Getting Started
Open IntelliGlossary from Confluence Apps. The main navigation contains Terms, Discovery, Import / Export, Settings, User permissions, and Audit. Which tabs appear depends on your role: Reviewers can open Discovery, glossary managers can open Import / Export, Settings, and Audit, and only site administrators can open User permissions.
- Choose a glossary view. Use All for the glossaries available to you, Site-wide for shared terminology, or a specific Confluence space for local terminology.
- Add or submit a term. Glossary managers save terms directly. Other eligible Confluence users submit terms for review.
- Approve the definition. Approval is required by default. Reviewers, Glossary Admins, and site administrators can approve a submission or request changes.
- Use it while reading. Open the IntelliGlossary byline on a published page to view matching terms and definitions.
Roles and Permissions
IntelliGlossary combines Confluence permissions with app roles configured under User permissions and Settings.
| Capability | Site Administrator | Glossary Admin | Reviewer | Normal User |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read terms in accessible glossaries | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Submit a new term in an accessible glossary | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| See own pending submissions | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| See submitted terms awaiting review in accessible glossaries | Yes | Yes | Yes | Own pending only |
| Approve or request changes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Edit approved terms in accessible glossaries | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Delete, restore, or deprecate terms in accessible glossaries | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| View and triage Discovery candidates | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Generate AI definitions for Discovery | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Import / Export, Settings, and Audit | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Manage Glossary Admins and Reviewers | Yes | No | No | No |
Site Administrators
Atlassian site administrators have full app access and manage Glossary Admins, Reviewers, and the term-visibility policy. They are not added as Glossary Admins.
Glossary Admins
Glossary Admins manage terms and settings in glossaries they can access. Space administrators can manage content within their own spaces. When term visibility conforms to Confluence space permissions, even a Glossary Admin is limited to accessible spaces.
Reviewers
Reviewers can view and triage submitted terms and Discovery candidates in accessible glossaries. They can approve terms or request changes, but cannot review their own submissions or start AI definition jobs.
Normal Users
Eligible Confluence users who are not guests or external collaborators can submit new terms in glossaries they can read. Their submissions enter In review status and remain visible to them while awaiting a decision.
Terms
The Terms table is the authoritative list of glossary content. Search terms, definitions, and categories, then filter by All, Site-wide, a specific Space, or Status. Select a column heading to sort it.
Add or Submit a Term
Select Add term as a glossary manager or Submit term as a contributor. The only essential fields are:
- Term: the word or phrase people encounter.
- Definition: the approved organizational meaning.
Select Add optional details for aliases and abbreviations, categories, owner team, reference URL, acronym case matching, and lifecycle status. Previously used categories and owner teams appear as autocomplete choices. Existing aliases and abbreviations are rejected until they are removed or changed.
Lifecycle statuses
- Draft: incomplete, newly accepted from Discovery, or returned for changes.
- In review: submitted and waiting for a reviewer.
- Approved: available to readers and page matching.
- Deprecated: retained for governance but no longer active.
- Deleted: a separate temporary state shown while a deleted term can still be restored.
Deleted terms remain restorable for 24 hours. Managers can restore them or remove them immediately; removed terms remain available in the Deleted terms export.
Review Workflow
Reviewers locate items with In review status in the Terms table. Use the green check to approve or Request changes to return the term to Draft. Reviewers cannot delete terms, change settings, start AI jobs, or review their own submissions.
Discovery
Discovery scans eligible published Confluence content for candidate terminology. It helps reviewers and administrators find project names, acronyms, CamelCase words, and repeated phrases that may need governed definitions. The four built-in patterns can be enabled or disabled in Settings, and administrators can add custom case-insensitive regexes.
- Accept as Draft: create a Draft glossary term from the candidate.
- Edit before accepting: adjust the candidate and definition before creating the Draft.
- Ignore permanently: prevent the term from being suggested again in that space.
- Dismiss until detected again: hide the candidate until a later scan detects it again.
- Restore to pending: return an ignored or dismissed candidate to the pending queue.
Ignored and dismissed candidates remain reversible in the table for 24 hours. They can also be exported from the Ignored terms dataset. Existing glossary terms are automatically discarded from Discovery.
AI Suggest Definitions
Glossary managers can generate missing candidate definitions as a background job. Existing definitions are never replaced. Progress is persisted, provider rate limits are retried, and usage is recorded in Audit. Built-in AI uses only its remaining trial allowance; any remaining candidates stay pending for a BYOK provider.
