Confluence - an irregular question
Asked by Rumceisz:

Dear All,

I would like to ask you regarding the usage of Confluence. It's an irregular topic: a bit differen than the others.

I am a Confluence administrator and now I face that a whole division will soon join to my instance. Therefore I start to create a slideshow about the best practices of using Confluence. Hence I am rather a technical guy, I am not sure about what are these best usage tips (of course I know Confluence very well).

What would you suggest to your users? What are the main features, usage tips you would highlight to your users? E.g. labeling pages, etc.

For start: the new users will use Confluence as a collaborating tool so not storing files.

Any ideas, suggests? Please stretch your minds!:)

Thanks in advance!

Rumi


Answers:
author: Natalie Hobson
body: I find that a lot of my users are not technical either, and need Atlassian jargon "translated". When confronted with Atlassian's awesome documentation, I think they just get overwhelmed. I spent some time creating a glossary of terms for various Atlassian tools (including Confluence) where I defined them into language that they can understand, and providing links to Atlassian documentation (making sure they were for our currently installed version) for instructions on completing certain functions (like creating spaces, restricting pages, adding tables and macros, etc.). :)


author: AlysonA
body: Hi Rumi!

There are a lot of useful features in Confluence that your team can take advantage of, such as:

* Not only creating content, but [creating attractive and dynamic content](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Creating+Attractive+and+Dynamic+Pages) as well as being able to [share this cool content](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Sharing+Content) among all users.
* You can [customize the look and feel](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Customising+Confluence) of your site at your own needs to generate a cooler appearance and make use of third party plugins from our [Market place](http://marketplace.atlassian.com/) to extend Confluence built in features.
* If you have JIRA, you can [integrate with Confluence](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Integrating+JIRA+and+Confluence) since they are designed to complement each other. This will allow your users to collect your team's thoughts, plans and knowledge in Confluence, track your issues in JIRA, and let the two applications work together to help you get your job done.
* Finally, one of the news in Confluence is that you now can [access all your content via your mobile](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Using+Confluence+on+a+Mobile+Device)

I believe I highlighted most of the useful features that Confluence offers, if you need more, feel free to take the [Confluence tour](http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/overview/team-collaboration-software)!

Cheers.


author: Daniel Borcherding
body: Hello Rumi,

We do have a pretty good quick start guide that would serve to "Hello World" your new users into Confluence pretty well.

<https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOCSPRINT/Quick+Start+Guide+for+Confluence+Users>

Please take a moment o review this guide and let us know what you think. If you can think of anythign that is missing I can do a quick writeup here or ammend the document with the pertenent information.


author: PeterKoczan
body: Hi Rumi,

I'd suggest to check out our User Guide here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Confluence+User's+Guide

I believe it gives practical examples and tips on usage and shall be useful for your users too.

Cheers,

Peter