How do I connect my JSM to already existing Confluence and Jira?

[Claude]

When we originally set up our JSM it asked me if I'd like to link it to an existing product. We have both Confluence and Jira installed. I selected our jira (only one was selectable). This now enabled us to add our "normal" jira users as collaborators and I manually select a handful of people to be agents.

Unfortunately I know sadly also found out, that creating this JSM automatically created a new Confluence Site with the name of our Jira product which is being billed.

How is it possible for me to create a JSM which uses our already existing Confluence Page as a Knowledge base, but still enable the jira users to be added as collaborators and be able to link existing jira issues in JSM. 

I just want to link the JSM with our already existing products and not be billed extra or create extra sites.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Hi @Claude ,

Can you maybe check admin.atlassian.com > Billing and see if your existing Confluence is listed there?

Is it possible that your Jira and Confluence are under two different organizations?
Also, are you potentially using Atlassian Enterprise? Like, is any of your current products on Enterprise plan?

To circle a bit back, if you have products under different organization, you could probably use transfer products feature to move them all under 'one hat'.

Note that you should be able to use existing Confluence site for your (new) JSM product and not necessarily pay two different Confluence instances.

Cheers,
Tobi

[Claude]

Hi @Tomislav_Tobijas_Koios_,

I believe they are all under the same organization. If I got to the top left and check all products, they are all listed under the same logo. I believe that's also a sign that it's all under one organization.

Unfortunately I'm only a site admin and not a organization admin so I can't verify if we are using attlassian enterprise, but im 90% sure we are as we are also billed annually.

[Claude]

Initially when I added JSM as a product, was I supposed to add to existing and then select confluence instead of Jira. Maybe then it would not have created a new confluence site for this JSM product automatically.

Also I have noticed that when I got to link the JSM with a knowledge base the only conf. pages that appear in the dropdown menu are the ones that were automatically created and exist on this new site. Nothing from our original site shows up in the dropdown menu.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

@Claude you could probably get some information from product switcher (top left as you said) as well, but I would suggest reaching out to your Org admin just to confirm. The whole setup could highly be impacted on how the organization itself operates, plus, as said, if you're using Enterprise products or not.

Here's one additional support doc on the topic: Understand Atlassian sites and organizations 

👀 What you could probably check are the URLs of your existing Confluence and of your new JSM. If these match (in a way sitename.atlassian.net) then these are under the same site. That's if you're not using custom domains.

Apart from that, again, maybe first reach out to Org admin as they'll probably have more info, or you can also reach to Atlassian Support as they could check your Organizations and sites and provide more info on the matter.

[Claude]

Hi @Tomislav Tobijas 
yes like I mentioned it's definitely the same organization. Also the link is the same.

As I mentioned before, the JSM automatically created this site on its own eventhough we are already using both jira and confl. When we added the product we added it to jira and not confluence. Could that be a reason why it did that?

Shouldn't jira infrastructure be smart enough on it's own that we of course don't want to have a new site added.

Just to confirm, if we add a new product again, select JSM, add to existing confl. Then we will be able to use existing confl. base and also have those current conf. users as collaborators in the JSM right?

[Claude]

Hi @Tomislav Tobijas ,

I just received information that we are using atlassian premium not enterprise. In case that helps

[Tomislav Tobijas]

@Claude it's a bit hard to debug this while not seeing the whole picture, but I can try.

First question - from where di you activate new JSM product? Did you go through product landing pages such as https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/service-management and selected Get it free, or have you used admin.atlassian.com > Products > Add product. I'm asking to see which screen was presented when you had to select between Jira and Confluence.

Also, to confirm - let's say you have two sites now (as you have two Confluence products). If I'm following right, you now have the following:

• <existingsite>.atlassian.net - Jira, Confluence (and now JSM)
• <newsite>.atlassian.net - new Confluence

These domains, of course, are different.

Although, I would suspect it's more likely to have the following scenario now:

• <existingsite>.atlassian.net - Jira, Confluence
• <newsite>.atlassian.net - new JSM, new Confluence

[Claude]

Hi @Tomislav Tobijas 
We went admin.atlassian.com > Products > Add product. There during the creation process we added it to jira. In our Case it's called Jiradg.

I have provided a screenshot here.
What is in the yellow box is a new site that was automatically created by the JSM which is named the exact way as our Jira. I supposed it's because we selected add to existing -> jiradg in the beginning of adding the product.


(the crossed out red JSM will be deactivated shortly. That was the first one attempt where we didn't press add to existing and instead clicked "create new" and then there waas no connection between jira and jsm)

Our current domain setup is:
jiradg.atlassian.net for Jira
jiradg.atlassian.net for JSM
confdg.atlassian.net for Conf.
jiradg.atrlassian.net for the new conf that was created by JSM (I don't want this)

Thank you for your help!

