I want to use Confluence offline
Asked by asaf Ben Oved:

Hey,

I work a lot on the train and the internet is not stable there it even works.

Isn't there any local plugin which allows me to use confluence offline and then in the office to synchronize ?


Answers:
author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Short answer is "no". Your best option is probably to run a local copy on your laptop and then manually synchronise whatever pages you've been editing when you get to the office.


author: Alexander Elz
body: It would be great to be able to edit certain documents offline - similar to the offline mode Google Drive has. This also helps with spotty connections as you don't have to wait for internet to come back and can just keep working and confluence synchronizes once the connection is back

comments: author: Rodney Hughes
body: If you are referring to "documents" as Word, Excel ... of course you can download them BEFORE you loose internet connectivity and just upload them again later.

The trick with uploading new versions of documents is NOT to change the file name in any way ... no extra prefix or suffix with the next version number, initials or date. If you keep the EXACT same file name, Confluence automatically "archives" the old version and uploads the new version. All kinks to the document anywhere in the system will automatically point to the latest version and you can always go back to the older version(s) via the Attachments view and clicking the "\>" chevron.

If you mean document as a Confluence page, you can also Export that as a Word document via the three dot Ellipsis button top right of screen BEFORE you are going to loose internet connectivity, and then import it back to the Confluence page when you have connectivity.

I know the idealists would say "how annoying" ... but these days the internet is somewhat critical .. even if the information was sitting on your company Intranet, unless you have connectivity (and sometimes requiring VPN etc) you cannot access it from a train or plane (although both are increasingly provisioning moving internet so people can browse Facebook on the way to work ?????)

As I have said earlier, Confluence is no a program that is installed on your PC. So when you click something it is just selecting a web page hyperlink that sends a command to a computer somewhere else in the world.

And as the information you are viewing is not installed on your PC, you have to think ahead to put it on your PC to access it if you are at risk of losing your internet connection.

It is a browser platform so if you are not connected to the internet you cannot browse.


author: Magui Al Ahmar
body: You can use this add-on :

<https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/rr/server/overview>


author: Mii
body: How about the possibility of integrating couchdb ? This would enable offline and online merge without big problem. Atlassian, time to check for couchbase or couchdb!


author: Robert Ortner
body: in our installation we have spaces per customer - before you meet your customer it?s a good idea to export this space to pdf and put it wherever you need it. So I always have all information on the go :wink:


author: asaf Ben Oved
body: OK thank you, Will keep that in mind.

I guess I got used to work offline with other web services like most of the google suite (Doc, Sheet etc...).


author: Stefan Arnold
body: Something like "Read-Only" should work.

You could install the confluence server on you notebook and use it with localhost.

Made something similar to get always current data for my test instance but with jira.

Was difficult to get the AD-User synchronization out of it but now everything works.

Now i only import regularly the necessary data and have a copy of our live instance.

The you could use your confluence, also plan and write new entrys but u had to manually copy then in your office confluence

comments: author: Ali Tabatabaei
body: It is easier to use another software for offline editings like Evernote or a free Markdown editor so you can easily update later. I wish we had confluence offline editing capability. I also fly a lot and want to edit offline.


author: Rodney Hughes
body: Yes, I understand the scenario - similar for people travelling by plane.

But you need to remember that it is a web system. i.e. what you see on your screen is what is happening on a server somewhere else in the world - it is not a program running on your PC that works independent of the internet connection.

The only program running on your PC is the web browser.

So just like you can't "Google" off line, or any other web page, you can't "Confluence" off line.

So the only thing you can do is before you leave internet connectivity, is to export the page(s) of interest to Word via the Ellipsis (three dot icon top right), work on the Word document on your PC and then Import the Word document when you are connected to the internet again.

The only other thing to do is to install Confluence server itself on your PC but I don't know much about what that involves as cost or how synchronising your local server with the main server actually works.

Or use your mobile phone as a hotspot connection to your 3/4G network internet to be more stable than the train wifi?

comments: author: Leuthold, Markus
body: You can create and edit google sheets offline, which is synced when you're online again. It's seamlessly integrated, no need for manual synchronization. That's what I'd expect from Confluence, too.


author: asaf Ben Oved
body: As I wrote in my scenario - which happens every day. I would like to update\\edit confluence pages while not connected to the internet.

Its ok if I only have limited access to functions. but the basic of editing should be accessible, I think.


author: Rodney Hughes
body: A good question!

For our global industry association it is not practical for individual Users to install Confluence server and there are just too many Spaces and Pages.

I just can't see how all the power of Confluence (as a web access system i.e. all the processing of commands is done by the host server) could work off line but would be helpful if it could.


Tags: offline