youngmon/atlassian-qna huggingface dataset:
I need to create a complex page template, what are my options?
Asked by Ed Murphy:

I want to create a page template that will store information about missions in our game.

The mission will contain a variable amout of waves, so the user needs to be able to decide how many waves there are, and is then prompted to add the relevant information for each wave.

It seems that the page template system is rather simplistic. Is there a plugin for doing this kind of thing, or can I code it in jquery or something like that?


Answers:
author: howard tiersky
body: Yes, agree would look at scaffolding. Also, with Confleunce 4.3 you no longer have to create page templates (Including scaffolding templates) with the old wiki markup but you will be able to create a page using the new c4 editor and then simply turn it into a template.

Scaffolding has a "repeating section" macro that sounds like exactly what you want.

cheers.

H

comments: author: Ed Murphy
body: thanks for that but AFAIK that wont work for me because we are using a hosted version of confluence. any other options?


author: Bill Ahern
body: Ed,

Customware has the scaffolding plug-in that is great for complex templates. You can make it a "live template" or "boilerplate" meaning you can maintain/edit the template and pages created from the template are immediatly updated. You can also add the "Create Page" plug-in from Adaptavist to make the page simple to create.

comments: author: Ed Murphy
body: thanks for that but AFAIK that wont work for me because we are using a hosted version of confluence. any other options?


author: Ed Murphy
body: **Update:** Still haven't got an answer to this, as Joseph Ramsay states below: "Atlassian has stated they hope to eventually include popular plugins like Scaffolding, but would not provide an estimated time table."

**Vote this question up if you are having this problem** (not really sure why a perfectly valid, well described problem that a lot of people are having is downvoted to 0)


author: Joseph Ramsey
body: @Ed I am going through exactly the same problem. My company has very impressive, complex deployment plan templates created in Confluence 3.3 with Scaffolding plugin. We are migrating the OnDemand and having to remake our templates.

Atlassian has stated they hope to eventually include popular plugins like Scaffolding, but would not provide an estimated time table.


Tags: confluence-cloud

cloud

page

template
Get/create user-specific credentials to access external datasource in user-macro
Asked by Hoek:

I'm using AJAX in user-macro's to display data from an external database on confluence pages. Now I'd like to show user-specific data from that external database, preferably without the confluence-user having to enter a username and password.

I don't have much experience with velocity or java, so I'm not sure which way to go. I'm thinking about getting the confluence-username in velocity, encrypt it in velocity, and use it that to authenticate with the external database. But what type of encryption is possible in velocity?

Or maybe there is another user-specific variable available in the velocity contexts, so I can use that along with the username to authenticate?

Or should I go with a completely different approach?


Answers:
author: Bob Swift (personal)
body: Consider using the [Confluence SQL Plugin](https://bobswift.atlassian.net/wiki/display/SQL) it uses application server datasources. Use the [Confluence Cache Plugin](https://bobswift.atlassian.net/wiki/display/CACHE) for performance reasons.

comments: author: Hoek
body: I'm not sure if I explained it clear enough, but the SQL plugin wouldn't solve my problem, looking at this issue: <https://bobswift.atlassian.net/browse/SQL-11> . That and my datasource only works with AJAX/JSONP.

The Confluence Cache Plugin looks promising. I was also thinking about using your Script Plugin to use Beanshell to encrypt the username. Too bad the plugins are not yet compatible with Confluence 4.2.4.


author: Bob Swift (personal)
body: Ok. All these plugins are compatible with 4.x including 4.2. Marketplace should be automatically updating the point release compatibility for plugins, but isn't at the moment. I correct when someone mentions it.


Tags: database

user-macro

velocity
Provide dependency from lib/ directory
Asked by Igor Loskutov:

Hi! I want include XStream library in my plugin.  
I don't want use \<scope\>compile\</scope\> because I see that Jira include this library (xstream-1.3.1.jar) in WEB-INF/lib folder. But when I write something like that :

```
&lt;dependency&gt;            &lt;groupId&gt;xstream&lt;/groupId&gt;            &lt;artifactId&gt;xstream&lt;/artifactId&gt;            &lt;version&gt;1.2.2&lt;/version&gt;            &lt;scope&gt;provided&lt;/scope&gt;        &lt;/dependency&gt;
```

it just don't work, plugin can't find and load xstream classes in runtime.

