Summary

There are departments that require the employee to create a Confluence page after raising a ticket to Jira to further track on detail information about their request. For example, when employees would like to request a work trip, they need to create a Jira ticket to Finance to approve budgeting, and on top of that, they need to fill up their trip itinerary. This article will guide you on how to automatically create a Confluence page using the "Work Trip Planner" template once the Jira ticket is created. 

Environment

Jira Service Management Cloud

Solution

With this solution, the final result will be:-

1. The employee will raise a ticket to propose a work trip with brief information.
2. Automation will automatically create a page.
3. The employee is expected to have a Confluence license to update the page with detailed information.
4. Finance will review the ticket and transition the issue for approval from the Manager.
5. The manager will review the Confluence page and approve it.

Let's do this:-

Step 1: Create a Jira Service Management project

1. Go to the Jira site
2. At the top bar, click Projects > Create Project 
3. Choose General service management for business teams  project template
4. Create the project, and you can name it Work Trip Planning 

Step 2: Create a few custom fields for employees to fill up when creating the ticket.

1. Go to Jira Settings > Issue > Custom fields 
2. Click Create Custom Fields 
3. Choose Date Picker  custom field type
4. Name it Travel Date  and click Create 
5. In the search panel, key in the project key. Then, look for a screen with Jira Service Management: General Request Issue Screen name. 
6. Tick it and click Update 
7. Repeat the step 2 to 6 for the field below:-
   
   1. Trip Location - Use the "Short Text" custom field type
   2. Flight Date - Use the "Date Picker" custom field type
   3. Flight Time - Use the "Short Text" custom field type

Step 3: Create a new request type and update the form with the custom fields.

1. Go to the new project you've created.
2. Go to Project Settings > Request Types 
3. Click Create Request Type 
4. Key in Work Trip Proposal and choose to Submit a request or incident  issue type
5. Tick the General and click Create
6. Open the newly created request type to edit the form.
7. Drag all the new custom fields created previously from the right sidebar to the form. Including the "Approvers" field.
8. Update the "Description" portal field name with "What is the purpose of this trip ?" 
9. The form setting will look as below:-
    

Step 4: Create the automation to automatically create a page once the ticket created 

1. The automation will look as below:- 
   
2. Download the attached file, and you may need to upload it to the site and update a few things based on the next steps.  
   • automation-rule-create-page.json
3. Go to the site's global automation page, which is https://xxxx.atlassian.net/jira/settings/automation
4. Click the three dots on the top right corner and click Import Rule:-
   
   
5. Click Upload JSON  and choose the file
6. Under "Restrict to projects" , choose the newly created project
7. Tick it and click Next > Let's do this 
8. Go back to the project and go to Project Settings > Automation 
9. Open the newly uploaded automation.
10. Click the Then : Send Web Request . The REST API used for this request are the Create Content API from Confluence Cloud , which is  POST /wiki/rest/api/content 
    
11. Update the section as per screenshot below :-
    
    
12. For the Header section, add as below:-
    
    1. Header Name: Authorization 
    2. Header Value: Basic XXXXX
       1. The XXXX value are a decoded Base64 value of username:API Token
       2. Follow the steps in Manage API tokens for your Atlassian account documentation to create an API Token for your Atlassian Account.
       3. Then, follow the instructions here to encode your useremail:APItoken to base64.
       4. Paste it to the Header Value
13. For the space key, you can use the space created for the project.
    1. Go to Project Settings > Knowledge Base 
    2. Hover to click the space name
    3. From the URL, you will notice the space key from "/wiki/spaces/XXX/overview" . The XXX are the space key
14. Once done updating the automation, Save it and enable the automation.

Step 5: Allowing the user with Confluence user to edit the page.

1. Go to the space permission setting 
2. Add the groups that needed permission.
3. Detail steps can, refer to Assign space permissions documentation.

Step 6: Configure the Approval configuration

1. Go to Project Settings > Workflow 
2. Click the pencil icon for the Default ESM workflow for Jira Service Management workflow to edit it.
3. In the Diagram view, click Pending  status
4. Tick the Include approval step and click Edit 
5. Update as per screenshot:-
   
   
6. Additionally, if you would like to allow the employee to transition the issue to Pending status, you can click the transition and tick the Show transition in the customer portal. 
7. Once done, publish the workflow.
8. For a detailed explanation about Approval and displaying transition in the workflow, may refer to the documentation. 
   • Set up an approval stage
   • Show a workflow transition in the portal

Step 7: Allowing employee or customer to choose another account as an approver

1. Go to Project Settings > Customer Permission 
2. Under "Customer Sharing", choose the Customers can search for other customers within their project or organizations. 
3. For detailed explanation about this, you may refer to this documentation: Change project customer permissions

Step 8: It's time to test

1. Go to customer portal:-
   
2. Choose Work Trip Proposal 
3. Raise a ticket as below:-
   
4. A ticket will be created, and a comment will be added with the Confluence page link :-
   
   
   
5. If the user has access to the space, he/she can access the link and edit it. The page will look as below:-
   
6. From Jira, the ticket will look as below:-
   
7. Assigned the ticket and transitioned it to "Pending". The approver will notice the Approve/Decline button as below:-
   
8. The approval has been approved it and the comment will be updated with the approval status:-
   
9. The ticket can be closed if needed.