youngmon/atlassian-qna huggingface dataset:
Using Confluence to create document based knowledge base
Asked by Shawn Yates:

Hi!

I have been tasked with making a lot of documents available in a searchable knowledge base. We already own Confluence so I want to leverage that. The documents live on SharePoint, but the UI there just isn't what we are looking for. The conecpt of having a page for each document with a brief summary then a link to the document is very well received.

Now, my challenge is to make the process of adding documents VERY simple for non-technical people (don't even talk about using wiki markup language). I have used Scaffold to create an "add new page" link that takes them to a easy enough page with a place to enter the doc title and a description. Easy enough.

The challenge now is how to I get them to link the document? I am hoping for some kind of "browse" button where they can browse to the doc and that will put the link right on the page.

Any thoughts? I am also open to general thoughts on how others have used Confluence to do this same thing.

Thanks,

Shawn


Answers:
author: Shawn Yates
body: Thankks for the suggestions. I will check them both out.

I will close this question as it seems this may be as close as we get for now :).


author: SarahA
body: Hallo Shawn

This documentation may be useful:

<http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Developing+a+Knowledge+Base+on+Confluence+Wiki>

It is a set of pages written by the Atlassian support team, about building a knowledge base in Confluence. One of the pages is about templates, and there are other useful techniques too.

I hope this is helpful!

Cheers, Sarah


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Three very quick points/ideas which may not apply to your cases

1. My current client discourages attachments, and find the "word import" trick has enabled us to get rid of a nice wide swathe of documents completely.
2. Confluence 4.0 doesn't have wiki markup - the editor has been rewritten. Worth a look and an upgrade?
3. Have you looked at user macros? My thought would be a macro that you could a) stick on a template page and b) derive the document location from the title of the page? (e.g. if they called the page "My Doc 104", your macro would display a link to [https://yourdocrepo/space-name/my.doc.104](https://yourdocrepo/my.doc.104) and you can play tricks like "open in new window" with the url and so on)
Looking for best practices for setting up Jira and Confluence for a community development situation
Asked by Jerry Scharf:

Hi,

Open Source Routing is working to reintegrate a number of independent development track into Quagga and provide a common testing framework for existing and future work. We have chosen Jira/Confluence to base this work on. We are probably looking at \~20 major contributors from across the world.

Are there any best practices documents about ways to set up Jira and friends in a community development project. If not, are there a few comparable sized projects that would be willing to share their experiences with what worked and didn't work for them in bringing Jira and friends in.

you can contact me at jscharf-at-opensourcerouting-dot-org.

thanks in advance

jerry


Answers:
author: Luis Mayora
body: I can speak only for JIRA

1. Dont go Workflow crazy. I heard that in a company had like 250 workflows(to many). You need to create 3 or 4 categories for workflows(agile, waterfall,etc). You need to match different teams within these categories. Otherwise you probably have a lot of workflows to maintain. If you company is going to hire full time atlassian experts then go workflow crazy. But I dont think this is the case for many companies.(Keep it Simple)

2. The same applies for Permission, Notification schemes. We currently have 3 types of Permission schemes and 3 types of notifications schemes(No more!)

3. Make sure you evaluate and test your plugins in a standard way. Take a look at the logs, make people use the plugins for a while before installing them on production.

4. Always, always set up a Sandbox Jira Instance to test your changes.


author: Jerry Scharf
body: I was thinking more about workflows, user management, etc.


author: Luis Mayora
body: 1. Use MySQL Database

2. Use Linux on the server

3. Use the same instance Tomcat for both(If you have more than 1 server you can have two instances)

4. Set up a really good Backup Procedure

5. Dont go Plugin Crazy

6. Wait for JIRA 5.0 (November. Is really cool!)


Tags: best-practice

jira-administration
What plugin is used for answers.atlassian.com?
Asked by Sue Hallwood:

What plugin and macros are used for [answers.atlassian.com](http://answers.atlassian.com). My client would like to show votes, comments and views and the tabs across the top.. active newest hottest most voted etc....


