As organizations transition towards a self-service experience for employees, it is difficult to scale this effort effectively due to knowledge sources and information spread across various platforms. Employees find it challenging to manually search the necessary information from multiple data sources, as this process can be highly time-consuming and inefficient.


Freshservice's unified search through the Confluence Connector allows you to integrate the Confluence knowledge sources, enabling effective self-service at scale. It helps retrieve information from Confluence with comprehensive and efficient Freddy AI Agent search capabilities, allowing employees to find accurate information quickly.

This article contains the following topics:


Prerequisites for integration

Before you begin, ensure that the following requirements are met:

  • You have administrator access to Confluence, including permissions to view and manage the spaces you want to sync.

  • The required Confluence spaces are accessible. ACL restrictions may prevent Freddy from indexing content in restricted spaces, which can limit search accuracy.

  • You have an Enterprise plan on Freshservice, with administrator privileges to install and configure apps.

  • Freddy AI Agent features with Generative AI capabilities are enabled in your Freshservice account.

Integrate the Confluence Connector

  1. Go to Admin > Automation & Productivity > Extensibility > Apps.

  1. Or, click the Marketplace Apps icon on the top-right corner, and select Marketplace Apps.

  2. Search and select the Confluence Search Connector app in the Search box.

  1. On the installation page, click Install.

  1. After the installation finishes, on the new screen that appears, click Connect now to sign into your Confluence account using Merge. Freshservice integrates with Merge to provide a secure and trusted connection to your Confluence account.

  2. On the new window that appears, select the required authentication method, and then select Next to authorize access to Confluence. We recommend authenticating using your Confluence credentials.

    1. Review and confirm the requested file access permissions, and select Next to continue.

    2. Under Enter additional information, enter the URL of the Confluence site you want to sync, and then select Next again to proceed.

  3. On the new screen, grant Merge access to the Confluence site you want to sync by selecting the site details and clicking Accept.

  4. After successfully signing in, a confirmation message appears, as shown below.

  5. Click Next to proceed.

  6. Depending on the data size, the number of spaces and pages, current system load, network latency, and other factors, Confluence may not display all spaces immediately. If a space does not appear in the list, reload the page and try again. Then, select the spaces you want to sync (up to a maximum of 100 spaces), and select Save and sync.

  7. You can monitor the sync status on the Settings tab of the Configuration page.

  8. Once the sync is complete, a Sync Successful tag appears next to your Confluence account, as shown. To refresh the sync or disconnect the account, click the three-dot menu and choose the desired option.


Note: The maximum file size that can be indexed from Confluence is 50 MB. Files above the maximum file size cannot be synced.

  1. Click Sync log next to the last synced timestamp to view logs for the artefacts synced from your Confluence account.

  • Log details, such as sync time, sync status, and the number of documents or shared drives added, deleted, or modified, are updated with each data sync.

  • Each data sync can have a Successful or Failed status.

  • If data sync is successful, the sync status is marked as Success. If any file fails or the overall sync fails, the sync status is marked as Failed, which could be due to system errors.

  • Individual document errors may occur, even after a successful sync, due to unsupported file formats, large file sizes, empty documents, and so on. Contact the support team to obtain the reason for the document-level failure.

  1. If you want to update the shared spaces for sync, use the edit option on the Settings tab of the Configuration page. It is recommended to select the shared space with the most relevant and recent data. After the sync is complete, information from the selected shared spaces is integrated with Freddy AI Agent’s search capabilities.

    Note: A one-time initial data sync is performed from the selected drives, including user access permissions.


Known Limitations of this Integration

Here are the known limitations to keep in mind when using the Confluence integration:
  • Admin privileges: You must be a Confluence organization admin with permissions to view and manage the spaces you want to sync.
  • Required companion app: You must install the Merge Events for Confluence app from the Atlassian Marketplace. The integration relies on this app to map user email addresses and manage Access Control Lists (ACLs) for search.
  • Permission update delay: Changes to user permissions (ACLs) in Confluence can take up to 24 hours to reflect in search results. For example, if you revoke a user’s access to an article, that user might still see results from that article for up to 24 hours.
  • Space deletion: If you delete or archive an entire space in Confluence, the integration doesn’t automatically detect this change. Articles from that space remain in the search index and continue to appear in search results until the next full sync.
  • Attachment deletion: The integration doesn’t detect when an individual attachment is deleted from a Confluence page. The deleted attachment remains in the search index until its parent article is removed.
  • Attachment size limit: The integration only processes and syncs attachments smaller than 50 MB. Larger attachments are skipped during sync and won’t appear in search results.
  • Admin access changes: If the admin account used to set up the integration loses access to certain articles, those articles are treated as deleted and removed from the search index for all users. To prevent this, we recommend using a dedicated service account for installation and authorization.
  • Publicly shared articles: The integration can’t identify or search articles that are shared publicly (available to anyone with the link). Only internally accessible, permission-controlled content is indexed.


Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

  1. What happens when part of my data is in Confluence and the rest is in Freshservice knowledge base?
    Our Freddy-powered Freddy AI Agent has the intelligence to provide you with the most relevant response by unifying the content from various sources.

  2. How does Freddy AI Agent ensure that users only see documents they have access to?

When a user asks a query, Freddy AI Agent checks to see if the user has access to the content that’s retrieved from Confluence to answer the query. The user’s email address is used to uphold the access privileges between Confluence and Freshservice. Admins should ensure that the email address field is populated on Confluence and there is parity between Confluence and Freshservice.

  1. What to do if I face data sync issues?

If you encounter persistent data sync errors, reach out to your CSM or support@freshservice.com for further assistance.

  1. What search methods are used for retrieving results from Confluence?

To retrieve results from Confluence, a hybrid search method that combines context-based and keyword search is used.

  1. In what scenarios will data not sync?

The data will not sync when there is an empty document, an incorrect file format, or a file size exceeding 50 MB.

  1. Are texts from tables and images included in the indexed content?

No, currently the text within tables and images is not extracted or indexed. At this time, only plain text content is parsed during the sync. However, support for table and image content is being actively explored based on customer feedback.

  1. How long will the initial/full sync take?

The duration of the initial sync depends on the number of files and the total size. On average, syncing 1,000 files totalling 250 MB takes around 3 hours to complete.