List KB articles dynamically on JSD Help Center

[KA S]

Hello! So I know that you can search KBs on Jira Service Desk Help Center, but can you also list KB articles there dynamically? Some examples would be something like displaying 5 top viewed articles in the last 14 days (calling it "Popular articles") and another one 5 latest articles in the last 14 days (calling it "Latest articles"). I'm really hoping that this is possible because we do want to offer KBs as first option before users submit a request/ticket. The search bar is great but in our experience, not many users are actually using it. So maybe listing some articles there might help to draw more attention to our KB solution. Your wisdom and experience is very much appreciated :) Thanks!

[Carlos Garcia Navarro]

Hi @KA S ,

I'm not aware of such functionality to dynamically influence the search weight in Confluence in the way you described it, but they sound like a great idea. This document has some details on how the ranking on Confluence searches is determined (it's a little bit old, I wonder if it may be out of date), and it does mention that age is a factor, as well as popularity, although the popularity is determined based on incoming links.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/how-do-i-understand-the-ranking-of-confluence-s-search-results-785614686.html

[KA S]

Hi @Carlos Garcia Navarro

Thanks for your response! Sorry I must've not phrased my question clearly. What I wanted to ask was not about influencing the search weight (although this in itself is also an interesting topic), but the possibility of adding some sort of panel or an iframe that will list articles dynamically based on the conditions as mentioned above. This panel/iframe would be placed just below the search bar. So from the perspective of a user looking at the JSD Help Center, the order of what they will see (i.e. their flow) would be something like:

1. Search bar
2. Panel/iframe listing 5 popular and 5 latest articles
3. "Submit a ticket/request" cards

With the addition of the article panel/iframe, it would give the self-help (self-service) portion of the Help Center a bit more prominence. 

[Anthony Andriano]

@KA S Did you ever figure this out? It's really annoying to not see articles in the help center. My customers don't even try to search because they don't know the articles are available. They go straight to creating tickets, which defeats the point of the help center. I found a ton of questions about this while searching the internet for answers and it seems like Atlassian is ignoring this request.

[KA S]

@Anthony Andriano Hi there! I agree, the current state of the help center is very ticket-centric. And we haven't been able to figure it out yet, but we will likely explore the possibility of this more in depth in 2021. Our devs have done some light research and they think it's possible to do with some custom dev work. So we'll only know for sure when they get around to work on it next year.