We're updating our terminology in Jira

'Issue' is changing to 'work item'. You might notice some inconsistencies while this big change takes place.

Use Jira and Confluence together

Confluence and Jira products are like bacon and eggs; coffee and cake; Simon and Garfunkel. Separately, they're great, but together, they're amazing! If you have both a Confluence and Jira product in your Cloud site, you can seamlessly track project updates across both tools and create Jira work items without leaving the Confluence page you're working on.

What you can do with Confluence and Jira depends on the type of Jira product have in your Cloud site. Find out about the types of features you can use with each Jira product at the bottom of this article.

For every project or team

Display work items on a page

To display Jira work items on a Confluence page, use the Jira work items macro. Display a single work item, a list of work items, or show the total number of work items.

The simplest way to add a Jira work item to Confluence is to paste a Jira URL on a Confluence page.

Here's some examples...

  • <yourjirasite.com>/browse/CONF-1234 will insert the Jira work items macro and display a single work item.

  • <yourjirasite.com>/issues/?filter=56789 will insert the Jira work items macro and display a list of work items matching the saved filter. 

  • <yourjirasite.com>/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20CONF  will insert the Jira work items macro and display a list of work items matching the Jira search. 

Alternatively, you can add the Jira work items macro to the page and search for work items directly:

  1. In the editor choose Insert > Jira work item

  2. Follow the prompts in the macro browser to choose a project and search for a work item—you can even use Jira Query Language (JQL)

Once you've added the macro, you can customize how the work item or list of work items appears on the page, including how much information to display, how many work items, and more.

Create reports and charts

Reporting on information stored in Jira is simple in Confluence. In addition to the Jira work items macro, you can use the Jira Report blueprint or Jira Chart macro to show information from your Jira products visually. It's the best way to give your stakeholders a snapshot of your team or project's progress. 

You can:

  • Use the Jira Report blueprint to create a Change Log or Status report

  • Use the Jira Chart Macro to display data as a chart, including pie charts, created vs resolved, and two dimensional charts

  • Use Jira Gadgets to display detailed Jira reports and charts on pages

Create work items from inside Confluence

You can create work items while viewing a page or from the editor, letting you use Confluence for planning and gathering requirements. You can create a single work item from highlighted text, create multiple work items from a table, or use Atlassian Intelligence (AI) to generate work items for you, either one at a time or by scanning your page and drafting multiple work items at once.

Atlassian Intelligence (AI) uses Confluence data to create Jira work items by generating the summary and description. However, the experience itself lives in Confluence.

Atlassian Intelligence is available and automatically activated for all products on Premium and Enterprise plans. Organization admins can manage Atlassian Intelligence preferences from Settings > Atlassian Intelligence in Atlassian Administration.

Atlassian Intelligence isn’t available for Atlassian Government products.

Create work items when viewing a page

To create a single work item from a Confluence page, as a customer with the Free or Standard plan:

  1. Highlight text on your page. The floating toolbar appears.

  2. Select the + Jira work item dropdown.

  3. Select Create single work item.

  4. The Create Jira work item side panel opens on the right.

  5. Complete your Jira fields and select Create.

The work item will be created in Jira and added to your page. 

To create a single work item using Atlassian Intelligence:

The quality, accuracy, and reliability of information generated by Atlassian Intelligence may vary. Learn why

If your organization is on a Premium or Enterprise plan and if Atlassian Intelligence is activated for Confluence, you can use Atlassian Intelligence to generate a Jira work item from highlighted text that will also use context from the rest of the page.

  1. Highlight text on your page. The floating toolbar appears.

  2. Select the + Jira work item button.

  3. The Create Jira work item side panel opens on the right with the generated Jira work item.

    1. If you don’t want to use Atlassian Intelligence, toggle off Use AI to generate summary and description. This will reload the work item and only use the highlighted text to populate the Jira work item summary field. Any additional work items created from the highlighted text will not use Atlassian Intelligence.

  4. Complete your Jira fields and select Create.

The work item will be created in Jira and added to your page. 

To create multiple work items from a table:

  1. Highlight text in a table on your page. The floating toolbar appears.

  2. Select the + Jira work item dropdown.

  3. Select Multiple work item.

  4. The Create multiple work items modal opens.

  5. Select Create.

The work items will be created in Jira and added to the table on your page. 

To generate multiple work items from a page using Atlassian Intelligence:

The quality, accuracy, and reliability of information generated by Atlassian Intelligence may vary. Learn why

  1. Select the AI button on the bottom right of the page, then select + Create Jira work items. Confluence will generate a list of work items for you in the right side panel.

  2. Hover over a work item and select the pencil icon to review the summary and description for accuracy, make any necessary changes, and add additional information as needed.

  3. Select Create to save your changes and create the work item in Jira or Cancel to discard changes.

  4. To remove a work item from the list, hover over the work item and select the X.

The work items will be created in Jira and added to your page. 

Create work items in the editor

To create a single work item:

  1. In the editor choose Insert > Jira work item > Create new work item

  2. Enter your server (if you have multiple Jira instances connected to Confluence), projectwork type, summary, and description.

  3. Select Insert.

The work item will be created in Jira and added to your page.

