Documentation for JIRA 4.2. Documentation for other versions of JIRA is available too.

On this page:

Why would I set up local online documentation?

You may wish to run the documentation locally, and have JIRA link to it. There are a few reasons you may wish to do this:

  • JIRA's interface contains links ( ) to help pages, some to pages within JIRA, but many to the online documentation on www.atlassian.com. For deployments in environments without an internet connection, a local copy of the documentation is desirable.
  • If you have customised JIRA, you may wish to update the documentation to reflect your changes, or add new pages.
  • You can change the look and feel of the documentation to integrate into your company's intranet.

How to set up local online documentation

For JIRA 4.0.x and later:

  1. Install Atlassian Confluence. (If you don't already have Confluence, ask for a free Evaluation License. You can use 'Anonymous' access to allow your users to view the documentation.)
  2. Download the JIRA Documentation's XML source. Note that the Confluence version of the XML source needs to be the same major Confluence version as your local Confluence site.
  3. Import the XML file into your Confluence site. (Note: if there is already a 'JIRA' space in your Confluence site, it will be overwritten.) For detailed instructions, see the Confluence documentation on Restoring a Space.
  4. (Optional) If you want JIRA's help links ( ) to point to your local documentation, you will need to:
    1. edit JIRA's /WEB-INF/classes/help-paths.properties file and change the url-prefix line so that it points to the 'JIRA' space in your local Confluence site, e.g.: 
      url-prefix=http://confluence.mycompany.com/display/JIRA/
    2. restart JIRA.

If you are downloading the local online documentation for JIRA 4.1.x or later, please note that the XML source content includes the Confluence Documentation Theme configuration details. (This theme was introduced in Confluence 3.2 and is now included in all of our documentation spaces on http://confluence.atlassian.com.)

The Header and Footer sections of these Documentation Theme configuration details contain references to our main Atlassian Documentation space on http://confluence.atlassian.com. These references will generate the following error in the left navigation column, header, footer in your local JIRA documentation because your local Confluence installation will not have the Atlassian Documentation space:

Unable to render {include} Couldn't find a space with key: ALLDOC

Therefore, after importing the JIRA Documentation's XML source into your Confluence site, we recommend performing either of the following to the Documentation Theme of your own JIRA Documentation space:

  • Customise the Navigation, Header and Footer sections to suit your Confluence site or environment.
  • Remove all content from the Navigation, Header and Footer sections of the Documentation Theme and select the Page Tree check box.

For JIRA 3.13.x and earlier:

JIRA licensees can download the XML source for the documentation.

To build JIRA's docs locally:

  1. Download Apache Forrest 0.5.1 (zip, tar.gz), used to render the docs.
  2. Download the JIRA Documentation's XML source (6.2Mb). Note: the download is restricted to JIRA license holders.
  3. Follow the JIRA_DOCUMENTATION.txt instructions in the package.

Local field documentation

If you just want to document usage of a custom field, please see Creating Help for a Custom Field.

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