How can I use Confluence Knowledge base with Service Desk, if Anonymous access is OFF?
Asked by Aaron Ko:

Confluence - In Global Permissions, Anonymous Access is OFF, due to security

JIRA Service Desk - requires Anonymous Access to access Knowledge Base.

Even if I go into 1 space, I can NOT turn on Anonymous Access, because the Global Permissions overrides it.

Any workaround for this problem?


Answers:
author: Shannon S
body: Aaron,

Why don't you just open your Knowledge Base space to all active users and customers? This way, anyone with a customer account on Jira Service Desk can view the space without having a Confluence license.

* [Jira Service Desk Cloud \> Serving Customers with a Knowledge Base \> Knowledge Base Permissions](https://confluence.atlassian.com/servicedeskcloud/serving-customers-with-a-knowledge-base-732528995.html#Servingcustomerswithaknowledgebase-permissionsKnowledgebasepermissions)
* [Jira Service Desk Server 3.11 \> Serving Customers with a Knowledge Base \> Viewing Access](https://confluence.atlassian.com/servicedeskserver/serving-customers-with-a-knowledge-base-939926546.html#Servingcustomerswithaknowledgebase-Viewingaccess)

Regards,

Shannon

comments: author: Aaron Ko
body: Hi Shannon, thanks for the reply.

yes, we considered that, however our security team is giving us a hard time on that (opening up our Confluence to all users, including "anonymous").

1. We have Confluence, global permissions anonymous is OFF.

2. We are testing JIRA Service Desk, however cannot search KB, with the global permissions OFF in Confluence.

Besides what we already know, is there any other workaround, besides turning on global permissions in Confluence? The only workaround I can think of is A) turn on global permissions in Confluence then B) at Space level, turn off anonymous access for each space that is not a KB space. Possible, but not practical.

Thanks, Aaron


author: Shannon S
body: Aaron,

Opening up to all licensed users does **not** provide access to Anonymous users. You would have to have a customer account on the instance in order to view the KB.

Searching won't be possible for the users via Confluence itself, but they can still search on the Customer Portal page.

Besides the two options listed on the article, there is no other workaround.

Regards,

Shannon


author: Joseph Isom
body: [@Shannon S](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/510046) I have a followup.

I have built a knowledge base space in our Confluence Server (6.8) environment which is connected via application links (over SSL) to our Jira Service Desk (3.4.1) running as a part of Jira Software (7.6.1)

When a licensed agent is in the Service Desk project, they have the KB search function available to them in the sidebar. When they search for an article from the sidebar, it fails to surface any results. However, if they click the "Go to Confluence" hyperlink in the Knowledge base sidebar, they can do the same search and find the relevant article.

We do NOT have anonymous access enabled for security reasons and the fact that Single Sign On doesn't automatically sign our users in, if we enable even that one space for anonymous access. If we enable anonymous access, the search from the sidebar in Service Desk will surface results without the agent having to jump over to Confluence. Any idea why this is occurring?

Thanks

Kind Regards,  
Joseph


author: Shannon S
body: Joseph,

I'm not really sure about that. These are licensed AGENTS and not Customers? Can you show me which sidebar search you're referring to?

Shannon


author: Joseph Isom
body: Hi [@Shannon S](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/510046),

This is the sidebar I am referring to and yes these agents are licensed and authenticated in Jira Service Desk. We are using Active Directory and Jira Internal Directory for user management in both Jira and Confluence.

When searching in this pop up they are not able to surface KB articles that have been created in the corresponding Confluence KB space but when they click that link to go to confluence they can run the same search and retrieve the articles.

Appreciate any insight you and the team may have.

Kind Regards,  
Joseph


author: Shannon S
body: Hello Joseph,

As long as you have unlicensed users set to view the space in Confluence then it *should* work. However, I found a bug that sounds similar to your issue:

* [JSDSERVER-4233](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDSERVER-4233)

If you can confirm your Jira and Confluence users are using the same userbase, can you try the workarounds that are listed there and see if it helps the situation?

Regards,

Shannon


author: Joseph Isom
body: Hello again [@Shannon S](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/510046),

I have discovered what my apparent issue is. I had the application link established with Oauth but not with Oauth (impersonation).

Once I deleted and recreated the links with impersonation, it works.

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate the responses.

Cheers,  
Joseph


author: Shannon S
body: You're welcome, Joseph! Glad I could help you in any way that I did. :)

Take care, and have a pleasant week.

Shannon


Tags: jira-service-desk