How to resolve this issue?


Answers:
author: Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]
body: Jar files under WEB-INF/lib are not available to OSGI plugins. They have a class path or their own and hence you need to give the scope as compile. There is no other option here.

Well, the only other option is to create a v1 plugin. That will work but will take away all the advantages of v2 plugins away, like dynamic deployment.


Tags: pom
Workaround/plugin for applying pdf custimizations to single page export?
Asked by Wim Deblauwe:

Hi,

Is there anybody who has come up with a hack/plugin to make the single page export redirect to the flyingpdf thing until Atlassian fixes [CONF-17853](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-17853) ?

It seems that if you create a PDF via the advanced section, a HTTP POST is done with the id of the page against this URL:

<http://confluence.mycomp.com/spaces/flyingpdf/doflyingpdf.action?key=SPACEKEY>

with this form data:

   1. atl_token:  
   G3vRXONLa2
   2. contentToBeExported:  
   31031379
   3. synchronous:  
   false
   4. confirm:  
   Export

Where 31031379 is the id of the page.

Given this information, it seems very likely that somebody who created a Confluence plugin before can hack together something to fix this :)

regards,

Wim

PS: I am aware of the Atlassian proposed workaround to define the styles 2 times in different ways, but for me, I cannot get them to match exactly, so I would like to have this as workaround.


Answers:
author: Alejandro Conde Carrillo
body: Single page exports still use the PDF stylesheets. You could apply your customizations using CSS instead than the HTML layouts as explained in [Adding Headers and Footers to Single Page Exports](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Advanced+PDF+Export+Customisations#AdvancedPDFExportCustomisations-AddingHeadersandFooterstoSinglePageExports).
How Can I import XML page files?
Asked by Jack Yu:

Hi Support,

I export a page from a Confluence site, the file format is XML, how can I import this XML file to my other Conflunence site?

Thanks!


Answers:
author: Jim West
body: I know this is late to the game, but I was just struggling with this. If you copy the XML file to your confluence_data/restore folder then it will show up under Backup and Restore under General Configuration.


author: Bhushan Nagaraj
body: Hi Jack,

Firstly this is not Atlassian Support. If you want to contact Atlassian Support, raise a ticket at <http://support.atlassian.com>

To answer your question, if you exported the page through Space Operations like how it is given below:

<https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Exporting+Confluence+Pages+and+Spaces+to+XML>

You can import the same in the Space Admin page


author: RAEMAR HORNE
body: Anyone?


author: RAEMAR HORNE
body: Can Anyone Help?


author: Jack Yu
body: Can someone help?


Tags: import

xml
Confluence behind firewall open to customers ?
Asked by JIRA Autobot:

Hi,

We have deployed confluence internally behind our firewall but we have requirements from departments to create spaces where customers or 3rd party people can document and talk on products. What are the best practices for doing something like this ?

I see following options :

1. Open up the internal server to external people but use permissions on the spaces, here we risk that internal people forget to set correct permissions and the content get's out to everybody.

2. Deploy another instance only for external people.

What do you do in your organization ?

/donnib


Answers:
author: Dennis Kromhout van der Meer
body: It's possible to have your existing shared externally, but as you mentioned it's important that there is strong access control performed by the admins. I would give the default confluence-users group the baseline rights that you would use for external users, and create extra groups for your company staff.

One thing to remember is that you'll have to use the same Confluence base url to be accessible for both internal and external customers.

comments: author: JIRA Autobot
body: yes but is that a good practice or better with a second instance ? The issue is also, how secure is confluence ? If we have a second instance there is no problem because it's behind firewall but if there are security issues in confluence then we have problems.


author: Dennis Kromhout van der Meer
body: It's good practice if you want to share and edit content between your staff and external users. However, if the external users will only use content that do not affect your staff, it might be best (and most safe) to set up a separate instance.


