collaboration: a hands-on demo using confluence wiki

Slide 1Collaboration using Confluence wiki, by Sarah Maddox 1

Collaboration: A hands-on demousing Confluence wiki

Scriptorium webcast26/27 April 2012

Slide 2Collaboration using Confluence wiki, by Sarah Maddox 2

Confluence, Tech Comm, Chocolate

Wikis and technical documentation

Agile environments

Social media

Crowd sourcing

Driving wiki development

And more

A wiki as platform extraordinaire for technical communication

wikitechcomm.onconfluence.com

Introducing Sarah’s new book

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A documentation wiki

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Demohttp://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC

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A developer documentation wiki

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Demohttps://developer.atlassian.com/

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Introducing Donna Dark

Technical communicator extraordinaire

at Dangerous Liaisons

I’m Donna and I’m everybody’s hero

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What we will cover

Collaboration, and why it’s a Good Thing

Introduction to wikis and Confluence

Creating a technical communication space

Collaboration tools

Wiki plugins and add-ons

A “how to”, not a showcase of features

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Collaboration – a world of opportunity

SMEs

Support engineers

Customers

Product managers

Developers

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Slide 8Collaboration using Confluence wiki, by Sarah Maddox

Life of a document up to publication

Image copyright © Sarah Maddox 2012

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The real life of a document

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Image copyright © Sarah Maddox 2012

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Introducing the wiki

A wiki

Confluence and other brands

The dashboard

Spaces

Pages

With a wiki, you can edit a web page in your browser

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Confluence dashboardDemoWelcome message Recent activity

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A hierarchical page structure in a space

A list of spaces on my Confluence dashboard

A page

Demo

Wiki spaces and pages

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Division of content into spaces

Per manual?

Per product?

Per product version?

Killing Me Softly

SOFT010 SOFT011 SOFT020

A space

One of Dangerous Liaison’s products

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Building a documentation space

Let’s get cracking

Add the SOFT010 spaceThemePermissions

Design the home pageWiki editor

Build a skeleton table of contentsAdd the key pagesMove and order pages

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Adding your space (1)

Adding a space to Confluence

Demo

You can change the permissions at any time

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Demo

You can also change the theme at any time

Choose the Documentation theme

Adding your space (2)

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Setting the permissionsDemo

Groups

Individuals

Anonymous users

Type of access

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Designing a space’s home page

The default home page Demo

The default content is pretty ordinary, really

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Our new home page

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Our new home page

Demo

Designing a space’s home page

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Adding a skeleton TOCDemo

The table of contents forms as you add the pages

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Collaboration tools

Permissions

Sharing a page via email

@mentions

Notifications

RSS feeds

Let’s look at the basic workflow

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Workflow using core Confluence

Image copyright © Sarah Maddox 2012

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Monitoring updates

Watch a page or space

Set your notification options

Use RSS feeds

I need to stay on top of the news but avoid information overload

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Watching a page

Choose “Tools” > “Watch”

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Watching a space

Choose “Browse” > “Advanced”

> “Start watching this space”

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Setting your notification options

Choose the type of content you want to know about

Choose the format of the notifications

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Setting your notification options

?? Haven’t you seen enough of my profile?

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Setting your notification optionsDemo

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Building an RSS feed

Building an RSS feed in Confluence

Choose “Browse” > “Feed Builder”

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Collaboration in action

Add a draft page: Release notes

Set permissions ready for review

Share page

Publish the page

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Draft page – release notes

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DemoLock indicates page restrictions

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Ready for review

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Demo

Share the pageBroaden the page restrictions

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The dashboard activity stream

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Demo

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Wiki plugins and add-ons

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Add-ons for enhanced workflow

www.frevvo.com

www.comalatech.com

Configurable workflows

Shared workflows

Content publishing

Live forms

Conditional routing

Digital signatures

And more

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Many, many more add-ons Exporting and importing content to various formats

Look and feel (themes)

Content reuse

Metadata

Templates

Diagrams and mockups

Social media integration

Website and application integration

You name it plugins.atlassian.com37

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The magic of collaboration

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Slide 39Collaboration using Confluence wiki, by Sarah Maddox

Getting hold of my book

Wiki:

https://wikitechcomm.onconfluence.com

Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Confluence-Tech-Chocolate-Sarah-Maddox/dp/1937434001

Barnes & Noble:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/confluence-tech-comm-chocolate-sarah-maddox/1108812996?ean=9781937434007

XML Press:

http://xmlpress.net/publications/chocolate/

Drawings from the book are copyright © Ryan Maddox 2012

http://ryanmaddoxart.wordpress.com/

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Questions

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Prize draw

Winner!wikitechcomm.onconfluence.com

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Contacting me

Email: sarah@atlassian.com

Twitter: @sarahmaddox

http://twitter.com/sarahmaddox

LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/sarahmaddox

Blog: http://ffeathers.wordpress.com

Other blog: http://travellingworm.wordpress.com/

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Taking your own wiki for a spin

Download Confluence or try it online:

http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/try

Licensing:

Evaluation for 30 days

Free for non-profit and open source organisations

$10 for a 10-user licence (proceeds go to “Room to Read”)

Commercial licences based on number of users

For this demo I used Confluence 4.2 installed locally on Windows 7. My browsers are Firefox and Chrome.

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References

Confluence wiki

Website: http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/

Software for technical documentation: http://www.atlassian.com/documentation-technical-writing-software/overview

Documentation: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/

Plugins: https://plugins.atlassian.com/search/by/confluence