Redline-style editing and in-line comments like Google Docs
Asked by Chris Ridgeway:

So I often feel divided between Google Docs and Confluence as to where to start a draft of a document. Because the document may need several collaboraters to review, but it may be a few pages long, I find the Confluence comment system to be inferior to Google Doc's wonderful in-line comments, which allow users to highlight text, right-click, and drop-in a comment.

I know in-line comments plugin exists from Stiltsoft, but the fact that you have to hit Edit" and drop it in as a macro makes it klunky. And then you can't edit comments in Edit mode: you have to go back to View.

1. Is there an alternative to the Stiltsoft plugin that's even smoother?
2. Any thoughts on workflow for collaborative writing and review? Maybe there's another mindset here.


Answers:
author: Daniel Borcherding
body: Chris,

We have the following outstanding feature request for behavior like you are asking for. The particular ticket proposes the addition of a comment macro that would allow comments at different levels of the document.

<https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-4486>

As we have moved on from wiki markup this feature request might be a little outdated and take some reimagning for our new Rich Text Editor. I have added this post to the issue to let our developers know that this is something that our community is still clammoring for.

I also took the liberty of looking through our marketplace site and saw the Inline Talk plugin as the only sort of plugin that would produce this behavior.

This may be a bit silly but we do have a plugin that allow you to embed google documents inside of Confluence. This may bea useful stop gap for you until the functionality you are looking for is rolled into a future version of Confluence.

<https://marketplace.atlassian.com/archive/com.appfusions.confluence.google.confluence-google-docs>


author: Ellen Feaheny [AppFusions]
body: Hi Chris -

Solving the divided feeling was partly the purpose of developing the [Google Drive (Docs) for Confluence plugin](https://www.appfusions.com/display/GDOCSC/Home) - to allow you to have the best of both worlds.

You are not alone to want to hold on to some of your in-line editing habits in Google Docs or Office apps, and at different times, both toolsets are good for different reasons - as also is Confluence.

When you have the Google Docs for Confluence plugin, your google docs can be accessed, embedded, edited, downloaded local, and presented - all from Confluence. When you save your edits to the doc, they are saved back to the Google Drive, as you should expect.

Send us an email at [info@appfusions.com](mailto:info@appfusions.com) and we'll get you going - this is a crowd favorite among our integrations, and also one of the most mature (2+ yrs now).

Check out the video.

Best,

Ellen

comments: author: Chris Ridgeway
body: Thanks for this answer- and yes we are aware of the embedding plugins. Unfortunately, it's still not as smooth as you'd want it to be because of you have to switch contexts to use it.

But the biggest issue for us is price. We are a small-to medium sized non-profit with a 50-user license. But because we have a religious affiliation we don't qualify for Atlassian's very narrowly defined non-profit license (academic, government, politicial, religious all don't qualify). So the annual cost of just this plugin (and many others, on top of the Confluence cost) is a significant stretch for us.


author: Andreas Springer _Actonic_
body: Hi all,

even if this is a few years old, I'd like to point out that there's now our app ?[Show Inline Comments in Editor](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1217328)" in the marketplace, which lets you see inline comments in edit mode. This should work nicely for you.

I hope this helps. :)


author: Vadim Rutkevich
body: Hello, Chris.

You can try our Talk Add-on for Confluece. It suppports inline comments while editing the Confluence page. We are about to release the version, whcih supports inline comments while viewing the page, so you needn't even switch to the Edit mode. We also invite you and other people to join our beta-testing. Please let me know your decision.

Thanks.

Best Regards,

Vadim Rutkevich

comments: author: G_ Richard Bellamy
body: Hey Vadim, it would be great if your plugin was supported in OnDemand


author: Vadim Rutkevich
body: Hello, Richard.

We already have this request in our roadmap. To accelerate development, you can vote for this feature in our [Feedback system](https://feedback.stiltsoft.com/responses/simplified-version-of-confluence-talk-plugin-for-ondemand "Feedback System").

Thanks.

Best Regards,

Vadim Rutkevich


Tags: addon-com.stiltsoft.confluence.talk.confluence-talk-plugin

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