There are some limitations when creating Jira work items from Confluence. The Jira work items macro or Create Jira work item dialog will notify you if it's unable to create a work item in the selected project. You can find out more in the Jira work items macro page.

Move between Jira and Confluence

Whenever you add a link to Jira work items in Confluence, or link to a Confluence page from your Jira products, the Jira Links button appears at the top of the Confluence page. This means you can quickly jump from Confluence to Jira and vice versa, speeding up your workflow.

The number on the Jira Links button indicates the total number of work items and sprints connected to that page, regardless of whether you have permission to view them. The dropdown, however, will only show details of work items and sprints that you have Jira permissions to view.

The button doesn't detect links from work items displayed in the Jira work items macro in table format.

For software teams

Here are some suggestions to help you get the most out of Confluence and Jira, and unleash the potential in your agile development team. 

Define your requirements

Confluence is the perfect place to start defining your requirements. You can use the Product requirements template to capture your requirements, then create your Jira epic and other work items right from the requirements page in Confluence.

Here's how it works:

  1. Create a Confluence page using the Product requirements template.

  2. Choose the placeholder text 'Link to Jira epic or feature' and choose Create new work item to create your epic in Jira.

  3. Collaborate with your team to define your stories and save the page.

  4. Highlight text on your requirements page and choose the Create Jira work item link to create stories in Jira, and automatically link them to your epic.

  5. Track the progress of the stories from the Confluence page or from within Jira.

The tight integration between Confluence and Jira means you can easily access work items from the Confluence page and see their status at a glance, and from within Jira you can see links to related Confluence pages. All the information you need is right there.

Manage your sprints 

There's often a lot of material in Confluence that provides useful context for your team during a sprint. These might be requirements documents, designs, tech specs, customer research and more. By linking these pages to epics, you make them easy for your team to find during the sprint. 

Here's how you can use Confluence to support your sprint from within Jira Agile:

  • In Jira, create a Confluence page to plan your sprint. The page is created using the Meeting notes template and is automatically linked to the sprint.

  • In an epic, link to useful Confluence pages, including requirements, designs, and more.

  • Report on your progress to stakeholders using the Jira Report blueprint in Confluence.

  • Use the Retrospective template in Confluence at the end of your sprint to take stock of what went well and not so well.

For people who work mostly in Jira, the integration means that useful Confluence pages are only a click away.

Share your roadmap

If you're using a team-managed Jira Cloud project, you can project's roadmap to a Confluence page. See Jira Roadmap Macro to learn more.

For service teams

Provide self help resources for your customers

If you use Jira Service Management, you can help your customers resolve their work items without creating a request by connecting your service management project to a knowledge base in Confluence. 

In Jira Service Management, head to Administration > Confluence KB  (or Settings > Knowledge Base if you're using Jira Service Management Server 2.x or earlier) to connect or create a Confluence space. 

When Jira Service Management customers search in the customer portal, pages in the linked knowledge base space will be suggested, allowing customers to help themselves. 

Create knowledge base articles

The Knowledge Base space blueprint, along with templates for how-to and troubleshooting articles make creating new knowledge base articles super simple for your Jira Service Management agents. 

The templates used in the how-to and troubleshooting blueprints are completely customizable too. Set up the template with all your standard information and let your agents take it from there. 

Allow any active user to see knowledge base spaces

If your Confluence instance is not public, you can still make a knowledge base space available via the customer portal. 

When you link your Jira Service Management project to a Confluence space, you can choose to allow all active users and customers to see pages in the linked space, even if they don't have a Confluence license.  These people get very limited Confluence access. 

Unlicensed users can:

  • View pages via the Jira Service Management customer portal.

  • Follow a URL to a page and then navigate within the linked space.

Unlicensed users can't:

  • Like, comment on or edit pages (or be granted permission to do this).

  • See the dashboard, user profiles, the people directory or space directory.

  • Search the whole Confluence instance.

This permission can only be enabled via Jira Service Management, but you can revoke access to the whole instance or to particular spaces via Confluence's global permissions or space permissions. 

Allowing all active users and customers to view a space will override all existing space permissions, so any logged in, licensed Confluence user will also be able to see the space (regardless of their group membership). This is due to the way Confluence inherits permissions.

Jira product features

As you've seen, Confluence has many integration points, some of which are only available in particular Jira products. Check out the features you can access depending on what type of Jira product you connect to Confluence Cloud: 

Feature

Jira business projects

Jira software projects

Jira Service Management

Display work items using Jira work items macro

Display work item and project information using Jira chart macro

Display work item and project information using the Jira Report blueprint

Create a work item from Jira work items macro

Create work items by highlighting text on a Confluence page

Create work items by highlighting text on a Confluence page and automatically link work items to an epic

Link and create Confluence pages from work items and sprints

 

View linked work items with the Jira links button in Confluence

Create a space using the Software Project space blueprint

Use a Confluence space as a knowledge base in the customer portal

Allow Jira Service Management customers to view knowledge base articles without a Confluence license

Search for an existing Confluence page within the Jira link dialog

 

 

Delegate user management to Jira

Add a Jira gadget to a Confluence page

 

Still need help?

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