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Ah yes - now I see. I have had to play around for a bit to see how different sites behave and can you link those somehow to get knowledge base integration running.

A note before we begin, how it's usually implemented is that all products are under the same site/same domain. I'm not sure why it was implemented that way in your org, but you have two different sites for Jira and for Confluence. 👀 By default sites = URLs so you have:

• Site 1 > jiradg.atlassian.net (Jira)
• Site 2 > confdg.atlassian.net (Confluence)

Again, it would be much easier if you would have just one site for all your products. If you would proceed with this, I would suggest checking the following article/guide.

---

Now, as for the issue itself. It seems that for connecting JSM and Confluence (as a knowledge base), these two need to be under the same domain/same site as per official docs:

When linking spaces from Confluence cloud sites, make sure that the Confluence site and Jira Service Management site have the same domain name.

That being said, ⚠️ you will not be able to connect Confluence from confdg.atlassian.net with JSM from jiradg.atlassian.net. There's a feature suggestion for that: JSDCLOUD-5782: Support linking non same domain JSD Cloud instances as knowledge base 

If you wish to stick with two different sites/URLs, the suggestion is to:

1. Delete/remove JSM and Confluence products from jiradg.atlassian.net
2. Add new JSM product to Confluence, a.k.a. confdg.atlassian.net

This would then result in the following:

• Site 1 > jiradg.atlassian.net (Jira)
• Site 2 > confdg.atlassian.net (Confluence, JSM)

Again, if possible, my final recommendation would be to put everything under the same site. Meaning, either:

1. Migrate Jira to confdg.atlassian.net
2. Migrate Confluence to jiradg.atlassian.net

👉 If you do so, you can easily change product and site URL by following the official guide (note that there are some limitations). So, you could rename it to something like <org-name>.atlassian.net and then URLs for products would be:

• <org-name>.atlassian.net/jira > for Jira and JSM
• <org-name>.atlassian.net/wiki > for Confluence

---

To sum it up - you initial thinking was correct. Due to your org setup (you have 2 different sites), if you have chosen Confluence instead of Jira, additional Confluence wouldn't have been created. This is because products are connected to sites as your organization can have more sites and therefore, more identical products.

Sorry for the longer text/explanation but I know that these 'connections' and the structure itself can be a bit confusing when it comes to Orgs/Sites/Products. I would also recommend going through an official (free) course related to Administering Atlassian organizations as I believe this can help clarify things. 📚

Cheers,
Tobi

[Claude]

Hi @Tomislav Tobijas ,

Thank you so much for your thorough explanation! This really clears things up for me! 
I will have to talk to our organization admins wether mergingn to one site would be possible but unfortunately I doubt it.

Therefore most likely we will have to go the other route and add JSM as a product again and then select to link it to Confluence during the setup.

Thank you and best regards,
Claude

[Claude]

Hi @Tomislav Tobijas ,
So we finally managed to add the JSM by adding to existing Confluence site. 
However now it seems like the normal Conf. users don't have access to the JSM? They should be contributors automatically. Why is that not the case?

[Tomislav Tobijas]

@Claude glad to hear that.

As for the following

However now it seems like the normal Conf. users don't have access to the JSM? They should be contributors automatically. Why is that not the case?

Do you mean they would need to raise tickets on this JSM site/help center, or do they need to work on tickets (be agents)? You can configure product settings/access if you would navigate to admin.atlassian.com > Products > Manage Product next to this JSM instance and then add user groups which would need to be Customers or Agents.

[Claude]

Hi @Tomislav Tobijas ,

We have 2 use cases. On one hand my own team will need to be agents, while the rest of the company needs to be able to look at tickets but not use features like reply to customer. From what I understand they should have collaborator role.

I did already give the "Service Team" Role to one of my teams colleagues but still he does not have access to look at the JSM project.

Do I need to add all other company users as "customer" her admin.atlassian.com > Products > Manage Product

[Tomislav Tobijas]

@Claude got it.

As for this:

I did already give the "Service Team" Role to one of my teams colleagues but still he does not have access to look at the JSM project.

Do these users have access to at least one other Jira product? E.g., do they have Jira license? Collaborators need to be licensed in Jira (or JPD I think; but not necessarily in JSM) and then, once you give "Service Team" role, they should have access to your JSM project.
👉 That is if the project permission scheme is configured this way. Can you maybe check who has Browse Projects permission within the scheme? (also, are there any security levels set on tickets?)

As for the 'customer' product role - you can grant those users this role if you'd like for them to have access to the help center/portal and raise new or be included in existing tickets.