Serving customers with a knowledge base
Jira Service Desk can be integrated with Confluence's knowledge base capabilities to help customers find solutions on their own in the customer portal or help center:
On this page:
With a linked Confluence space, agents can also create knowledge articles directly from service desk issues to help save their team time when working on similar issues and to provide customers with more self-service knowledge articles. Note that customers do not need a Confluence license to view knowledge articles, but service desk agents do need a Confluence license to create and edit knowledge articles.
Integrating with Confluence
Administrators can integrate Jira Service Desk Server with Confluence Server version 5.6 and up. They will need to link Jira Service Desk and Confluence with an application link using OAuth. To ensure users don't need to log in to view knowledge base content, use an SSO application such as Atlassian Crowd.
Linking a knowledge base
Once an administrator has integrated Jira Service Desk with Confluence, project administrators can then manage their project's Confluence knowledge base integration by going Project administration > Knowledge base:
Start by selecting a Confluence space to use as your linked knowledge base. You must have permission to view a space in Confluence in order to select it as your knowledge base. If you don't have this permission, check with your Confluence administrator.
You can then choose to allow all active service desk users and customers (also known as unlicensed Confluence users) to view your linked Confluence space.This works best if your Service Desk and Confluence instances share a user base. If your Service Desk instance and Confluence instance have separate user bases, you will have to create a Confluence user account for each Service Desk customer. If you don't want the customer to consume a Confluence license, do not assign the Confluence user to a group.Unlicensed Confluence users cannot:
- Like, comment on or edit Confluence content
- See the Confluence dashboard, user profiles, the people directory, or the space directly
- Search all of Confluence
If you choose to restrict viewing of the linked Confluence space to licensed users, you must grant customers a Confluence license or open your Confluence space to anonymous access. As a project administrator, you'll need to contact the administrator of your linked Confluence space to manage which agents can create and edit knowledge articles. Keep on reading to learn more about the auto-search settings you can control.
How to suggest articles for specific request types
When customers select a request type from the customer portal or help center, you can select what type of knowledge articles appear as they're filling in the request details. For example, if a customer is filling in a hardware request, you can have knowledge articles tagged with the "hardware" label appear to offer self-service suggestions. You can control how Confluence suggests articles for each request type in the Auto-search on request forms section. You can control this in two ways:
- Prevent Confluence from suggesting pages - Select No in the Search KB column for the request type. For example, you might not want the "Get access to a system" request type to suggest pages since users have to request access through the Customer Portal.
Limit the pages that will be suggested - In the Restrict to articles with label column, enter the labels that must be applied to pages in order for them to appear in the suggested page list. For example, you might want to only include pages with the label "purchasing" to appear when customers enter a "Request new software" request.
Tip:
If you add label restrictions to a request type, these labels will also appear as the default labels for knowledge base articles created from Jira Service Desk for issues based on that request type.
How agents create knowledge articles
Service desk agents must have the Add page permission in the Confluence space to create a knowledge base article from an issue.
When your agents have finished working on a customer issue and want to save their solution as a knowledge article, they can simply select Create KB article from the service desk issue view:
Agents can choose to create an article with the How-To template or Troubleshooting template. These templates give agents content suggestions, and can help you expand your knowledge base with clearly organized topics. The issue title and description will be automatically added to the new Confluence page as its title and body text. If you've set up label restrictions for the request type the issue was based on, those labels will be automatically suggested for the article. Note that images and attachments will not be automatically copied from the service desk issue to the knowledge base article.
How customers find knowledge articles
Customers will be able to search for knowledge articles connected to service desk projects they have access to. If you have linked a Confluence space to an open service desk (with public signup enabled), then all customers will be able to view the knowledge articles in that space. Customers can view knowledge articles in the global help center, and in Confluence if they're provided with a direct link.
You can also help customers fill out a request form by suggesting knowledge articles related to that type of request.