In any workplace, synergy between business and technical teams is crucial for success. In the Atlassian world, we find that business teams usually rely heavily on Confluence for collaboration and knowledge management,. While technical teams favor the Jira suite for project tracking and management.
In a previous articles, we’ve shared insights on optimizing Confluence and Jira usage. We covered how non-techy teams can use Jira, how to foster collaboration in Confluence, and more. However, without a bridge between these platforms, valuable information can be lost.
In this article we want to explore how organizations can bridge the gap between Confluence and Jira to ensure collaboration across all teams?
Why use Jira and Confluence together?
Before we delve into the specific of Confluence and Jira integration. Let’s highlight the benefits this integration brings to your teams and organization as a whole.
Facilitate access to information
Confluence serves as the organization’s knowledge hub, while Jira is the project management hub. Together, both tools ensure all team members can easily access relevant information.
Navigating your suite of tools eliminates the need to shift between shared drives, search slack messages, and worse go into unnecessary calls. This can help your teams save time, avoid confusion, and stay updated on key information.
Highlight teams’ alignment and project tracking
Keeping every team member aligned and focused on tasks is essential for effective project management. And, aligning tasks and goals becomes more streamlined when Jira issues are directly linked to Confluence pages. This integration allows teams to maintain a cohesive view of project progress, objectives, and dependencies in real-time.
For instance, when a new feature is proposed in a Confluence page, teams can seamlessly create a corresponding Jira issue to track its development progress. Likewise, updates made to Jira issues are automatically reflected in linked Confluence pages, ensuring that everyone stays informed and aligned in real-time.
Enhance team collaboration and productivity
Integrating Jira and Confluence fosters collaboration by enabling seamless sharing of information and updates between teams.
For example, team members can embed Confluence pages directly within Jira projects to provide context and detailed information for tasks and issues.
This eliminates the need for constant context-switching between platforms and promotes a more cohesive workflow.
By creating Jira issues directly from Confluence content, teams can initiate actions and track progress without disruption. Thus, enhancing team collaboration and efficiency.
How to use Jira and Confluence together
Now that we went through some of the benefits, let’s explore how to get the most out of Jira and Confluence to maximize productivity and collaboration.
Connect your Jira and Confluence to streamline access to information:
The first step in harnessing the power of Jira and Confluence integration is to establish a seamless connection between the two platforms. By linking your Jira and Confluence sites, you can ensure that updates made in one platform are reflected in the other, promoting consistency.
To connect a Confluence space to a Jira project, follow these steps:
- Navigate to the Project pages in the Jira left-hand sidebar.
- Click on “Connect to Confluence.”
- Search for the Confluence space you want to connect.
- Once connected, you can view, create, and edit pages from within Jira seamlessly.
Adding shortcuts to resources within each platform is yet another way to enhance your user experience and productivity. With shortcuts, you enable your team members to quickly access essential resources without navigating through multiple menus or interfaces.
To learn more on how to add a Confluence or Jira shortcut, you can read this Atlassian guide.
Create Jira issues from Confluence
Simplify your workflow by creating Jira issues directly from Confluence content. Whether you’re reviewing documentation or collaborating on Confluence, you can effortlessly highlight relevant text and create a Jira issue without disrupting your workflow. This feature enhances efficiency and ensures seamless task tracking across platforms.
To create a Jira issue in Confluence, browse for the “Create a Jira Issue” macro and insert it within your content.
Specify the Jira project, issue type, issue status. You can also provide more information for your team by adding a description and attachments, specifying linked issues, setting issue priority and adding labels for clarity and easy tracking.
Moreover, there is an easier way to create Jira issues directly from your Confluence page view mode. You can highlight text in your Confluence page, a box will pop up with multiple formatting options, Click “+ Create Issue”.
You can configure the issue by selecting the Jira project, issue type, and adding a description to provide more context for teams working in the Jira project.
Structure and access your jira issues from Confluence
Once connected, it’s essential to structure your content and projects in a way that promotes effective knowledge sharing.
Start by displaying your Jira Project issues within your Confluence content to facilitate seamless information exchange between platforms.
You can ensure that relevant documentation, meeting notes, and updates are easily accessible to all teams from product, software to marketing and finance teams.
You can use the Jira Issues macro in Confluence to display issues from your Jira Cloud project. To do so, simply type “/Jira Issue” or browse for the macro. You can search for a specific issue in the search bar with keywords. Or you can also filter the issues to display by jira project, issue type, status, or assignee. You can also choose your display option in table format or inline link.
Suppose you are in the process of migrating your tools to Atlassian Cloud. Confluence provides a macro that allows you to display both Jira Cloud or Server issues. This way, you don’t miss any important information during your migration journey. The Jira Legacy macro is basically a parent macro that combines Server Jira Issue/Filter and Jira Charts macros.
To insert jira issues from your jira Server project or to create Jira Charts based on Jira Server issues. Type”/Jira Legacy”.
Now, Select which macro you want to insert, and configure macro parameters. If you are using the “Jira Issue/Filter” macro, you can search, create a new issue, or display recently viewed issues in your page.
You are now on a fast track to fostering collaboration and empowering your teams to make decisions based on up-to-date information.
