Integrating a writing tool with Confluence
Asked by i_isay:

Hi all! I plan to switch from Confluence to a writing tool to manage our product documentation. But I still have a lot of readers in Confluence, and I need to somehow integrate Confluence into the writing tool (or whatever to link them) to constantly update the Confluence docs from the writing tool. The writing tool producers do not support any plugins, etc. Did someone do anything like that? Does anyone experience any problem like that and what was your solution? Thanks!


Answers:
author: Matt Reiner [K15t]
body: Hi [@i_isay](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4139927)

The only option I can think of is to:

1. Export the content out of your writing tool as a Word file when you want to update the content in Confluence
2. Delete the old documentation in the Confluence space
3. Import the Word document

Why do you want to write in another tool?

comments: author: i_isay
body: Thank you! I'll try it that way for now..

There are several reasons:

- Track changes and update the docs or its sections with one stroke (like snippets, images)

- Manage versions

- PDF format of Confluence is a disaster! I need smth better to publish in PDF

- Need more formatting features, more like in Word

- Track broken links and fix them all together

There are many reasons why Confluence is not ok for technical writing ) It was fine for a while, but today, I have too many pages, it's simply hard to manage them.


author: Matt Reiner [K15t]
body: Ah, interesting.

* I suppose you can look at the [Page History](https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/create-edit-and-publish-a-page/) to see some of this, but perhaps that's not enough. You could also consider using an [Inclusion Library](https://www.k15t.com/rock-the-docs/content-reuse/organize-your-reusable-content) to house your images and snippets in Confluence. I find those much easier to make changes across an entire space.
* For managing versions, you could check out my team's app [Scroll Documents](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1217608/scroll-documents-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=overview). We're also working on integrating it with our app [Scroll Viewport](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211636/scroll-viewport-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=overview) so you can quickly publish one or more versions of your content to a help center. Here's [our help center](https://help.k15t.com/) as an example.
* [PDF formatting](https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/customize-exports-to-pdf/) is rough, for sure. As another option, my team makes Scroll [PDF Exporter](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/7019/scroll-pdf-exporter-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=overview), which has a full template builder you can use to make things look just the way you'd like. We just redesigned the template builder, so I'd suggest checking out the video on the listing to see it in action.
* Formatting is certainly limited in the new Cloud Editor. I'm glued to [the roadmap](https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap/). You might find some of the theming provided by Scroll Viewport makes up for this, or perhaps not.
* Some link checking is done when [generating a preview in Scroll Viewport](https://help-cloud.k15t.com/scroll-viewport/Generate-a-Preview.843515311.html).

While we don't have a massive amount of pages, we've been using these tools and techniques for a while now. Hope this is helpful.


author: i_isay
body: These are interesting things you say! I'll check them out! Thanks!


Tags: application-link

cloud

confluence-cloud

integration

update