Connecting to Confluence as a knowledge source for employee service AI agents (EAP)

For employee service (ES) AI agents, you can connect Confluence as a knowledge source. First, an Atlassian admin must install the Zendesk Knowledge app, then a Knowledge admin can create individual connections of allowed content for ES AI agents.


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Employee Service Suite

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Summary: ◀▼
You can connect Confluence as a knowledge source for employee service AI agents by installing the Zendesk Knowledge app and setting up connections with appropriate permissions. This allows syncing of pages, attachments, and blogs while enforcing user-level access controls. Choose between restricted access or open connections to control content visibility based on user permissions, ensuring sensitive information is protected.






Location: Admin Center > AI > AI agents > Sources


For employee service (ES) AI agents, you can connect Confluence as a knowledge source. First,
an Atlassian admin must install the Zendesk Knowledge app, then a Knowledge admin can create
individual connections of allowed content for ES AI agents.
The connection allows pages, page attachments, or blogs.
This article contains the following topics:

Understanding how Confluence permissions work
within employee service AI agents
Installing the Zendesk Knowledge app for
Confluence
Creating individual connections
to allowed Confluence content

Related article:
Creating, deploying and editing employee service AI agents
(EAP)




Understanding how Confluence permissions work within employee service (ES) AI agents

It is important to understand how permissions are managed in Confluence, and ensure that
permissions are carefully managed at the Confluence space and page level, to ensure
information is only viewable by the intended audience.
When connecting Confluence spaces to ES AI agents, make sure you understand the intended
audience for the information, and ensure that you have applied the appropriate permissions
directly within the spaces. Best practice is to ensure the permissions model applied in the
space matches the permissions type (either restricted access or open to everyone) being
applied when the connection is made.
If the connection is open to everyone, but the space has restricted access, the ES AI agent
will still surface the relevant information in its response, based on the viewing
permissions of the admin who created the connection. However, if a user does not have
viewing permissions on the source, they will be denied access when they try to access it.
This means that sensitive information could inadvertently be exposed to users in your
company, based on how the connection is set up.
It’s a good idea to always use a restricted access connection, combined with resource-level
permissions (RLP), that enforces permissions at the file level by checking the user's
permissions before displaying the information. Access to the space still needs to be granted
to the connecting user (ideally a service account), but what is exposed to the end user is
not inheriting that account's permissions.



Installing the Zendesk Knowledge app for Confluence

The first step in adding Confluence as a knowledge source for an ES AI agent is for an
Atlassian admin to connect to the Zendesk Knowledge app. You can do so by setting up a
resource-level permissions (RLP) connection. Alternatively, you might consider using SSO
(see Details for connecting to the Confluence
app using SSO).
Resource-level permissions (RLP) in Confluence ensure that shared links adhere to the
permissions set within Confluence at the space and page level. The process requires an
Atlassian admin to install the Zendesk Knowledge app from the Atlassian Marketplace and
activate the REST API. The app allows Zendesk to index and synchronize users and groups,
enabling permission enforcement. Then a Knowledge admin creates the connection to
content.