Manage your sprints for enhanced productivity:
Efficient sprint planning and execution are crucial for any project success. Confluence provides a centralized space to allocate all important resources to consider during your sprint, from requirement documents, customer research, technical specifications, and more.
However, oftentimes software teams dive deep into their work in Jira and find it challenging to shift between their Jira tasks and Confluence content.
By creating a sprint planning page in Jira Software using Confluence’s Meeting notes template, teams can establish a centralized hub for sprint discussions. They can associate Confluence pages containing critical data, such as requirements and designs, directly with Jira epics.
For instance, Confluence provides a macro called “Jira timeline”. Search for Jira Timeline in Macros Browser or simply type “/Jira Timeline” in your page content. Paste a Jira Instance URL, select your Project. Then select the Board View you want to display in your confluence page, and click “Save”.
With this feature in place, teams can follow up on any sprint project and track progress easily during discussions without the need to navigate to the jira project and tackle different board views.
This swift access to resources within these two complementary tools ensures effective collaboration and task execution.
Set up your reporting across your tools
In addition to facilitating knowledge sharing, integrating Jira and Confluence enables comprehensive reporting and analysis.
By using the Jira issues macros in Confluence pages and leveraging Confluence’s reporting capabilities, you allow teams to gain valuable insights into project status and performance.
For instance, You can create a Jira chart within Confluence to provide valuable information and context.
To do so, select “Jira Chart” from the Confluence macro browser or insert the “Jira Legacy” macro and select “Jira Charts”. Select the chart template to use from the list displayed on the left-side menu of the macro dialog. You can use Jira filters or the Jira Query Language (JQL) to pull in the issues that you want to display on the chart.
And you can also configure your chart display options before saving the macro.
Another feature that allows your teams to visualize Jira Project information is the Jira Report Blueprint. It makes reporting on information stored in Jira within your Confluence space simple and effective.
Simply create a new page and search “Jira Report” in the default templates.
Click on “Jira Report”, a list of report templates will appear for you to choose from. Select your template.
Now you can configure your template by specifying the jira project you want to work on ,and setting up your report page name.
Your report will be generated, you can now customize your report page as you see fit.
These custom reports and dashboards created using Jira data embedded within Confluence can provide actionable insights into your project performance trends, resource allocation, and potential bottlenecks. Thus, empowering your teams to make informed decisions and drive continuous improvement.
For instance, teams can also conduct sprint retrospectives using the Confluence native Retrospective template, reflecting on successes, challenges, and areas for improvement to foster continuous enhancement within the team.
Insert project pages from Confluence
We’ve covered how teams can create issues directly from Confluence. Vice Versa, teams can also insert Confluence pages into their Jira projects for detailed information.
Navigate to your Jira Project, and then select Project pages from the side bar menu. Click”Connect to Confluence” and select the confluence space you want to link.
Now, your team can easily view Confluence space content within their Jira Project.
Now, you can add Confluence Pages to a Jira Issue to provide more information for your team while working on the issue. Navigate to an issue in your Jira Project and click “Link Confluence Page”
Now, Select Confluence space, and search for Confluence pages you want to link to the issues. When you are done, click the “Link” button, and there you have it, when your team now accesses this issue, they can view the pages linked to it and preview their content directly from their jira project.
You can also copy and paste a Confluence page URL into an issue description, where a Smart Link automatically appears, revealing crucial context about the page directly within the Jira issue. You can then customize the viewable context by clicking the Smart Link and selecting from options like Inline, Card, or Embed.
By adding Confluence pages directly to Jira issues, you can give important context to tasks and issues. This feature allows your software teams to easily locate relevant documents associated with the issue, further enhancing collaboration and ensuring seamless information exchange between Jira and Confluence.
Showcase articles inside Jira Service Management
While connecting Jira and Confluence is essential for centralized knowledge sharing among software teams, it’s equally crucial for support teams within Jira Service Management (JSM). These teams rely on JSM projects to efficiently manage support requests and tickets. However, valuable information often resides within the Confluence content hub.
One powerful feature that elevates the capabilities of your support team is the ability to embed articles from Confluence directly into their knowledge base in JSM. By doing so, support agents can enrich their knowledge base with comprehensive articles and useful information, enhancing their ability to address customer queries effectively.
To do so, navigate to your JSM project, then “Knowledge Base”, click on “Knowledge Base Settings”.
Click “Link Space” on the far right, select which Confluence space you want to link to your JSM project, and “Save”.
You can configure who can view or edit articles embedded from the linked Confluence space. To allow users to publicly view articles from this Confluence space through the support portal, first check if you enabled global anonymous access in your space. Then, select “Anyone” in the drop-down list for who can view your JSM Knowledge Base articles.
This functionality enables users to search for solutions to their issues independently. By typing a support request or searching in the support portal, users can come across relevant articles that provide valuable insights or answers to their questions. Ultimately it enhances the users’ experience and empowers them to resolve issues more efficiently.
By integrating these tools, Atlassian is offering an all-in-one solution tailored to meet the diverse needs of teams across organizations. With seamless communication, enhanced collaboration, and centralized knowledge sharing as just some of the few benefits that result from connecting these platforms. The above features are just a glimpse of the practices teams can embrace to fully leverage the Atlassian suite, fostering productivity and efficiency across their workplace.
