With both jira and confluence, should space keys and project keys be different or the same?

[Eirik Lygre]

We have been using jira for a while, and are about to start using confluence. We think that we will have one confluence space per jira project, and then we need to decide on naming:

• Should we use the same conflucence space key as the already existing jira project key?
• Will integration work better when they are the same?
• Will something get confusing when they are the same?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

I'd actually say roughly the opposite from Rodrigo on the use of the key. On the technical side he's absolutely right, but it's actually very useful for humans to have a single point of reference. Being able to say "you know, the XYZ thing" and know that confluence/display/XYZ and jira/browse/XYZ will point to the single project you need to talk about is immensely useful and intuitive. I've often ended up in conversations where people are asking "but my project is called Moo, so why have I got Oom in Jira and Omo in Confluence?".

The only time I'd avoid using the same key is when you've got one-to-many relationships. For example, when a team has one confluence space and several Jira projects, people may miss the range of projects if they see a Jira project with the same name as confluence (they stop looking any further)

[Davin Studer]

I agree. If the mapping is 1 to 1 use the same key.

[Ron Summers]

We just had this same question come up which is why I came out to find out what other people have said. It's good to know there isn't any technical reason (like there is between JIRA and Crucible projects not having the same key) for Confluence to be different. It may be ok with 1:1 like Nic and Davin says but we are in the 1:M and actually we have a lot of M:M where multiple teams may have different Confluence spaces and work on various JIRA projects and some of the JIRA projcts may be the same so multiple Confluence spaces may be pulling data from the same JIRA project.

[Greg Dungca]

Hi Eirik,

I'm in the same situation as you were. Our organization has been using JIRA for a while and we are going to use Confluence. We also plan on having one Confluence space per JIRA project. Can you update us on what naming convention you ended up using for space keys and what you recommend now as a result?

Thanks,

Greg

[Eirik Lygre]

So there seems to be no "right" answer, but mostly preferences. We ended up using the same key, are happy about the single point of reference, but are still fearful of the confusion.

It seems I should accept an answer, so I'll accept both :-)

[Rodrigo Girardi Adami]

Hi Eirik,

In a technical way, using the same space key as the project key won't do any harm to both apps since their databases are not the same.However, in my opinion, using the same key might cause some confusion when you need to manage the project and the space links if both applications uses the same key.

I wouldn't use the same key to avoid this kind of situation but it's up to you to decide.

Regards,

Rodrigo