Tags: external

firewall
Which linux distro works best for confluence?
Asked by Sean Boran:

Hi,

We've had problems with confluence memory errors and more recently hanging, on and off over the last few years. Traditionally we use Ubuntu, and moving to Maverick/10.10 (and the java delivered with that), provided a stable basis at the end of 2011.

Since then we've had intermittenet problems (hanging, but different errors each time) over receent months, I just wanted to ask (without starting a religous debate) if there are specific Distros/releases that "just work" out of the box for large confluence sites? i.e. perhaps Atlassian test more extensively on specific releases of the well know distros?


Answers:
author: Dennis Kromhout van der Meer
body: We test with various linux distros and it doesn't really matter as long as java runs fine on it. However, the main problem with Ubuntu is the push of having OpenJDK as java by default,. We noticed it's getting increasingly difficult to install Oracle Java instead of OpenJDK on Ubuntu, which can cause problems with out applications. From my personal experience CentOS, Redhat and Ubumtu are the most commonly used distros.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: In my experience, it's the one that you are most familiar with.

My clients have run it fine on all sorts - Ubuntu (with the caveat that I agree with Dennis - OpenJDK is a bit of a pain to run, getting worse, and you'll want to install Oracle's ex-Sun Java to save the hassle), RedHat is extremely popular, as is CentOS. Suse, Debian, and Arch are all good servers. I've worked with Mint, Puppy, Scientific and Bohdi as desktops, and hence used them for development work and testing local installs.

I'd recommend sticking to a distro that's aimed more at the server side (Mint for example, is aimed firmly at desktop users and hence installs all sorts of stuff you don't need or want on a server), but the main advice is to run what you're most comfortable with already.


author: Sean Boran
body: Thanks for the inputs. Debian and Centos were the alternatives I had in mind.


Tags: linux

release
Is there a keyboard shortcut that allows me to navigate to the parent of the page I'm looking at?
Asked by Scott Stevson:

I see there are "G + S" to browse the currect space and "G + D" to go to the Dashboard but neither really fits my use case.


Answers:
author: CharlesH
body: As Confluence includes the jQuery library, I think it should be possible to write some code to put into Custom HTML which checks for a particular key press and performs some action. The following link is a discussion of implementing shortcut keys with jQuery, but bear in mind the shortcut key plugin mentioned for jQuery is not loaded via Confluence (as far as I know) so look down the proposed answers to the simple example with 2 votes. That relies on just jQuery code. To get the link to the parent, you could use jQuery to analyse the breadcrumbs links and pick the right one, or alternatively, package this as a user macro and then Velocity would give you the parent of the current page easily.<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/593602/keyboard-shortcuts-with-jquery>

comments: author: Matthew Erickson
body: To add tot this, if you want to add your own keyboard shortcuts you can create them as [Keyboard Shortcut Modules](https://developer.atlassian.com/display/CONFDEV/Keyboard+Shortcut+Module) in a plugin. This will make them appear in the help dialog.


author: Alejandro Conde Carrillo
body: Unfortunately, there is not a shorcut for that.

You can see all available shorcuts by pressing '?'
Confluence upgrade - some questions
Asked by AbrahamA:

Hi All

I am trying to upgrade from confluence 3.0.2 to 4.2.6.

So first upgrading to 3.5.17 and then to 4.2.6

Per my understanding:

* I am making a copy of my production setup in test system. Created a zip of confluence install directory and data directory and copied to my test system.
* Downloaded the zip of 3.5.17 of confluence installer (i did not find windows installer) and extracted to test system.

Questions:

1. How do I upgrade my old version. If I run startup.bat of 3.5.17 it just brings up 3.5.17 of confluence. (In 4.2.6 instaler it had option of upgrade) Is there a installer that I need to start in 3.5.17
2. I modified conflue-init.properties under C:\\conflu3-5-17\\confluence-3.5.17-std\\confluence\\WEB-INF\\classes setting confluence.home=c:/confluence/data. When I start server it throws an error saying it cannot find f:/confluence/data (which is what I have on production)
3. I could not get the whole data directory ( as it is too large for my test system), so just copied files in top level only like confluence.cfg.xml, is there a better approach.

Please let me know.

Abraham.


