Connecting Confluence Cloud

Confluence Cloud is a team workspace, where knowledge and collaboration meet. Often used as an organizational wiki and intranet, it usually houses valuable information for staff across multiple areas of businesses, large and small. The Confluence Cloud connector provided with Workplace Search automatically captures, syncs and indexes the following items:

(If your deployment is not syncing as expected, see Known issues.)

Confluence Cloud may require 48 hours to sync new and changed documents to your Workplace Search deployment.

The issue affects Confluence Cloud accounts in particular timezones. Affected accounts do not expose changes to Workplace Search during more frequent syncs.

The delay is caused by an issue in the Confluence Cloud API. Atlassian, the developer of Confluence Cloud, is aware of the issue.

Configuring the Confluence Cloud connector is the first step prior to connecting the Confluence Cloud service to Workplace Search, and requires that you create an OAuth App from the Confluence Cloud platform. To get started, first log in to Atlassian’s Developer Portal:

Step 1. Click Create new app:

Figure 23. Connecting Confluence

Step 2. Provide a name and agree to the terms:

Figure 24. Connecting Confluence

Step 3. Add a description and image, and Save changes.

Step 4. You can retrieve the application’s Client ID and Client Secret. Keep them handy, we’ll need these in just a few seconds.

Step 5. We must now create API access and set the right permission level. In the sidebar, locate OAuth 2.0 (3LO):

Figure 25. Connecting Confluence

Step 6. Use the Callback URL form to add the following two callback URLs, substituting <WS_BASE_URL> with the base URL at which Workplace Search is hosted (scheme + host, no path).

<WS_BASE_URL>/ws/org/sources/confluence_cloud/create
<WS_BASE_URL>/ws/sources/confluence_cloud/create

Examples:

# Deployment using a custom domain name
https://www.example.com/ws/org/sources/confluence_cloud/create
https://www.example.com/ws/sources/confluence_cloud/create

# Deployment using a default Elastic Cloud domain name
https://c3397e558e404195a982cb68e84fbb42.ent-search.us-east-1.aws.found.io/ws/org/sources/confluence_cloud/create
https://c3397e558e404195a982cb68e84fbb42.ent-search.us-east-1.aws.found.io/ws/sources/confluence_cloud/create

# Unsecured local development environment
http://localhost:3002/ws/org/sources/confluence_cloud/create
http://localhost:3002/ws/sources/confluence_cloud/create

Figure 26. Connecting Confluence

Step 7. A prompt appears. Click the Add APIs hyperlink:

Figure 27. Connecting Confluence

Step 8. Find Confluence API and select Add:

Figure 28. Connecting Confluence

Step 9. We must enable a series of permissions. Add the following and save:

Step 10. From the Workplace Search administrative dashboard’s Sources area, locate Confluence and provide both the Client ID and Client Secret, as well as your Confluence instance Base URL. Do not include a trailing slash:

https://example.atlassian.net

Voilà! The Confluence Cloud connector is now configured, and ready to be used to synchronize content. In order to capture data, you must now connect a Confluence Cloud instance with the adequate authentication credentials.

Once the Confluence Cloud connector has been configured, you may connect a Confluence Cloud instance to your organization.

Step 1. Head to your organization’s Workplace Search administrative dashboard, and locate the Sources tab.

Step 2. Click Add a new source.

Step 3. Select Confluence Cloud in the Configured Sources list, and follow the Confluence Cloud authentication flow as presented.

Step 4. Upon the successful authentication flow, you will be redirected to Workplace Search.

Confluence Cloud content will now be captured and will be ready for search gradually as it is synced. Once successfully configured and connected, the Confluence Cloud synchronization automatically occurs every 2 hours.

(If your deployment is not syncing as expected, see Known issues.)