Q&A in Confluence Cloud: your options

Questions for Confluence, Atlassian's own app

Questions for Confluence is Atlassian's Q&A app for Confluence. Atlassian's documentation explains how to install it from the Atlassian Marketplace and how to get started. If your team already uses it and it works for you, there is no reason to change.

A page with comments

The simplest option needs nothing extra: an FAQ page for a team or space, where people ask in a comment and someone answers in a reply or adds the answer to the page. That works well for a handful of questions. With dozens it gets harder, because there is no way to mark one reply as the answer, and finding the questions that are still open means reading the whole thread.

A Jira Service Management knowledge base

If questions reach you through a service desk, Jira Service Management can use a Confluence space as its knowledge base (Atlassian: Link a Confluence space to your knowledge base). Answers are written as articles in that space. This fits support teams that answer requests; it is less suited to open questions between colleagues inside a team's own space.

A Marketplace app

Several apps on the Atlassian Marketplace add questions and answers to Confluence Cloud. Points worth comparing:

• Per space or site-wide. Can you turn Q&A on only in the spaces that need it?
• Permissions. Can you decide separately who may ask, who may answer and who moderates?
• One accepted answer. Can the person who asked, or a moderator, mark the answer that worked?
• Getting data in and out. Can you import what you have today, and export everything if you leave?
• Where the data lives. Apps built for Atlassian's "Runs on Atlassian" programme store their data with Atlassian (Forge storage), not on the vendor's own servers.

AskSpace

Full disclosure: Dortus makes AskSpace (on the Atlassian Marketplace). What it does:

• Q&A per space. A space admin turns it on in the spaces that need it; nothing changes anywhere else.
• Separate permissions. Who may ask and who may answer are set separately: everyone in the space, space admins only, or chosen Confluence groups. Moderator groups can edit or delete any question or answer.
• Votes and one best answer. Answers get up and down votes. The person who asked can mark the best answer, but never their own; moderators can too.
• Tags and similar questions. Questions can carry tags, and similar questions show up while you type a new one.
• On a page. The AskSpace questions block shows the latest questions of the space on a page, optionally for one tag.
• Import and export. A space admin can import from CSV or from Questions for Confluence, with a preview first and an undo afterwards, and export the questions and answers to CSV.

Moving questions from Questions for Confluence

If your site already has questions in Questions for Confluence, AskSpace can read the questions, answers, topics and accepted answers on the same site, as the space admin who starts the import, and put them in the spaces you choose. It only reads: nothing changes in Questions for Confluence. For Questions for Confluence on Server or Data Center, AskSpace imports a JSON file from your old Confluence.

No export file is needed for the Cloud import. An exporter and importer for Questions in Cloud is an open feature request on Atlassian's tracker (CONFCLOUD-51723).

Step by step: Getting started with AskSpace.

Side by side: AskSpace vs Questions for Confluence.

Which option fits

A few questions a month: a page with comments is enough. Questions that come in as service requests: a Jira Service Management knowledge base. Ongoing questions inside teams, where the right answer should be easy to find later: a Q&A app, whether that is Atlassian's Questions for Confluence or a Marketplace app such as AskSpace.

Questions

Spotted something wrong on this page, or an option we missed? Email support@dortus.com.

See also: How to build an FAQ in Confluence Cloud and Stack Internal vs Q&A in Confluence