Answers:
author: Colin Goudie
body: 1 and 2 are related. The general upgrade procedure is to point the new confluence installation and your existing data directory and existing database. If you are pointing at your existing data directory correctly then its confluence.cfg.xml will also point at the old database so it should all get auto upgraded. (obviously backup first or as you are doing, do this on a copy)

So it sounds like for some reason it is still finding your old confluence.home. Now that could be the case if it is definied as an environmental variable possibly, which would override your setting in confluence-init.properties. So check that first.

3. If this is a test system then you'll mainly be missing attachments if you do that, which might be ok for what you are doing but then you really aren't testing the full upgrade ;)
Edit restrictions, hit update, button goes gray, nothing happens
Asked by keith weng:

Normally after editing restrictions on a page you hit update, and after a moment the dialog goes away.

Sometimes however the button goes gray, and the dialog just sits there. Nothing changes. All you can do is hit cancel. After that your edits have not taken effect.

Seems to come and go every week or two.

Any thoughts on what causes the "update" button to hang like that ? What can I do to fix it ?

confluence 3.3.1

chrome 19.0.1084.56 m

win 7 32-bit SP1


Answers:
author: PeterKoczan
body: Hi,

I would suspect this to be a performance issue of your Confluence instance. I would check the memory usage first, to see if you are on the edge. If this does not give a clue, it would be advisable to check the logs immediately when the problem occurs, maybe you can find more information there.

Cheers,

Peter

comments: author: keith weng
body: atlassian auto-reminders bugging me to resolve the question, so choosing this answer as the most likely, although I cannot be sure without the problem recurring.


author: RianA
body: It might be related to customization and plugins. Perhaps you coudl try to revert them to default and check.


author: keith weng
body: This seems to be a rare but intermittent problem on our instance. So 95% or 99% of the time things work properly, including in chrome.

The memory suggestion thus seems possible. I'm not the jira admin, so I don't have direct access to the logs. Will try to look next time the issue comes up.

Thanks for the help.


author: AlysonA
body: Hello,

I'd probably check other browser first, since Chrome is not a supported/compatible browser for Confluence 3.3 as outlined here: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF33/Supported+Platforms>

This should be working fine with other browsers such as Firefox 3, 3.5, 3.6 and/or IE 7, 8.

Cheers.


author: Colin Goudie
body: Open up the chrome development console - Ctrl-Shift I and look at the console tab when you do it. Do you see any obvious javascript errors?
Confluence upgrade error
Asked by AbrahamA:

Hello

I am upgrading confluence from 3.0.2 to 4.2.6

I see this error in atlassian-confluence.log Can you please let me know how to resolve.

( I did a backup in 3.0.2 with backup attachments option checked, I got a zip file. I am restoring in 4.2.6 using this zip file.)

2012-06-29 12:43:46,471 ERROR \[Indexer: 2\] \[apache.pdfbox.filter.FlateFilter\] decode Stop reading corrupt stream  
-- referer: <http://localhost:8090/admin/backup.action> \| url: /admin/restore-local-file.action \| userName: admin \| action: restore-local-file  
2012-06-29 12:43:49,618 ERROR \[Indexer: 2\] \[apache.pdfbox.filter.FlateFilter\] decode Stop reading corrupt stream  
-- referer: <http://localhost:8090/admin/backup.action> \| url: /admin/restore-local-file.action \| userName: admin \| action: restore-local-file

Thanks

Abe


Answers:
author: Andrew Frayling
body: Hi Abraham,

Unfortunately upgrades are not as simple as that as backup export/import only works if both the source and target Confluence versions are the same.

For a general overview of upgrades have a look at <https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Upgrading+Confluence> and <https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Upgrading+Confluence+Manually> , but going from 3.0.2 you're going to have to do some intermediate upgrades:

3.0.2 -\> 3.3.3 -\> 3.5.17 -\> 4.2.6

You might be able to skip the 3.3.3 step, but you are going to need the intermediate 3.5.17 step as there were major updates in 3.5 and you can't jump that many versions in one go.

Hope that helps?

