JSM Knowledge Base

Summary

Working with Jira Service Management (JSM) and utilising the unlicensed user feature from Atlassian where Service Desk users can access Confluence pages as articles, there are a few things that are good to know when adding Refined to the mix.

Refined is a great tool for highlighting content from Confluence on your site, getting that self-service set up. Read on to learn more about what to consider when setting up a knowledge base.

Introduction to the concept: https://refined.com/blog/how-to-add-a-confluence-knowledge-base-to-your-refined-for-jira-support-site/

How Refined works

When it comes to access and licensing, Refined works in the same way as Confluence and Jira: any user’s permission and access will be determined by their license set on the Atlassian side of things.

This means that a user cannot access content in Confluence or JSM via Refined that they can’t access via Confluence or JSM itself.

Guidance for building your knowledge base site

As mentioned in the blog above, there are two ways of building your knowledge base on a Refined site using Confluence:

• using the JSM knowledge base connection

• surfacing Confluence spaces on your site

Before building out your site, make sure you have considered the full scope of licenses, permission and access when it comes to Confluence.

What licensing are you working with in Confluence?

For a user to get access to content in Confluence, there are three ways you can set this up:

1. Unlicensed users

2. Confluence licensed users

3. Anonymous users
   

Unlicensed users

When setting up on or several spaces as knowledge base spaces via a JSM project, unlicensed users are the ones that have access to a service desk that has a Confluence space connected as a knowledge base. The unlicensed users can view content in Confluence on a per article level, meaning they can access content in Confluence via the portal as articles, but they cannot go directly to Confluence to view content.

When this is applied in Atlassian cloud, it is reflected in Refined.

Content from Confluence can be viewed on an article basis, as a popup.

Confluence licensed users

Confluence licensed users will have access to content in Confluence as per their permissions on a space level. This is reflected in Refined. When you have this option you open up for adding Confluence spaces to a Refined site, giving any user with a license opportunity to browser the content, view the page tree and access activity streams and blog feeds.

Anonymous users

Having your Confluence open for anonymous users means that the content is publicly available. Since from the point-of-view of permissions this means read permissions in Confluence you get the same options as in the case of users have Confluence licenses above, and you can add in spaces to your Refined site unlocking all the nice features here.

What Refined apps do you have installed?

When using Refined for Atlassian cloud, what you can do depends on what Refined apps you’ve added to your Atlassian cloud.

Refined for Jira

With Refined for Jira Cloud you have access to the knowledge base shown as popups on an article per article basis, either via link or via search.

Refined for Confluence

With Refined for Confluence Cloud you open up for adding Confluence spaces to your Refined sites. Users who have read permissions in these spaces can browse the spaces from the Refined site, and you can highlight content.

What Confluence content in the search on a Refined site?

The search in a Refined site shows the content based on what is added to the site and what the searching user has access to see.

Refined for Jira

With Refined for Jira Cloud, when you have a Confluence space linked as a knowledge base to a JSM portal, and that project is added to your Refined sites, when a user searches they will see search results as articles.

Refined for Confluence

With Refined for Confluence Cloud, when Confluence spaces have beed added to your Refined sites, the search for content will show up as pages.

For any user that have access to both the Confluence content (via a Confluence license, or if the content is anonymously available), and the knowledge base content (by being a user on a JSM portal that has a knowledge base linked) both results will show up, one as a page and one as an article.

Extending articles with links on Refined

While an unlicensed user cannot freely browse content on your site as they only have a per-article way of viewing it, you can use links to create a library for users.

Learn more here: Building a knowledge base for unlicensed Confluence users

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