Answers:
author: Dylan O'Mahony
body: If you look at the footer of the site there's a link that says "Powered by OSQA" - <http://www.osqa.net/> has the details.

comments: author: Jeremy Largman
body: This is correct. Answers is powered by OSQA.


author: Sue Hallwood
body: How is OSQA intregrated with Confluence? my client would like to use this concept on a page within a space.


author: David at David Simpson Apps
body: @Sue Hallword: Answers runs off [OSQA](http://www.osqa.net/) and as such is not integrated with Confluence, but is a stand alone system.

On [developer.confluence.com](https://developer.atlassian.com/), Atlassian have created a custom plugin called "Answers Linker Plugin" that queries Answers and dispays some results in the **\<div id="answers-container"\>..\</div\>** element.


author: Daniel Jilg
body: My guess is that Answers is not provided by a plugin. Instead, it is very likely a custom version of StackOverflow ( <http://stackexchange.com/about> ).
Is there a way to order links on a page based on how many times they have been clicked
Asked by Salvatore Pirrello:

Hey guys,

I have links on a page that I would like automatically ordered. The ordering should be based on which links are used/visited the most.

Does anyone know if this is possible on confluence?

Edit: I found the following macro that allows you to use the functionality with Macros. The order=rank configurable is what I want for the links.

<http://www.schirmacher.de/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=3801089>

thanks!


Answers:
author: David at David Simpson Apps
body: Your example shows the popularity of labels based on the number of pages in the system with that particular label.

Confluence does not store the popularity of pages within the system, for that you'd need some kind of analytics package.

The [Google Analytics Reporting for Confluence](https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugin/details/16722) plugin contains a "Top Content" macro which lists the most popular page views in the space in the last week see here for a demo:  
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6U8gF1-82E\&t=0m50s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6U8gF1-82E&t=0m50s)

*If the "Top Content" macro is not quite suitable, we could look at enhancing the plugin.*

Disclaimer: I'm the plugin author :)

comments: author: Salvatore Pirrello
body: Thanks for the help David. I will take a look and post back soon.


Tags: analytics
Confluence V4.x Security v.s. V3.5
Asked by Aron Hausler:

Hi, we are considering upgrading our intRAnet to Confluence V4.x from V3.5.

Our use may include a blend of spaces that are commercial-in-confidence with some that are shared (public within our IntRAnet). We need to make sure that we keep the permissions at the right level so that only people who 'need-to-know' can access the x-in-confidence material.

Does anyone know if there are any significant differences between Confluence V3.5 and V4 in terms of its security model or features?

Cheers + thanks


Answers:
author: Mark Hrynczak
body: Hi Aron,

See [this page](http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Confluence+Security) for a detailed overview of security in Confluence. There are no significant differences between 3.5 and 4.0 in terms of the security position. In particular, permissions applied at page, space and global levels will continue to be respected after upgrading.

Cheers,  
Mark


Tags: security
Version UI a la Confluence documentation
Asked by Robert Lauriston:

How do you implement a version UI like the one in Confluence's documentation, which has a little menu in the upper-left corner? Can you set it up to reuse topics that have not changed from one version to the next?

#### All Versions {#toc-hId-1231245336}

[Confluence 4.0.x](http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC)  
[Confluence 3.5.x](http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF35)  
[Confluence 3.4.x](http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF34)  
[More...](http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/ALLDOC/Confluence+Documentation+Directory)


Answers:
author: Edwin Dawson
body: Hi there, as Joe mentioned this is achieved by customising the Confluence Documentation Theme.