Andrew.


author: PeterKoczan
body: For future reference, based on Jozef's link, I have created a KB for this issue that you can find here: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=319389981>


author: Jositz, Michael (Allianz SE)
body: Hi Abraham,

we also had many of these "decode Stop reading corrupt stream" issues when indexing in Confluence 4.3.2. For me replacing pdfbox-1.6.0.jar with pdfbox-1.7.1.jar stopped the issues from appearing.

You could try that, but I think it is not officially supported by Atlassian because Confluence 4.3.x is delivered with version 1.6.0.

Regards Michael

comments: author: Jozef Kotl?r
body: IMHO the real root cause is swallowed OutOfMemory Exception - see my comment in [CONF-27115](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-27115) - request for packaging newer PDFBox into Confluence
How can I get basic statistics on Confluence instance like how many total items of content, how many spaces?
Asked by Larry Talley:

Having migrated from a standalone Confluence instance I am looking to confirm that my migration was complete. I would like to compare counts of the number of spaces, the number of content items, the number of current versions. Any statistics that I could compare between the standalone instance and the OnDemand instance would help give me confidence.

Is there any way to reach Confluence Usage statistics in OnDemand?


Answers:
author: Abdoulaye Kindy Diallo
body: The system information displays the Confluence usage (total spaces, local users etc..). It could be accessed through Wiki Administration page: https://\<domain name\>.atlassian.net/wiki/admin/systeminfo.action

Hope that helps.

Diallo


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud
Is there a simple way to list all users with their profile data
Asked by Matthias Born:

We try to create a users list with the profile date maintained by the user itself or the administrators.

I haven't found any way to list these date.

The Metadata Plugin seems not to work, neither C3 nor C4.

I tried sth. like this:

{users-report:User,Email,Location,Extension}

<br />

Unfortunatly only user and email are shown.

To show this informations, there are only ways to add exactly the same informations within metadata lists.

And it would be fine, i we could filter according to space/team labels.

Can anybody help me?  

Thx!  

Matze


Answers:
author: Adolfo Casari
body: Take a look at the Reporting Plugin with the [User Supplier](http://wiki.customware.net/repository/display/AtlassianPlugins/User+Supplier)

comments: author: Matthias Born
body: Well, that sounds promising... At least a little bit.

Now I have Username, Full Name, Email, The Content ("About Me", rendered wiki), the Picture. Personal Space (if any), Attachments and Last Login Date.

But I haven't what i've been looking for mostly:

* Phone
* IM
* Website
* Position
* Department
* Location

There are no keys for that informations (And I can not understand: Why?!)

Any hints to get all these informations?


author: Antonio D'Errico
body: [https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211696/linchpin-user-profiles?hosting=server\&tab=overview](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211696/linchpin-user-profiles?hosting=server&tab=overview)


author: CharlesH
body: Following Adolfo's suggestion, one way to get more info is to provide users with the hover functionally that Confluence puts on other references to users. There is a user macro which replicates this: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DISC/hover-profile>You can get the username back from reporting, then use it in the call to the hover macro. It may take the user a couple of clicks, but that way they'll be able to reach the profile of the user they're interested in and those extra details you mention.


Tags: data

profile
blog post macro and email notifications?
Asked by Tsol:

Hi everybody,

i have created a page where i collect blog posts from different spaces. In this page i had added some users as watchers. The problem is that when a new blog post is created the page doesn't update. Do you have any idea how to add a functionality that sends an email to the watchers of the page when macro finds a new blog post?

Thanks,

Tsol


Answers:
author: Remo Siegwart
body: I wouldn't do this with a macro, because macros are only executed on page view. So the notifications wouldn't be sent until some user visits that page. You could write your own plugin with an [EventListener Module](https://developer.atlassian.com/display/CONFDEV/Event+Listener+Module), that listens to the [BlogPostCreateEvent](http://docs.atlassian.com/atlassian-confluence/latest/com/atlassian/confluence/event/events/content/blogpost/BlogPostCreateEvent.html).

A simpler solution would be to tell them to [start watching the space blogs](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Watching+a+Space#WatchingaSpace-WatchingforNewBlogPostsinaSpace): **Browse =\> Advanced =\> Subscribe =\> Start watching space blogs**

Hope this helps


Tags: blog

macro

watcher