Publishing technical documentation in Confluence without Jira Service Desk

[Deleted user]

We are considering using Confluence to maintain our product documentation and I'm trying to understand how we would provide customers with access to this.

Is there a way to make our documentation available to our customers without using the Jira Service Desk portal?

We don't want to make our documentation public - it is only for our customers.

thank you

[Bill Bailey · Accepted solution]

Assuming you want your docs public, is to go with a two server solution: an internal behind the firewall where you develop documentation, and use as your Intranet, and a second external server for customers only. The external doesn't need to have a big licenses or all the plugins (so read cheap).

Then you can brute force publishing (backup/restore a space), or go with a sophisticated solution based our Comala workflows.

This solution protects your internal data, but provides easy access to your docs by your customers.

[Mike Rink]

For future visitors reading this answer, using Workflows for this purpose does work but it requires an additional app, Comala Remote Publishing. 

[Deleted user]

Thank you.

[Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting] · Accepted solution]

You would need to create accounts for your customers and have them log in, if you don't want to make the content anonymously visible. Confluence has an internal directory that you can use for this purpose, which will save you from adding external accounts to your AD or LDAP.  

[Deleted user]

Thanks Dave.

And we would be able to have links from within our (software) products to particular pages in Confluence, right? (i.e. so we can provide context-sensitive help).