Reading Confluence Pages
On a published Confluence page, open the IntelliGlossary byline panel to see approved terms found on that page. The term list shows definitions and occurrence counts. Select View matches to open matching excerpts; hover a highlighted term to see its definition.
Matching respects full word boundaries, multi-word phrases, aliases, synonyms, configured translations, and optional plural matching. Acronyms can be restricted to uppercase to reduce false positives. Code, links, embedded cards, and unsupported page elements are excluded from scanning.
Import and Export
Glossary managers use CSV for transfers. Choose the dataset before importing or downloading.
- Import: Terms and Ignored terms.
- Export: Terms, Discovered terms, Ignored terms, and Deleted terms.
Only new entries are added during import; anything already in the glossary is left unchanged. Invalid rows are reported without stopping the rest of the transfer.
AI Definition Assistant
AI is disabled by default. A Glossary Admin or site administrator enables it under Settings → AI definition assistant and selects one of these modes:
- Built-in AI: shared trial keys, with 50 generated definitions during a one-time 30-day trial and a limit of 6 provider requests per minute per user.
- Bring your own key: Google Gemini, Groq, OpenAI, or Anthropic.
- Private endpoint: an OpenAI-compatible HTTPS endpoint with an optional bearer token.
For BYOK and private endpoints, the model ID can be configured. Content is sent only when a user requests a definition or starts the Discovery AI action: the term and any supplied definition, categories, aliases, and source-page context may be sent to the selected provider. Review the provider’s privacy, retention, and transfer terms before enabling AI. AI output is a draft and should always be reviewed. Provider keys are stored using Forge secret storage and are not displayed again after saving.
Settings and Audit
App UI language
The app follows the user’s Atlassian language by default. In Settings, choose a supported language to override Atlassian for IntelliGlossary, or return to Follow Atlassian (default). Simplified and Traditional Chinese are separate UI choices.
Glossary rules
Settings include site-wide term inclusion for a space, approval required for new manager-created terms, the default language for new terms, and Always use the default language for AI suggestions. That AI option is enabled by default; when enabled, AI writes definitions in the glossary default language even when the term uses another language.
Discovery settings
Administrators can enable the built-in Discovery patterns, add up to 20 custom regexes with a maximum of 200 characters each, and set the maximum number of unique candidates per Confluence space. The default candidate cap is 100.
AI settings
Glossary managers configure the provider, model, key, and private endpoint settings described above. The connection test uses the last saved configuration, not unsaved form values.
User permissions
Only Atlassian site administrators can manage Glossary Admins and Reviewers or change the term-visibility policy. The default is Conform to Confluence space permissions; broader visibility options should be selected deliberately.
Audit
The Audit tab records governance events such as submissions, approvals, requested changes, deletions, Discovery actions, imports, settings changes, and batch AI requests. Administrators can search, filter by All time, Last 7 days, or Last 30 days, and download an Audit CSV for review or evidence collection.
Troubleshooting
I cannot see an administration tab
Import / Export, Settings, and Audit require Glossary Admin or site-administrator access. Space administrators can manage terms within their own spaces but do not receive the global management tabs. User permissions requires Atlassian site-admin access. Reviewers can see Discovery but cannot start its AI definition job.
I cannot approve a term
Confirm that you are configured as a Reviewer, Glossary Admin, or site administrator, that the term is In review, and that you are not trying to review your own submission.
CSV import fails
Only .csv files can be imported. Choose Terms or Ignored Terms, export a sample if needed, and check that each row uses the expected columns. Existing entries are skipped; invalid rows are reported.
AI says it is disabled
Ask a Glossary Admin to open Settings, enable the AI definition assistant, choose a provider, add the required key or endpoint, and save. Provider errors are shown in the app instead of as generic Atlassian invocation failures.
A term is not detected on a page
Confirm that the term is Approved, the page is published, the applicable Site-wide or Space glossary is included, and acronym case or spelling matches the term settings.
User cannot see some terms
By default, Conform to Confluence space permissions is selected, so IntelliGlossary checks each user’s Confluence access and limits visible terms to spaces they can access. A site administrator can change this setting to allow wider glossary visibility; depending on the selected policy, users may then see terms from spaces they cannot directly access in Confluence. The site administrator grants IntelliGlossary its requested Atlassian permissions during installation or upgrade.