Advice for knowledge base - external solutions welcome

[Paul Wiggers]

Hello all,

It seems that creating a useful knowledge base is harder than it should. We can't seem to find a proper solution and I turn to the community once again.

First, a short description of our current situation.

We are using Refined for our knowledge base. It looks great but we are running into some issues.

Refined Pro's

• Looks good
• Easy to navigate
• Custom domain

Refined Cons:

• No integration with JSM so default sign-up e-mails contain the wrong KB URL, articles cannot be directly linked in an issue
• No support for forms

We have tried going with the built-in knowledge base which is the reverse of the pro's and cons. In short, not ideal either.

I have tried looking at other KB's but can't find a good solution that will work for us. 

What are we looking for?

• Integration with JSM
  • Sending out the correct URL when customers sign-up is crucial
  • Integration with JSM issues is optional
• Form support
  • Optional
• Easy to navigate and browse
• Custom domain
• Multi-language support (with automatic translations)
  • Automatic translations are optional, as long as there is support for a language switcher
• Public KB
  • Preferred but can be optional if the sign-up URL works
• Submit issues only while logged in
  • Must, we don't want to receive issues from unknown people

One option that we are open to is hosting the KB in a separate solution while redirecting customers to the built-in JSM customer portal when they need to submit an issue.

Are we looking for the goose with the golden eggs or are we just not looking hard enough?

I would love to hear what you are using, how you are managing it and what made you choose that solution over something else. 

[Dan Breyen]

Hi Paul.  Coming from nothing, we went with the JSM/Confluence KB.  So far it is working for us.  Starting out, I wanted to make sure we had the basic stuff for a Support Portal, and Confluence fits the bill.  I know nothing about Refined, but wondering if the Refined for Confluence App for Cloud would help at all to get a bit of both worlds? If that app let you maintain in Refined but dumped them over to the Confluence KB so JSM can use them, that might work.   I can take articles written by our developers for our internal confluence pages and copy them over to the KB so JSM customers can get to them.  I needed something integrated, so right from JSM I can create the article if needed.  Hope that helps.

[Paul Wiggers]

Hello @Dan Breyen 

Refined is a layer over Confluence that offers different options such as a custom domain and different layout options. It looks great and can be a very handy tool, were it not for the shortcomings that we are encountering now. From what I understand, this is nog something Refined (or K15t for that matter) can do something about since they are limited to what the Atlassian API supports.

Refined plugs into your Confluence space to display the knowledge base articles so you can still create the articles as you would normally do.

However, since we are using a custom URL, our customers need to jump through several hoops when signing up because they need to switch URL's.

Also, Refined does not support a language switcher macro to allow multi-language.

So we are torn between something that looks great and can be browsed (Refined) or something that works great but cannot be browsed (Atlassian).

We are looking at something where we can combine those features.

How do your customers like the KB? Is it seeing much use? How do you handle the option to navigate the KB?

[Dan Breyen]

Hi Paul, I guess I'm trying to get a better understanding of what 'navigate the KB' means for you.  The search works in JSM.  As customers are typing in words, it's suggesting articles.  And by putting labels on articles, there's also a keywords search.  We're still pretty new to JSM and getting our customers accustomed to using JSM, but I haven't heard any complaints.  Our goal for all of this is to get to the point where questions are being deflected due to the KB.  I've used different Support Portals from Atlassian's competitors, and from a Support Perspective, integration is an important feature, so you can link articles and easily search them.  

It's also easy for your Support Analyst to attach a KB article to the Service Request and get that information back to the customer.  Hope that helps.

[Paul Wiggers]

What I mean by navigation is that a customer can open a section and browse the knowledge base instead of having to search for them,

This will allow customers to read up on different sections of our product without having to search for it. They can jump back and forth to articles that interest them and perhaps find section that are unknown to them.

The default portal works great for searching and suggesting articles, it is not so great for browsing articles.

Refined has the ability to read a Confluence space, and display the page, including all the different sub articles. A quick example:

[Raj Sehmi]

Hi Paul,

Raj from Refined here, came across your post and I might have some input that could be useful (no sales pitches, I promise). 

Some background, to make sure we're on the same page: We've got two primary Atlassian cloud apps - Refined for Confluence Cloud, and Refined for Jira Cloud. We're set up as a SaaS on cloud, integrating with Atlassian cloud- which means that you can create Refined sites parallel to the native Atlassian Confluence / Jira instance, and pick and choose what Spaces / Projects are shown on each Refined site.

The two apps can be used independently of each other, or together. So you can use Refined for Jira Cloud and just use the JSM aspects of Atlassian on your Refined sites (and this comes with the native JSM project to KB connection), or use Refined for Confluence too, and actually add the Confluence Spaces on to your Refined sites. Here's a short video showing how these work and the differences. 

With this in mind, let's take a look at your list of requirements: 

What are we looking for?

• Integration with JSM
  • Sending out the correct URL when customers sign-up is crucial
    This is a challenge for us as you've experienced, since the redirection on first time signup is out of our hands - there is an Atlassian issue for this here though: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDCLOUD-9174. It is possible to manipulate the links in the email notifications to customer users after this though (for example, for request notifications). 
    
    One workaround with the signup issue that I've seen Refined admins use is to add a banner on the native JSM portal asking users to visit the Refined site instead - we use the same for our help center (see native help center here. 
    
    
  • Integration with JSM issues is optional
    Do you mean allowing customer users to create and view JSM requests via the same site as the KB? Totally do-able using Refined for Jira. You just need to add the JSM project to the site, and then use Request modules to show the Request Types via the Refined site, and the user's existing Requests. 
     
• Form support
  • Optional
    There's light at the end of the tunnel here, the APIs for this are being made available so soon we will have Forms support in Refined for Jira. 
    
    
• Easy to navigate and browse
  This is sort of what we do :) 
   
• Custom domain ✅
  
  
• Multi-language support (with automatic translations)
  • Automatic translations are optional, as long as there is support for a language switcher
    We don't have translation capabilities today I'm afraid. We do have a guide here that might be useful as a workaround.
    
    
• Public KB
  • Preferred but can be optional if the sign-up URL works
    If you're using Refined for Confluence - this is easily done, by making the Confluence spaces public, adding them to a Refined site, and making the site public too. This is what we've done for our own docs over at https://help.refined.com/. We've added our JSM support projects there too, that can be accessed by logging in.
    
    
• Submit issues only while logged in
  • Must, we don't want to receive issues from unknown people
    I've usually been on the other side of this (being asked about anonymous request creation on Refined) :) 
    
    On Refined today, JSM customer users must log in to file requests, anonymous request creation is not supported. A limitation for some, but fits right into your requirements I guess!

Hope this helps, let me know if anything is unclear or if you need any more info.