Knowledge base articles are not visible on Help portal unless we add them to confluence
Asked by Marissa Moroz:

I am trying to configure our Help portal knowledge base, but I cannot get the knowledge base articles to populate unless I ALSO give the customers access to Confluence. We do not want to give these customers access to confluence

On the Service Desk Project, I have the settings mirroring what the support docs note should enable access for logged in users

<https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-management-cloud/docs/manage-knowledge-base-permissions/>

<https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-management-cloud/docs/manage-knowledge-base-permissions-from-your-service-project/>

- Who can view: All logged in user

- Who can edit: only confluence users

![Screenshot 2024-05-16 at 10.46.19?AM.png](/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/324272iE4AA7E9C9DF917DF/image-dimensions/336x129?v=v2 "Screenshot 2024-05-16 at 10.46.19?AM.png")

What other settings need to be adjusted for this to work?

My issue mirrors recent comments on here, but the answer noted does not resolve anything: <https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Service-Management/Customers-can-not-see-knowledge-base-or-articles-on-portal-home/qaq-p/1994463>


Answers:
author: Dan Breyen
body: Hi [@Marissa Moroz](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2014658) I would suggest looking at [this article](https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/resources/guides/extend-functionality/confluence-jsm#overview). If your Confluence project isn't setup as a KB from JSM or linked properly, it's not going to act as a KB.

Hope that helps.

comments: author: Marissa Moroz
body: Hi Dan - thank you for the suggestion, but this doesn't help here. Are you aware of any other settings that need to be considered here?

I have tried both paths:

1. Creating a knowledge base directly from the JSM - Project Settings - Knowledge base page

2. Creating a confluence space and then linking it to the JSM Knowledge base page.

-

In both scenarios, I can get articles to be visible for my user (admin) in the help desk, but not for a logged in customer account. The only path that seems to work is ALSO adding the customer to the confluence guest users. This is not what the JSM - Knowledge base outlines in the set up though, and is not the path we want to use.

User setting wise, we have this configured to allow customers with specific domains to sign up and for the articles to also be suggested in the portal.


author: Helene Dryden
body: We are having the same issue with a newly created service project. KBs work fine in our other service project (company managed) but I can seem to get it working in this new service project (team managed). They show for my user (admin) but not for normal customers.

Is the Service Project that you are having issues with also team managed?


author: Helene Dryden
body: FYI, I submitted a ticket for my issue to Jira support and they were able to trigger a "re-index of the search functionality" of our Confluence site which solved our issue. They mentioned that is usually what causes problems fetching articles.


author: Marissa Moroz
body: Thank you Helene! Would you be able to provide anymore info on what you told Jira Support? I'm going to try to do the same


author: Helene Dryden
body: Below is what I sent them and then they asked for the name of affected user(s) and asked if they had permission to impersonate them, which we provided.
> We are working to set up a new service management project for our People Team and are encountering issues getting suggested KB articles to show for regular customers in our portal.
>
> As a Jira Admin, I am able to see the suggested articles in the portal, however, regular service desk customers are not able to.
>
> I'm working with another user who I have made a Project Admin for the Jira Service Mgmt Project. She has a Jira Service Mgmt license but does not have a user license for Confluence.  
> When logged into our Jira Service Mgmt project she is able to see that the Confluence Space is linked (under Projects/People Team/Project settings/Knowledge base) but cannot see the Articles (under  
> Projects/People Team/Knowledge base/Articles). When she accesses the Portal and begins to fill out a form, no suggested articles populate for her (as they do for me). However, if I provide the link to an article directly in the portal she is able to view it without issues.
>
> The Confluence space we created was setup via the Service Mgmt Project and is entirely open to Anonymous/Guest access. All pages are unlocked and unrestricted as well. All Request Types in the portal have the Knowledge Base element added to them. I've reviewed many KB and Community articles but none of them seem to address my problems - the recommended settings are already implemented as suggested. We have a IT Service Mgmt Project setup with near identical settings and the same customers are able to see suggested articles in that portal without issues.
>
> Can your team take a look at our account and help me work to identify the underlying issue?
>
> Link to the Service Mgmt Project: \[link\]
>
> Link to the Confluence space:\[link\]
>
> Link to the Customer Portal: \[link\]
>
> Link to example Article: \[link\]


Tags: cloud

jira-service-management

jira-service-management-cloud