quickly navigate and provide reference to the Confluence Page via Messaging Extension. Learn more about teams for Confluence
• Connect GitHub to Jira. Easily connect one or more GitHub Organizations to your Jira site and select specific repositories to bring your work together. Learn more about GitHub for Jira
• Jira Cloud for Excel. Get the power of Excel to slice and dice your Jira data and create the custom reports and charts you need to answer your organizations pressing questions. Learn more about Jira Cloud for Excel
• Miro for Jira Cloud. Use Miro for Jira with the native Jira Cards integration to embed Jira issues to your boards as cards so that your distributed team can easily discuss, prioritize, and problem solve together on one collaborative canvas in real-time.Provide a better context for your Jira issues. Grant your team access to Miro boards with product requirements, story maps, and design iterations, all in one place, by attaching them to Jira issues in either Miro or in Jira. Learn more about Miro for Jira Cloud
• Miro for Confluence Cloud. Embed Miro and easily access all of your relevant assets right from Confluence to provide more visual context for your pages Learn more about Miro for Confluence Cloud

Q2: Is the Slack integration free?

A: Yes, this integration is completely free and easy to install. All you have to do is add the Jira bot to your channel. Also check out more information on the promotion we have for paying customers.

Q3: What are the most popular integrations?

A: The most popular ones are G Drive, MSFT Teams, Zoom, Zoho, Slack, Figma, Draw.io, and Gliffy. Check out more Cloud integrations on the Atlassian Marketplace!

• Collaborate
• Design
• Code
• CI/CD
• Monitoring

Q4: If I want to use the Google sheets integration with Jira to show multiple projects, does this require Premium? If I update a Google Doc in Google Drive will the changes be reflected in Confluence?

A: You can use the Google-add with any of our plans. And yes, changes are updated automatically.

Q5: Can we embed files from OneDrive into Confluence?

A: Yes! You can find the integration here on the Atlassian Marketplace.

Agile? We know that there's no "right" way to practice agile, so, instead of sharing lofty platitudes, we've studied agile teams inside and out and have packaged up more than just agile practices, but the culture and values teams lean on to make those practices sing.  You're not alone on your agile journey. Check out the no-nonsense guide to agile development.

[Samie Kaufman - Your Gal at Gliffy]

Thanks for the Gliffy nod! :) 

For me, this was a really helpful webinar. I have solid footing in Confluence but less experience with Jira. Learning more about how to combine the two is a big opportunity for me to grow in terms of both my day-to-day work with teammates and my understanding of Atlassian tools.