To install the Zendesk Knowledge app for permission-based links in Confluence
Find the <a class="xref" href="https://developer.atlassian.com/console/install/929fb560-88c0-4b53-9f6f-94269b0f8d59?signature=AYABeAuQre%2Bhfk2CWCvCPKITtbQAAAADAAdhd3Mta21zAEthcm46YXdzOmttczp1cy13ZXN0LTI6NzA5NTg3ODM1MjQzOmtleS83MDVlZDY3MC1mNTdjLTQxYjUtOWY5Yi1lM2YyZGNjMTQ2ZTcAuAECAQB4IOp8r3eKNYw8z2v%2FEq3%2FfvrZguoGsXpNSaDveR%2FF%2Fo0BtM8w97RsTS%2BnHn34%2FynDMAAAAH4wfAYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoG8wbQIBADBoBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDNFhq1p9ZlV10nq8JgIBEIA7Aa9sU7%2FldhnCRLlBssUqpGA0w9JaZZsNDtX964kIdBF8QOtgqX%2B8mpNxsQPm5%2BQ1KmlyeHnzBhJWBMMAB2F3cy1rbXMAS2Fybjphd3M6a21zOmV1LXdlc3QtMTo3MDk1ODc4MzUyNDM6a2V5LzQ2MzBjZTZiLTAwYzMtNGRlMi04NzdiLTYyN2UyMDYwZTVjYwC4AQICAHijmwVTMt6Oj3F%2B0%2B0cVrojrS8yZ9ktpdfDxqPMSIkvHAF8urvstOlD7jHjm97SynN1AAAAfjB8BgkqhkiG9w0BBwagbzBtAgEAMGgGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQM6wUDTlHP6eQ%2FmxLTAgEQgDuEd1sz%2F3fl5m4d3WK5sGndHxHQeaIvKxhrFiY4ugCYZsvqiGyW0q4hff4%2FFfXkEHOnSuiopB22O6xzgAAHYXdzLWttcwBLYXJuOmF3czprbXM6dXMtZWFzdC0xOjcwOTU4NzgzNTI0MzprZXkvNmMxMjBiYTAtNGNkNS00OTg1LWI4MmUtNDBhMDQ5NTJjYzU3ALgBAgIAeLKa7Dfn9BgbXaQmJGrkKztjV4vrreTkqr7wGwhqIYs5AVO6vpnudN2lzhvRnxb3M5EAAAB%2BMHwGCSqGSIb3DQEHBqBvMG0CAQAwaAYJKoZIhvcNAQcBMB4GCWCGSAFlAwQBLjARBAzK9VSiD5W2pUOTfpwCARCAO2Jxywm2d5Iu5MNUuYZ5pqqcTiWiZsDvwA5WtO1VSNCX9VaAczz321kTasbM7rJkGBzziBAHmawn%2FPluAgAAAAAMAAAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALcDQVUu7JHwv%2BfXJXM2N2f%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FAAAAAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQAAADKuTObfwIjj19QRh%2FsnIAtsQ87%2F3J%2BywA%2BGU%2Fp7N0Oqo1kl%2Bo%2B2k5QjGP9vayNonrlh0FeurlT4zY8IQYKoYmmhAfw%3D&product=confluence" target="_blank">Zendesk Knowledge app on Atlassian Marketplace,
then click Get app.
Select the Confluence site where you are installing the app, then click
Install. This should be your company's Confluence domain URL.

Sign in to your Confluence workspace. If you're already signed in and have multiple
workspaces, make sure you're signed in to the correct account for the intended
workspace.




To activate the REST API
In Confluence, select Administration > Site settings > Connected
apps.
For the Zendesk Knowledge App, select View app details.
In the App Rest APIs section, select Enable app REST APIs.


Now a Knowledge admin can create
the connection to Confluence.


Details for connecting to the Confluence app using SSO

As an alternative to setting up a resource-level permissions connection, you can use an
OAuth2 SSO for an open to everyone connection. The SSO connection allows for permission
granularity. However, periodic refreshing might be required according to the Atlassian
token policy.
The SSO connection uses the connecting user's credentials and requests specific read
scopes as part of the setup process. The read scopes are:
read:me offline_access report:personal-data
read:space:confluence
read:content.property:confluence
read:content:confluence
read:content-details:confluence
read:custom-content:confluence
read:attachment:confluence


For a full list of scopes and descriptions, see Confluence scopes for OAuth 2.0 (3LO) and Forge
apps in the Atlassian documentation.




Creating individual connections to allowed Confluence content

Once an Atlassian admin has installed the
Zendesk Confluence app, an admin can create individual connections for allowed
content, each with a subset of your company's total spaces. Alternatively, you can connect
all the required spaces under a single connection.
To connect to Confluence content


In Admin Center, click
AI in the sidebar, then select AI agents > Sources.
Click Add source.
Enter a unique connection name.
Select a user access type:

Restricted access: This connection enforces user permissions. This means
that when users ask questions, they see only information from the connected source
that they already have access to.

Open to everyone: This connection does not enforce user-level permissions
for the connected source. Users see all content available through that connected
source. If a user clicks on a source, but doesn’t have permission, access is
denied.

See Understanding knowledge source permissions in
employee service AI agents. If you create an open to everyone connection,
skip the step to install the Zendesk Confluence app and activate the REST API
.

Click Next.
Ensure that an Atlassian admin has installed the Zendesk Confluence app and activated
the REST API (see Installing the Zendesk Knowledge app for Confluence, then click
Next.
To authorize the connection, select a Confluence site to connect to, then click
Accept.
Select the site to pull data from, then click Next.
Select the space or spaces you want synced for the connection, then click
Next.
Select the types you want synced for the connection, then click Next.
Select a date range, then click Done. The initial connection sync begins. It
might take some time to sync all pages and attachments from the selected spaces,
depending on the volume of content. After the initial sync, the integration captures
file updates every 15 minutes.
At this point, you can add the knowledge source
to one or more AI agents by clicking Add to AI agent. Or, you can wait to
create and deploy an ES AI agent with this knowledge source at a later time (see Creating, deploying and editing employee service AI agents
(EAP)).





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