Details for how to do this are listed under step 4 on this page:

<http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Creating+your+Technical+Documentation+Space>

In the case of [Confluence.atlassian.com](http://Confluence.atlassian.com), we are including a page from another space for the list of versions. For example, the Confluence documentation includes this simple page into the left nav:

<http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/ALLDOC/_All+Versions+of+Confluence+Documentation>

You could customise the navbar to contain more or less anything you wanted, certainly a list of page titles wouldn't be too difficult. It could simply be a list of links on a basic page as in the example above.


author: Robert Lauriston
body: Do you reuse unchanged pages across release versions, so that if you found an error that applied to 3.4, 3.5, and 4.0 you could correct it once and all three would be updated?

comments: author: SarahA
body: Hallo Robert

No, we don't do that. It would become quite difficult to manage, unless the wiki provided some fairly sophisticated branching functionality similar to a source control tool. We keep the documentation for each major version in a separate space. On the whole, we maintain the space for the current release only, although occasionally we do update the archive spaces (for previous versions) when someone reports an error in the documentation, or an important workaround that needs noting.

Cheers, Sarah


author: Robert Lauriston
body: How about integrating a source control tool to handle branching?


author: Joe Clark
body: There is a configuration option in the Confluence Documentation Theme that allows you to customise the contents of the sidebar - this is accessible in the space administration section when the documentation theme is selected.

I'll see if I can get one of our tech writers to post an answer here describing how they achieved it on [confluence.atlassian.com](http://confluence.atlassian.com).


Tags: version
newbie: page tree confusion
Asked by Robert Lauriston:

I created a space and imported a Word document, choosing Import as a New Page, split on level 4 headings, and the Documentation theme. I got the TOC in the sidebar, but it was collapsed rather than expanded one leve.

I created another space and did the same thing, except choosing Replace Home, and got no TOC in the sidebar.

I deleted both spaces and tried the first approach again, still no TOC.

?


Answers:
author: Robert Lauriston
body: I can't reproduce this, so I don't know what the problem was.


author: Mark Krueger
body: Regarding the collapsed/expanded question, I have found that when using pagetree (or the left panel navigation tree - perhaps one and the same), if I expand the tree to navigate down to a page I want to see, click on the page, and then return, the tree is collapsed. This can be very annoying when you are trying to view more than one page at a lower level. Is there a setting which controls this behavior? Unfortunately, Windows Explorer has trained me to expect the tree to remain expanded. It feels like I spend a lot of time expanding the tree, and then re-expanding the tree, and then... You probably get the idea.


author: Robert Lauriston
body: I can't reproduce this, so I don't know what the problem was.


author: SarahA
body: Hallo Robert

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the TOC in the sidebar was collapsed rather than expanded. But here's some information about where the pagetree gets its information, in case this helps.

The most likely cause of pages not appearing in the left-hand panel is that the pages in your space are not children of the space's home page. Perhaps when you imported the Word doc with "Replace Home", Confluence did not reset the space's home page setting.  

Each space has a single page designated as its "Home" page. The Documentation theme constructs the TOC from the pages that are child pages of the space's home page. If your pages are at the same level as (i.e. siblings of) the space home page, they will not appear in the left-hand navigation bar.  

More background: The theme uses the {pagetree} macro to produce the table of contents on the left. When you use the {pagetree} macro on a page, you can choose the top page to be displayed. The Documentation Theme chooses the space home page as the top page.  

The fix: If this is the cause, then there are two ways to fix the problem:

* You can change the designated space home page for the space. You need space administrator permissions. Go to "Space Admin" and select "Edit Space Details".
* Or you can drag and drop all your pages to make them children of the current home page. Go to "Browse", "Pages" and click the "Tree" option.

I hope this helps!

Cheers

Sarah
Can't access Confluence over SSL via iPhone or iPad
Asked by Nicholas Silva:

We've been running an installation of Confluence (3.5) over SSL and have just recently noticed that we're unable to access the wiki from iPhones or iPads. I've accessed Confluence from iOS devices before, but none of those installations were over connecting via SSL.

Users attempting to access our particular installation are presented with an error that reads: "Safari cannot open the page because it could not establish a secure connection to the server."

