Jira Service Management Knowledge Base Pricing & Licensing

A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic. It can include FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and any other details you may want or need to know.

A knowledge base enables you to create, curate, share, utilize, and manage knowledge across your teams and customers. It can help teams across your entire organization leverage the intellectual capital and assets that are already available.

A knowledge base benefits your teams and customers by:

• Documenting answers to frequently asked questions to save agents' time
• Empowering customers to help themselves by searching for resolutions in the help center
• Gathering customer feedback to lead to more relevant and helpful article updates
• Helping agents solve requests faster by sharing articles with customers or referencing articles while they work
• Encouraging agents to create new articles if a request requires a new resolution.
• Standardizing answers to customer questions instead of offering multiple responses from different sources.

An out-of-the-box knowledge base in Jira Service Management means users have the ability to create, read, update, and delete knowledge articles directly within Jira Service Management.

Previously, Jira Service Management customers needed to purchase Confluence in order to get knowledge management capabilities. Now, Jira Service Management comes with an out-of-the-box knowledge base that allows users to create, read, update, and delete knowledge articles directly within Jira Service Management without requiring the purchase of Confluence.

Jira Service Management now offers core knowledge management features, enabling users to create, view, edit, delete, and publish articles directly within Jira Service Management. Customers also have the following features depending on which Confluence plan they add to their Jira Service Management site:

• Audit logs (Standard, Premium)
• Data residency (Standard, Premium)
• IP allowlisting (Premium)

Advanced features that are only available in Confluence include:

• Page and space permissions
• Advanced analytics
• Team calendars

Jira Service Management’s out-of-the-box knowledge base is powered by Confluence and gives you the ability to create, read, update, and delete knowledge articles directly within Jira Service Management.

Because this capability is powered by Confluence, you will need to add a Confluence plan to your Jira Service Management site to unlock knowledge base capabilities. No purchase of Confluence is required to use your Jira Service Management knowledge base.

If you already have Confluence, you can create a new knowledge base space or link an existing space to your service project in Jira Service Management.

View the guide here

There is no cost to use out-of-the-box knowledge base capabilities in Jira Service Management. Agents can create, edit, and delete knowledge base articles in Jira Service Management, without paying for a Confluence license.

The out-of-the-box knowledge base is powered by Confluence which means a site-admin or org-admin will need to manually add Confluence to your site in order to use the knowledge base inside Jira Service Management.

Note:

• Users who are granted product access to Confluence outside of Jira Service Management to access additional knowledge base capabilities will be charged based on the Confluence plan and user tier that is chosen to power their knowledge base.

All Jira Service Management users can CRUD articles without paying for a Confluence plan.

Jira Service Management will continue to have the same reporting capabilities that were previously available in the Confluence knowledge base such as:

• Requests deflected: shows how many times customers viewed knowledge base articles and how many said that an article helped solve their problems. 
• Requests resolved: compares the number of customers that were self-served through knowledge base articles and the number that ended up creating a request.

Learn more here.

We have many exciting new knowledge management features planned, some of which will be available in select editions of Jira Service Management. Some features to look out for include:

• Real time collaboration with non-Jira Service management users in Confluence
• In-line comments
• Page comments
• Lifecycle management and better analytics
• Ease of creation from issue view
• Granular permission control
• Confluence templates

Please refer to this public roadmap for the most up-to-date timeline.

No, Jira Service Management users need a Confluence license if they want direct access to Confluence. Jira Service Management users can only create, read, update, and delete knowledge base articles directly in Confluence if they have a Confluence license.

You will not need to migrate your data from Confluence to Jira Service Management. You can link your Confluence spaces to your Jira Service Management project and all the drafts and published pages from those spaces will appear in the Jira Service Management knowledge base.

This improvement to Jira Service Management’s knowledge base builds on top of the existing integration with Confluence for an open approach to knowledge management. The out-of-the-box knowledge base in Jira Service Management helps teams:

• Expedite self-service: Surface relevant articles where and when they’re needed so your customers and employees can get help quickly.
• Promote continuous improvement: Document changes, incident runbooks, and playbooks so your team can continuously learn and improve.
• Discover knowledge insights: Monitor knowledge usage to identify content gaps, optimize articles, and see which articles deflect the most requests.
• Federate your knowledge base: Return search results from service desks, request types, and knowledge base articles throughout your site.
• Use rich editing and formatting: Manage content using the powerful Confluence editor and its macros without leaving Jira Service Management.

Out-of-the-box knowledge base capabilities will not be available in Jira Service Management Data Center. You will need to purchase a separate Confluence license to build a knowledge base in Jira Service Management Data Center.

You can link a Confluence Server/Data Center space to Jira Service Management Cloud projects. Learn more.

You can also link a Confluence Cloud space to a Jira Service Management Data Center project. Learn more.

You do not need to purchase a Confluence license for users who only need to create, read, update, and delete articles in the Jira Service Management knowledge base.

You do need a Confluence license if you want direct Confluence product access or want to explore Confluence capabilities outside of Jira Service Management’s knowledge base.

Only site-admins or org-admins can turn knowledge base on.

Licensed agents in Jira Service Management can create, read, update, and delete knowledge from within Jira Service Management without purchasing a Confluence product.

Core out-of-the-box knowledge base capabilities in Jira Service Management will be the same across cloud plans once a Confluence product is added to your site.

• Both Confluence Standard and Premium plans will have data residency and audit logs.
• Only Confluence Premium will have IP allowlisting.

Out-of-the-box knowledge base capabilities will be available in each edition of Jira Service Management starting in March 2022 and will roll out across all instances over the coming weeks. As more advanced features are developed, they will be released into select Jira Service Management Cloud plans.

We are not offering credit. If you are on a monthly plan of Confluence and you want to keep the ability for users in Jira Service Management to create, read, update, and delete knowledge articles, you should remove all users from your Confluence license (0 Confluence users = $0).

If you need any additional knowledge base functionalities or the ability for users to access Confluence directly, you will want to keep your license.

If you have an annual subscription, please reach out to support.

We are not offering credit. If you are on a monthly plan of Confluence and you only want to keep the ability for users in Jira Service Management to create, read, update, and delete knowledge articles, we recommend canceling your monthly subscription to Confluence.

If you need any additional functionality or the ability for users to access Confluence directly, you will want to keep your license.

If you have an annual subscription, please reach out to support.