collaboration: a hands-on demo using confluence wiki

Collaboration using Confluence wiki, by Sarah Maddox 1

Collaboration: A hands-on demousing Confluence wiki

Scriptorium webcast26/27 April 2012


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

Collaboration using Confluence wiki, by Sarah Maddox

A documentation wiki

3

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


A developer documentation wiki

4

Demohttps://developer.atlassian.com/


Introducing Donna Dark

Technical communicator extraordinaire

at Dangerous Liaisons

I’m Donna and I’m everybody’s hero


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


Collaboration – a world of opportunity

SMEs

Support engineers

Customers

Product managers

Developers

7


Life of a document up to publication

Image copyright © Sarah Maddox 2012

8


The real life of a document

9



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


Confluence dashboardDemoWelcome message Recent activity


A hierarchical page structure in a space

A list of spaces on my Confluence dashboard

A page

Demo

Wiki spaces and pages


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

13


14

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

14


Adding your space (1)

Adding a space to Confluence

Demo

You can change the permissions at any time


Demo

You can also change the theme at any time

Choose the Documentation theme

Adding your space (2)


Setting the permissionsDemo

Groups

Individuals

Anonymous users

Type of access


Designing a space’s home page

The default home page Demo

The default content is pretty ordinary, really


Our new home page


Our new home page

Demo

Designing a space’s home page


Adding a skeleton TOCDemo

The table of contents forms as you add the pages


Collaboration tools

Permissions

Sharing a page via email

@mentions

Notifications

RSS feeds

Let’s look at the basic workflow

22


Workflow using core Confluence


23


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


Watching a page

Choose “Tools” > “Watch”


Watching a space

Choose “Browse” > “Advanced”

> “Start watching this space”


Setting your notification options

Choose the type of content you want to know about

Choose the format of the notifications


Setting your notification options

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


Setting your notification optionsDemo


Building an RSS feed

Building an RSS feed in Confluence

Choose “Browse” > “Feed Builder”


Collaboration in action

Add a draft page: Release notes

Set permissions ready for review

Share page

Publish the page

31


Draft page – release notes

32

DemoLock indicates page restrictions


Ready for review

33

Demo

Share the pageBroaden the page restrictions


The dashboard activity stream

34

Demo


Wiki plugins and add-ons

35


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

36


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


The magic of collaboration

38


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/

39


Questions


Prize draw

Winner!wikitechcomm.onconfluence.com

41


Contacting me

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @sarahmaddox

http://twitter.com/sarahmaddox

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

Blog: http://ffeathers.wordpress.com

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

mailto:[email protected]

http://twitter.com/sarahmaddox

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

http://ffeathers.wordpress.com/

http://travellingworm.wordpress.com/


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.


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

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

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

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




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

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

collaboration: a hands-on demo using confluence wiki

Technology

sarah maddoxslide

wiki spaces

sarah maddox slide

wikiyour browser confluence

documentation space

soft010 space

spaces home pagedemo

new home pagecollaboration