I know that there isn't any official support from Atlassian for mobile Safari as of yet, however I just want to be clear that we're not trying to edit or administer confluence from iOS, but simply trying access and view the wiki in general.

Is there something that I can do to enable SSL access for iOS devices?

Thanks!


Answers:
author: Nicholas Silva
body: Here's a screenshot of the error. I've been looking into this a bit more and have concluded that it must be a problem with our installation specifically. I tried accessing another confluence installation over ssl (<https://confluence.dehli.edu>) and that worked on the iPhone and iPad.

![SSL Error](http://www.thesawyerschool.com/otm/screens/ssl_error.jpg)


author: Nicholas Silva
body: Here's a screenshot of the error. I've been looking into this a bit more and have concluded that it must be a problem with our installation specifically. I tried accessing another confluence installation over ssl (<https://confluence.dehli.edu>) and that worked on the iPhone and iPad.

![SSL Error](http://www.thesawyerschool.com/otm/screens/ssl_error.jpg)


author: David at David Simpson Apps
body: What's the error you're getting? Can you attach a screenshot of the error? (Simultaneously hold down the power button + home button)
Can't add users to groups
Asked by Andy Yang:

I can't believe I'm asking this question, but there isn't anything in the Knowledge base that I can find.

I have a brand new install of Confluence 4.0 in a Windows 2008 VM. It is running as a Windows Service as Local Service. Confluence has synchronized to our AD instance and I can browse all of the users and groups.

However, when I try to add users to confluence-users or confluence-admins, nothing happens. If I create a new user, I am able to add that user to a group at that time.

Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks


Answers:
author: Edwin Chan
body: Do you have permission in AD to modify group memberships?

comments: author: Andy Yang
body: Aren't confluence-users and confluence-admins in the Confluence Internal Directory? (I have the internal directory set to be looked at first). I'm pretty sure I set up the AD integration to be read-only, yet saw these two groups in the list.

Also, I was able to add users to the group when I created the user.


author: Edwin Chan
body: Are you trying to add AD users into Confluence Internal Directory groups? Cause that probably won't work. You would have to create those groups in AD as well.

When you create a user, it was probably created in the Confluence Internal Directory, which is why it can be added to a Confluence Internal Directory group.


author: Andy Yang
body: When I look at the group list under Manage Groups - how can I tell whether it's internal or AD? I get confluence-users and confluence-administrators showing up, but they are definitely not in AD.

So, I had one of my network admins create confluence-users in AD and it still doesn't work. And I have no idea how to tell if it's trying to add an AD user to an AD group, or iand AD user to a local group.

How do most customers use this? Do they not bother with AD integration, but rather just export from AD and import into local Confluence?


author: Edwin Chan
body: Sorry, I don't have the latest version of Confluence so I don't know how the user interface looks. Even if the group exists in AD, I **THINK** you still need to have permission to modify group membership in AD.

In my company, we do not use any accounts inside the Confluence Internal Directory. All users and groups are strictly managed through the AD.
How to increase number of rows in group search?
Asked by ket.pjwstk:

Hi,

My goal is to increase number of rows in search result for groups.

I've already tried to approaches based on Conveyor plugin.

1) Override the templates and set proper filed in paggination support

2) Overrider Group Picker Action class.

Group picking is realted to five actions, four of which are located in spaces package, a one in usermanagment package. However, whene I am trying to do (1) or (2) on anyone actions in "spaces" package nothing (literally) happens. In usermanagment both (1 and 2) works quit fine. Ive spent a lot of time trying to figure out what is going on, but without any success.

Any idea?


Answers:
author: ket.pjwstk
body: Any Idea? Anyone?


Tags: java
MySQL 5.1 ...
Asked by St?phane St?phane:

Hi all,

With Confluence 4.0, MySQL seem's to be at least version 5.1 from the Supported Platform page :

* <http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Supported+Platforms>

But, from the requirements page :

* <http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/System+Requirements>

Atlassian announce that "Confluence should work with the database versions listed below". So the 5.0.28+ should work...

