JSM knowledge base customer access

[Kevin Flachsmann]

I have some trouble setting up access to the knowledge base of my JSM project. Currently I have the following behavior:

Internal Customer (without Confluence access):

When an internal customer (with Atlassian account) without Confluence access / licence tries to access the knowledge base directly (https://DOMAIN.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/XYZ/) a error message is shown: No confluence access, try another account. If the user first sings into the servicedesk (https://DOMAIN.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portals) he can go to the knowledge base without any issue.

External Customer (Portal-Only):

When an external customer (portal-only) tries to access the knowledge base directly, it always gives the error message (No confluence access, try another account), even if a successfull login to the servicedesk was made.

I would expect that the login should work for internal and external customers directly, without previous login to the servicedesk. But even more critical is, that the access for external customers isn't working at all.

Is there any configuration that has to be made to get this fixed?

[Cosmo Denger]

@Kevin Flachsmann we are struggling with this now as we just launched Confluence as our knowledge base and more importantly as our new employee onboarding experience. Turned out to be a big mistake because we didn't know of the limitations. 

We have internal customers that sync through our approved domains.  The users can log into JSM first and then that makes direct links to Confluence work.  However, this tends to be a showstopper for new employees that just want to access our onboarding materials. We now have to tell them "click on the service desk link and login, then go to the direct Confluence onboarding documentation link".  - Cumbersome from a usability standpoint. 

We also cannot open our JSM portal or Confluence up to anonymous as there is sensitive information in there meant for the company only. 

Simply put, why can't staff use direct links to Confluence without first having to log into JSM (many of which will only ever submit ticket through email ingest)? Is there some automated way we can auto login new users into JSM first without them knowing?

#frustrated

[Adrian Arm]

Hi @Cosmo Denger 

Have you found a solution for your problem?

We encountered the same issue with "you have to login... the search the page from your direct link"

[Cosmo Denger]

The only option for Jira is to use the confluence links through the help portal.  This forces the user to login to the portal as a customer.  The BIG downside is that they don't get the full navigation of all the articles. 

The other option we explored is a 3rd party add-on called https://www.refined.com/ which works great but you havea an added cost.  This allows you to present the confluence site but use JSM customer logins. 

JSM/Confluence just needs to implement what Refined has already achieved. 

[Adrian Arm]

Thanks for your feedback.

We already use Refined, but I would like to grant access only to JSM Customers.

Thats why I checked out a possible solution with the knowledge base.

The login is desired in our case but the issue is:
The customer gets a directlink from us to a knowledge page.
While not already logged in, he gets the page for "please login"
After login, he gets directed to the main portal page instead of the page from the directlink.

Now I have to try with a redirect.

[Cosmo Denger]

Ah ok.  I'm probably no help then.  The only other thing to check is that you can use Refined site to use JSM login to Confluence.  I'm not sure about the redirect issue you described as we ended up not using Refined.  

[Dan Breyen]

Hi @Kevin Flachsmann welcome to the community.  Here's an article from Atlassian with steps for setting up a KB for JSM. confluence-jsm 

That's what I did to get it accessible to internal and external customers.

Have you tried setting up a personal email as an external customer for testing?  I did that and use it alot for troubleshooting.

Hope that helps.

[Kevin Flachsmann]

Thanks for your answer. After long search, I found this article that might describe my issue: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/how-jsm-customers-with-an-atlassian-account-can-view-confluence-pages-without-having-a-license-1188780702.html

It seems that portal only customers only can view knowledge base articles in the customer portal. Directly accessing Confluence is not possible (Workaround anonymous access, guets account, or atlassian account - all options not possible). It's a shame that this is by concept, especially as this setup is possible onprem.

[Amelia Fraczkowski]

Hi Kevin, there is this functionality in Confluence itself that you can enable: Share content externally with public links | Confluence Cloud | Atlassian Support

[kevin_flachsmann]

Public links means public for everyone. The articles must only be visible for authenticated portal customers.