The Atlassian Community has been hankering after custom domains for Confluence and Jira for absolute yonks. It’s difficult to offer continuity of service – not to mention disorienting for the customer – when you’re directing them to a website that’s not your company’s in order to view your resources and documentation.
You’ve probably heard of the famous CLOUD-6999 Jira ticket. Behind it lies a tale of woe and despair. This simple request for custom domains for Atlassian Cloud products has been languishing in Atlassian’s backlog for so long it’s become a meme and sparked a range of merchandise. You can buy CLOUD-6999 t-shirts, magnets, stickers, greetings cards, and phone cases, and as the strapline says, be part of the most epic fail in cloud history by a multi-billion dollar company.
Created way back in 2011, CLOUD-6999 has become the most voted-for Atlassian Cloud backlog issue ever, with Atlassian still serving up excuses and cop-outs for why it eludes them. The latest is that it’s going to be delivered in 2023. I suspect the entire world will party HARD when – if – it arrives.
In the meantime, Old Street can offer the ultimate workaround: External Share for Confluence and External Share for Jira. These apps let you share live links to Confluence pages and Jira issues with people outside your instance, without having to purchase additional licenses. And the External Share custom domains feature allows you to customize these links, and put an end to your CLOUD-6999 misery.
Fully customized vanity URLs for Confluence and Jira
There are two aspects to our custom domains feature.
1. Make all links come from your website
By default, all External Share links reside under the following domains: confluence.external-share.com and jira.external-share.com.
By configuring a custom domain, you can replace “external-share.com” with “yourcompany.com”.
It only takes a few steps to configure a custom domain in External Share for Confluence. And if you want to configure a custom domain in External Share for Jira, the steps are very similar.
2. Customize each link
Also by default, the rest of an External Share link has a 16-character code for security purposes, e.g. https://confluence.external-share.com/content/6b39350c-19dc-48bf-a510-1d4e39489e98.
Our feature lets you replace this code with something more relevant, memorable, and friendly, so that your readers and collaborators know they’re looking at the right page/issue.
Therefore, if you want to share your links more widely and/or publicly, e.g. knowledge base articles with customers, then you may want to customize both the domain and the rest of the URL. That way, they know it’s coming from your company AND they know they’ve found the right article.
In effect, instead of https://confluence.external-share.com/content/6b39350c-19dc-48bf-a510-1d4e39489e98 you could have https://oldstreetsolutions.com/isn’t-this-a-damn-good-article.
Here’s how to create a custom public link in External Share for Confluence, and here’s how to create a custom public link in External Share for Jira. (Spoilers: you just tick a box 
).
Why you can forget about CLOUD-6999
Custom domains and links apply to all types of shares available in External Share.
External Share for Confluence allows you to share a page, page tree (by allowing child pages), or even a whole Confluence space. External Share for Jira allows you to share an issue, list of issues (using Jira Query Language), and even your entire Scrum or Kanban board.
This means you could share a large body of work, a product roadmap, or a knowledge base under your company domain and offer continuity of service and brand to the customer/partner.
Setting up custom domains for sharing content usually comes at a price. However, because we understand the pain of not having custom domains for Confluence and Jira (being sufferers ourselves), we’re simply including it in the cost of running External Share.
If you’re interested in making your requests and resources yours, not anyone else’s, start your free trial of External Share for Confluence or External Share for Jira today.
Christopher is a self-confessed nerd who’d probably take the cake on Mastermind if Star Trek: Voyager was his specialist subject. He writes fiction about time travel, conspiracies and aliens; loves roller coasters, hiking and Christmas; and hates carpet, rom-coms and anything with chilli in it. He’s written extensively for technology companies and Atlassian partners and specializes in translating complicated technical concepts, specs and jargon into readable, benefits-driven copy that casual readers will understand.