From my Test Envirronment, Confluence 4.0 works fine, and i am running Centos Or Redhat OS, where MySQL is 5.0.77.

Can i run quietly Confluence on the version 5.0.77 of MySQL server ? ...

Thanks.  


Answers:
author: LucasA
body: Hey St?phane!  

Your answer is yes. Since the 5.0.77 is a minorversion from MySQL 5.0 and the minimum requeriment from Confluence is 5.0.28, 5.0.77 is supported. I was not able to found any bug related to 5.0.77 specific version either.

But if you wanna know the true, I'm using PostgreSQL 8.4 in my labs in both Jira and Confluence. My server operational system is always CentOS 5.5 and 5.6, and I'm really enjoying the performance/stability from Postgres 8.4 instead of MySQL. You can replace the default (and **unsupported** ) PostgreSQL 8.1 from EL5 using the [pgrpms.org](http://pgrpms.org/) repository, it's quitte easy. ;)  

EDITED: As MySQL, PostgreSQL is also free (as in free beer AND in free speech).   

Best regards,  
Lucas Timm


author: stephane Dugravot
body: It is ok now,

I would like to close this case....


author: stephane Dugravot
body: Sorry for the delay Lucas, and thank you.

As you said, yes our test Confluence is running well MySQL 5.0. And we didn't find any bug too, until now.

But, i will change the database from MySQL 5.0 to MySQL 5.1 (supported in CentOS 6.0) soon.

Stephane.


Tags: mysql
Confluence 4.0. No Wiki-markup in macros. How to workaround
Asked by Alex Bobrovski:

I was unpleasantly surprised, that all my macros have stopped working after moving to Confluece 4.0. There is no options "Output format - Wiki markup" anymore.

What should I do? How to work it around? How to call a system macro in my XHTML (now) macro?

Thanks.


Answers:
author: E
body: This should work:

```
## @noparams&lt;ac:macro ac:name="info" &gt; &lt;ac:rich-text-body&gt;$body &lt;/ac:rich-text-body&gt;&lt;ac:macro /&gt;
```

---

And then set the macro as "Escaped".


author: Joe Clark
body: Just trying to understand your question properly, Alex - so you have a macro which, when rendered, includes in its content, an {info} macro?

Does your macro have a body? Is the contents of the {info} macro hard-coded, or configurable by the user?

If you want to convert wiki markup into XHTML, you can get a *com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.Renderer*bean injected into your macro class, and then use that to convert a {macro} string in wiki markup into the corresponding rendered XHTML.


author: Joe Clark
body: @Sue - Confluence 4.0 is fairly unique in the scope of changes to Confluence in that we completely altered the storage format of Confluence from wiki markup to XHTML. In honesty, Confluence 4 is probably the biggest change to Confluence ever, and it's probably unlikely that things will change this much again.

We have lots of resources to help plugin developers prepare for Confluence 4.0 upgrades. This page is a good starting point: <https://developer.atlassian.com/display/CONFDEV/Preparing+for+Confluence+4.0>

If you have any specific questions or problems, please feel free to ask questions on this site and our community can help you out!


author: Sue Hallwood
body: i am also having issues with all of the macros, in the theme plugin that I developed, not working in Confluence 4.0. What is the quickest and simplest way to resolve the issue without having to re-write the code? My client is concerned about the cost of upgrading the theme plugin every time a newer version of Confluence is released. Are there always this many changes when a major release of Confluence is re-leased? What are your plans for the future? Will there be more major changes to how macros are developed?


author: Alex Bobrovski
body: Ok, I found a part

it's my new body of the macro:  
**\<ac:macro ac:name="info" \>**   
*text text text*   
**\<ac:macro /\>**

it works partly - it draws a blue panel, but without the text inside. Need help.


Tags: macro