Is customer-facing knowledge base unavailable for the free tier users?
Asked by Matt:

Hello friends ?

I saw a similar question but the answer wasn't clear enough- I want to make sure that I'm not missing anything and that I completely understand everything correctly with regards to the knowledge base and free tier subscription on JSM

My first question: Is the all following correct?

- Free tier users can create a customer-facing Help Center

- I'm order to add knowledge base articles to the help center, a confluence project must be linked to the help center

- In order to make the articles from the confluence article available in the hell center, permissions must be updated in the confluence space's settings

- Free users cannot change permissions, therefor they are never able to add any customer-facing knowledge base articles

<br />

My second question: If one pays for confluence standard subscription for one month, changes the permissions for a confluence space, then elect to not renew their subscription- will the permissions be reverted to their default setting once the subscription expires?

Thank you!


Answers:
author: Dan Breyen
body: Hi [@Matt](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5449912) welcome to the community. I was testing with the Free versions of Confluence and JSM and I had access to create Knowledge Base articles as part of my testing. Yes, the KB is available with Free version, yes you need at minimum Free Confluence. I didn't really do anything with permissions, but my Confluence site was setup as a KB from the beginning.We've since moved to the Standard License, and having KB articles is working great!

I could be wrong, but I don't believe permissions are reverted, your space just goes into a read-only state.

See this article for more info on using Confluence as a KB with JSM: [Confluence with JSM](https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/resources/guides/extend-functionality/confluence-jsm#overview)

Hope that helps.

comments: author: Matt
body: Hi [@Dan Breyen](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5086375) !!

Thank you so much for the warm welcome and swift response!

It's helpful to know that the permissions wouldn't be reverted :)

As for the KB, I might've failed to communicate the issue I'm having-

The problem isn't that the knowledge base isn't created and it's not that the knowledge base isn't available at all

Rather the problem is that when a user who's a service management user (that is not a confluence user, and is created from the help center page itself) tries to access the knowledge base they get a permissions error telling them that they cannot access the page

Meaning that external users (not org users) are not able to access the knowledge base of the free tier confluence!

As non-org help center visitors, they are able to create an external account and submit a ticket, but they cannot read the KB unless they were added to confluence as confluence users in the org

I see a place to change these permissions to allow anyone to read these articles but sadly free tier users are not able to change permissions

So I'm wondering if there is a way to remedy this for free users or if the KB cannot be made public facing for free users :)

Thanks again!


author: Dan Breyen
body: Try this link to get JSM and Confluence setup to integrate correctly: [JSM \& Confluence](https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-management-cloud/docs/set-up-your-knowledge-base-with-confluence/)

I would have to use the proverbial "It worked for me" excuse when I setup my instance. I didn't have to mess with permissions at all.


author: Matt
body: It appears that your use case is different than mine, as what I'm trying to achieve is specifically addressed in the article you linked with the following
> There are some limitations of being on a Free plan of Confluence that you should be aware of:
>
> * Admins won't be able to customize space permissions or enable anonymous access in Confluence

So sadly my use case is not supported in the free plan :)

Thank you for taking the time to help me today ?????


Tags: cloud

confluence

jira-service-management

jira-service-management-cloud

knowledge-base

permission