Possibility of extending Confluence
Asked by Andi H.:

Hello everyone,

im currently working on a student project, and i would be really glad if anyone of you guys could provide his experience or any useful tips. I will just start off with the project description:

The object of the project is the trend management process of a client. We are now discussing about a solution considering the ?Make or Buy" approach. The following questions do concern only ?Make". The client is already using the Wiki-Software from Atlassian's Confluence, and wants to extend it with functionalities and Add-Ons. The main questions regarding this problem are:

- Is it possible to extend the software Confluence by the desired functions?

- What would be the cost/effort of this when realizing these features?

The trend management process includes the **identification** , **evaluation** and **visualization** of trends.

**Identification:**

- Entry masks to record information about a trend in Confluence such as title, segment, short description, cover image, references such as white papers and trend studies

- Before a trend towards capture is accessible to all employees, the content must be checked by an editorial team.

- After validation of the editorial team, the trend should appear on the wiki's homepage in a list of also captured trends, so that all authorized employees of the company get an overview of new possible innovations.

- Existing contents of a trend can be extended or changed at any time (e.g. if you want to add a new reference to a trend).

**Trend evaluation:**

The following functions are required:

- A first rudimentary sorting of trends using a thumbs up/thumbs down evaluation by a large number of employees from different departments of the company

- A second evaluation carried out by authorised experts (and bot by all employees oft he company) using a 5-star system according to various criteria.

- Visual representation of your own evaluation via a Kiviat diagram, which also shows the average of all evaluations already made for a trend.

- Filtering of ratings by department or time interval

**Trend visualization:**

The visualization of trends does not necessarily have to take place in Confluence. Therefore, the **interoperability of Confluence**is of central importance. This is characterized by the ability to easily exchange information with the other heterogeneous systems. A trend radar, for example, can be implemented with the open-source software flex, whereby the data exchange could be realized with XML.

I know thats a lot of text, but thank you in advance for reading/answering regarding the problem! Below, you can find example images of identification and visualization.

![identification.jpg](/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/42605iE63E9A9B6980B7D0/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "identification.jpg")![radar.png](/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/42606i30938026FD38D0B5/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "radar.png")


Answers:
author: Scott Theus
body: Hi,

There are over 900 applications available in the Atlassian Marketplace for Confluence, you can search through them here: [Marketplace](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/addons/app/confluence)

In all honesty, I doubt anyone in the Community would be able to say if there is a single app or combination of apps that would do all of the things you are looking for. Your best bet will be to use keyword searches in the Marketplace to find and research the applications and read through the documentation on the likely solutions.

-Scott

comments: author: Andi H.
body: Hi Scott,

thank you for your answer. This question was generally meant for self developing without using applications/plug-ins from the marketplace. Do you think its estimable to say how many hours/weeks/person would be required to do this?

-Andy


Tags: function