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By connecting the action builder to external systems, such as Confluence, admins can integrate Zendesk with external systems in automated workflows, improving collaboration and maintaining a seamless experience across multiple platforms.
Note: The steps associated with external systems in action flows are referred to collectively as external actions.
This article contains the following topics:
  • Connecting Confluence to action builder
  • Using Confluence actions in action flows
  • Recipe: Escalate Zendesk tickets by creating incident reports in Confluence

Connecting Confluence to action builder

Before you can include external actions in your action flows, you must connect the action builder to the external system.

When connecting to external systems for use in action flows, the following best practices are recommended:
  • All external actions performed by an action flow are attributed to the user who connected the external system. Therefore, it is a best practice to use a dedicated service account rather than personal credentials when connecting to each external system.
  • All integrations request access to necessary scopes. However, it's important that you review and validate the scopes before authorizing the connection to the external system.
  • When managing credentials for API key-based tools, such as OpenAI, it's best to store keys in a secure vault or credential manager.
To connect action builder to Confluence
  1. In Admin Center, click Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Actions > Action flows.
  2. Create or edit an action flow.
  3. Open the step sidebar.
  4. Under External actions, click Confluence.
  5. Click Connect.
  6. Follow Atlassian's prompts to authenticate and complete the connection.
    Note: All external actions performed by an action flow are attributed to the user who connected the external system. Therefore, it is a best practice to use a dedicated service account rather than personal credentials when connecting to each external system.

After you've connected to the system, you'll see an indicator that it's connected and details about the instance you're connected to, as well as the actions available for Confluence.

Using Confluence actions in action flows

Confluence action steps can be used to create, update, and add comments to Confluence pages.

The following Confluence actions are available:
  • Create page
  • Update page
  • Create footer comment
  • Search for a page

Creating a Confluence page

Use the Create page action to create a new Confluence page with the specified title and text-based content.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs space_id, title, value
Output Full metadata

Updating an existing Confluence page

Use the Update page action to update an existing Confluence page with specified text-based changes.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs space_id, title, value
Output Full metadata

Creating a footer comment on an existing Confluence page

Use the Create footer comment action to add a comment to an existing Confluence page.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs page_id, value
Output id, status

Searching for a Confluence page

Use the Search for a page action to search for a Confluence page by its title.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs title
Output id, title

Recipe: Escalate Zendesk tickets by creating incident reports in Confluence

The following example action flow automatically creates an incident report in Confluence when a Zendesk ticket is determined to be an incident. Automating these actions ensures immediate visibility for engineering, consistent documentation of incidents, and clean handoffs between teams working together to resolve the incident.

Such an action flow might consist of the following steps:
  1. Add an action flow trigger with the following details:
    1. Click Add trigger.
    2. In the step sidebar, under Zendesk, click Tickets.
    3. Click Properties and select Ticket type changed.
    4. Click Add condition.
    5. Under Variable, select Ticket type changed and Type.
    6. Set the Operator to Is.
    7. Under Value, enter Incident.
  2. Add a step to look up ticket details:
    1. In the action builder, beneath the action flow trigger, click the Add step icon ().
    2. In the step sidebar, under Zendesk actions, click Look up ticket.
    3. Under Ticket ID, click into the field and then click Select a variable instead.
    4. In the variable menu, select Ticket assignment changed as the step that output the variable you want to use, and then select Ticket ID.
  3. Add a step to look up user details about the ticket assignee:
    1. In the action builder, click the Add step icon ().
    2. In the step sidebar, under Zendesk actions, click Look up user.
    3. Under User ID type, select Zendesk user ID.
    4. For User ID, click Add variable.
    5. In the variable menu, select Look up ticket as the step that outputs the variable you want to use, and then select Requester ID.
  4. Add a step to lookup details about the ticket requester's organization:
    1. In the action builder, click the Add step icon ().
    2. In the step sidebar, under Zendesk actions, click Look up organization.
    3. Under Organization ID type, select Zendesk organization ID.
    4. For Organization ID, click Add variable.
    5. In the variable menu, select Look up user as the step that outputs the variable you want to use, and then select Organization ID.
  5. Add a step that creates a Confluence page based on the information you collected for the ticket, requester, and organization:
    1. In the action builder, click the Add step icon ().
    2. In the step sidebar, under External actions, click Confluence and then select Create page.
    3. Under Space, select the appropriate space from the connected account in which to create the page.
    4. Under Title, enter Incident report: and then click add variable.
    5. In the variable menu, select Look up ticket as the step that outputs the variable you want to use, and then select Ticket ID.
    6. Under Content, enter the templated content you want to capture for all incidents. Include relevant ticket and user information as variables from the Look up ticket, Look up user, and Look up organization steps, respectively, to streamline the incident resolution. In the following example, all variables are italicized: 
      An incident was identified via the following Zendesk ticket: Ticket ID.

**Incident owner**
The following team member is serving as the incident owner: Ticket Assignee. They should be included in all decisions.

**Summary**
- Incident: Ticket Description
- Status: Ticket Status ID
- Reported by: Requester Name (Requester ID)
- Reporter's Organization: Requester's Organization Name (Organization ID)
- Reported at: Ticket Created at
  6. Click Save.
  7. Click Test totest the action flow.
  8. Click the options menu () and select Activate to begin using the action flow to automatically create incident reports in Confluence.
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