Adding a knowledge base to your support site

One of the easiest ways to cut down on support tickets is to help customers or employees help themselves before they even need to file a ticket. For organisations using Jira Service Management (JSM), that often means integrating content from a Confluence knowledge base into their help center.

Types of users

Users can only access Confluence or JSM content on Refined sites that they can also access via native Confluence or JSM. This is why we recommend you to consider which Confluence permissions your Refined site’s users will have, before building your site.

There are three types of users, who are allowed to view different types of content.

Unlicensed users

Unlicensed users are logged-in users who do not have a Confluence license. If you give access to unlicensed users, they can view knowledge base content per article as popups, but they can’t go directly to the pages.

Learn more in Atlassian’s documentation:

Confluence-licensed users

Confluence-licensed users have access to Confluence content, based on their space permissions. They can browse the content through page trees, activity streams, blog feeds, etc.

Anonymous users

Opening your Confluence for anonymous users means that the content is available to everyone who visits your site. 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.

Learn how to set up anonymous content in Confluence

Limitations

Atlassian's feature for anonymous visitors to search a linked Knowledge Base Space is currently not supported by the API provided by Atlassian, which Refined is built on. Thus, anonymous access on JSM projects is not supported at this point in time by Refined.

The main Help Center page can be set as anonymously accessible. Our goal is to continually add functionality as the Atlassian APIs extend in features.

To keep track of this issue or vote/comment on it, click here.

Possible workaround(s)

Create a confluence space that is anonymously accessible. Use this space as your "knowledge base". Then:

Add the space to your Refined site.
Make your Refined site publicly accessible.
Anonymous users should be able to search the site for the pages in the space you just connected.

For this to work, you will also need to have a Refined for Confluence Cloud subscription. Note that requests cannot be submitted as anonymous users, nor can they access the JSM portal via Refined as an anonymous user. They will have to create an account. However, anonymous user can still access the Refined site, and this is based on site permissions.

However, with this workaround, anonymous users scan still browse around "knowledge base" pages before deciding to create an account. Their search results would show up under the category of 'pages', and not 'articles'.

Ways to build a knowledge base

There are different ways to integrate a Confluence knowledge base into your support site. Among other factors, this depends on whether or not you use Refined for Confluence in addition to Refined for Jira Service Management.

1. Add a Confluence knowledge base space to your Refined site

For the best user experience, use Refined for Confluence in addition to Refined for Jira Service Management (JSM). This lets you take full advantage of Refined’s user-friendly browse and search experience, which includes:

Page tree menus on landing pages and in the left-hand menu of the Confluence space.
Embedding request types directly on Confluence pages.
Confluence modules on your landing pages, which for example let you highlight the latest news from your blogs and show the most recently updated pages.

Learn how

To add a Confluence space as a knowledge base to your Refined site:

Go to the Site Builder.
Click Add New > Add Atlassian Content.
Use the search bar to find the desired Confluence space.
Set up the space.
Customise the appearance of the space home using modules and other tools.

2. Add a Confluence knowledge base to a JSM project

This method is ideal for folks who have Refined for JSM but not Refined for Confluence. Users can access knowledge base articles via direct links or by searching. When users search from the JSM project, they’ll see results from the Confluence knowledge base you just linked. They can read the articles from your knowledge base in a popup, on a per-article basis.

Learn how

To link a Confluence space to a JSM project using Atlassian’s default linking functionality:

Go to the JSM project page on your Refined site.
Click the … Three dots in the top-right corner > View project in Jira.
Go to Project Settings, located in the left-hand menu, and click Knowledge base.
Select the knowledge base spaces you’d like to add to your JSM project.

Limitations

Due to knowledge base articles being rendered in an iframe, we have no control over the content in the article. As such, we cannot direct the user to view those links on a Refined site.

This limitation also applies within articles when macros (ie. link list and child) link to other articles.

3. Build a Confluence knowledge base for unlicensed Confluence users

If you have a Refined site with JSM content, but no Confluence license, you can still create a setup where your project users can access Confluence pages as articles. In addition to Atlassian’s offer to show content from Confluence as articles on a project, which lets unlicensed users only view one article at a time, you can use Refined to create a knowledge base on your site.

Learn how

You’ll need:

A JSM project to which you connected one or more Confluence spaces as knowledge bases.
Articles in your Confluence space.
Refined for JSM Cloud.
To give the users access via the knowledge base link to the Confluence space.

When you’re all set, build the knowledge base:

Go to the Site Builder and add a page to your site.
View the page on the site and open its Page Builder.
Add a navigation module. In this example, we use three Navigation Cards modules, all placed in different sections to organise different types of articles.
In another tab, go to your Refined site and use the global search in the top right corner to find the articles. Copy + paste their URLs into the navigation modules.

Make sure to use the articles (located in the right-hand side of the search results), not to the pages (located on the left-hand side of the search results). Read more.

Limitations

We have had reports of users not being able to access linked articles properly when linked within navigation modules, link list modules, or on a page.

Workaround

This is due to the article containing an invalid link. Article links must contain the full link in this format: domain.com/portal/{id}/article/{id}/{title} and not be truncated by any URL shorteners.

For example: exampledomain.refined.com/portal/2/article/39026710/Payment

Articles or pages

When users search on a Refined site, the search results may show articles as well as pages.

Articles are content from Confluence spaces that are linked as knowledge base to a JSM project. They can be seen by all users of a JSM project that has a linked knowledge base.

Pages are content from Confluence spaces that are added in the Site Builder. They can be seen by users with the right Confluence license, or by everyone if the content is anonymously available.