Read-only Manual for Customers

[Lauren Bertsch]

My company currently uses Confluence for all internal documentation.

We would like to create a read-only manual based on Confluence that would serve as a resource for our customers using/subscribed to our software.
We would like to host the manual in Confluence, but using a completely separate account from our company's internal confluence library of pages, spaces etc. We want to keep our internal confluence pages as secure as possible.

We would like any of our customers to be able to click a link embedded in our software which would allow them to access the read-only, confluence-based manual. They should not be able to edit pages, create pages, comment on pages, delete pages, etc.

We don't want our customers to have to create individual logins to view the manual, however we need to make sure the manual is not publicly accessible. They will only access the manual from within our software.  We won't publish the link, but also don't want the link to be "found" in a google-type search. Ideally, we'd like to have one, universal login that our software auto populates behind the scenes when a user clicks the link to access the confluence-based manual.

We would need additional licenses/logins to manage, edit, add, remove content from this stand-alone Confluence account.

Can someone help me understand if the scenario outline above is possible?

[Robert Keiper _K15t_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Lauren Bertsch 
you might also want to take a look at my companies app Scroll Viewport.

It enables you to present Confluence content as a separate help center site but also to embed this content as in app help (Learn more) and to authenticate the content by using authentication tokens(Learn more). 

Feel free to book a demo with us or let me know here, in case you have more specific questions about Scroll Viewport.

Cheers, Robert

[Conrado Maggi · Accepted solution]

Hello @Lauren Bertsch 

If you want to avoid making your confluence public but accessible to anonymous users you can use a tool like the one we created:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1227534/deskbase-on-brand-websites-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

Which let you publish your docs on a public site and block google from indexing the site. You can even embed this into your software or hosted into your own domain.

[Lauren Bertsch]

Thank you - how many current customers do you have currently using your product? If we have 40 ppl in our organization, of which 10-12 may contribute to the content, along with the end users of our software who are the ones that need to be able to access the content (software help/manual), how does the pricing work? Is the team/suer pricing for the members of our organization? just those that are contributing content? Or do we need to account for potentially each of our end users that would be anonymous as a paid user?

[Conrado Maggi]

Hello @Lauren Bertsch The product is price just any marketplace app, these means a small amount for each confluence user. 

Anonymous or public users do not paid.

The product is free to try for 30 days.

[Lauren Bertsch · Accepted solution]

Thank you for the reply. Since we have multiple pages within the space that contains our manual, the public space option would be more appropriate. 

However, is it possible to have a stand-alone Confluence account, with a read-only space where one of the licenses ONLY allows access to view the read-only space? We do not want to make the space publicly accessible. And we would like this one license to not be able to make comments, create new pages, etc. We would like to use a single license to provide a secure, universal login (a single username and password) to populate on the backend of our software for any customer who needs to view the manual (we would program this feature) from within our software. The Confluence account and the spaces and pages within would have additional logins/licenses for our team members within the company that would have privileges to edit the content. 

[Brant Schroeder · Accepted solution]

@Lauren Bertsch 

You can use Public Space or Public Links.  You will have to choose one as a Confluence instance will not support both.

• Public Space
• Public Links

[Brant Schroeder]

There is not a delivered option to do that.  You can use Jira Service Management to allow users to access a space through the Jira application that is not public.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-management-cloud/docs/set-up-a-knowledge-base-so-customers-can-serve-themselves/

[Lauren Bertsch]

With the knowledge base in JIra, can customers access the information without having an individual login? The pages from the link you provided reference Confluence Users and Logged in Users. If we make the knowledge base public, is it searchable from browsers like Google?