Wednesday August 27, 2008

Click on the triangle next to the question to reveal the answer

Confluence Webinar - 3:00PM AEST - Host: Matt

 Who can we contact that will be able to come onsite and provide advice regarding implementation and set-up?

We have Partners around the globe who help implement, customize, configure, and support Atlassian products. Our network of partners offer a wide range of software development skills, consulting expertise, and best practices experience to help customers leverage their investment.

To look at procuring Atlassian professional services from one of our official Atlassian Partners, please visit here.

Feel free to contact any suitable partners directly, or if you would like a recommendation then just forward your requirements to partners@atlassian.com and our business development manager will respond to you shortly.

 Can we customise the look and feel of Confluence?

You have several methods of altering the look and feel of Confluence:

1. Internal Confluence Customization Overview
2. Creating a new Theme
3. Adaptavist ThemeBuilder Plugin

 Can we display data from a Microsoft Access database in a Confluence page?

Yes this is possible using the SQL plugin for Confluence which displays the result table or values from the SQL query on a Confluence page. Data from single or multiple results sets are formatted, usually as a table, for display. Multiple SQL statements (semi-colon separated) can be specified within a single sql macro body (subject to support provided by specific databases).

 Can we embed a Microsoft Project Gantt Chart in a Confluence page?

The GanttProject plugin enables generating and rendering Gantt chart from MSProject file attached to a Confluence page.

 Is it possible to define sections of a page which only certain users can edit?

This would be possible by using the Include Page Macro which allows you to include a Confluence page from the same instance in another Confluence page. Hence you could have a separate page for each question and restrict the editing of those pages to particular users. You could then include those pages into another page which others users could edit to write the answers to the questions.

Please note that there is a limitation in that users would still be able to remove the Include page macro from the page with the answers, however they would not be able to edit the questions themselves.

 Do you have a recording of a previous webinar?

You can view a recording of one of my more recent webinars for Confluence. The webinar recording is split into two parts which can be downloaded from here:

• Part 1
• Part 2

The video files are in m4v format which can be played in either iTunes or Quicktime.

Confluence Webinar - 8:00AM PDT - Host: Boots

 Can Ability to post audio and video files?? Multimedia Support

Using multimedia files you can display movies, animations and videos, and embed audio files on your Confluence page. There are several methods for attaching files to a page. Once you have attached the multimedia file to a Confluence page, you then edit the page to set where the multimedia content should appear. In the example below, we display a Flash file that is attached to this page. Confluence supports the following multimedia formats: Adobe Flash (.swf) Apple QuickTime (.mov) Windows Media (.wma, .wmv) Real Media (.rm, .ram) MP3 and MP4 files (.mp3, .mp4) MPEG files (.mpeg, .mpg) AVI files (.avi) You may need to enable an avi decoder within your browser.

On this page: Displaying a multimedia file attached to the page Multimedia macro parameters Notes Related Topics

Quick guide to displaying multimedia content on a page Choose one of these methods: Add the macro yourself: Attach the multimedia file to the page in the usual way. Add the Multimedia macro using the macro browser. Autocomplete: Attach the multimedia file to the page in the usual way. Type '!' in the editor and choose the multimedia file from the list that appears. Drag and drop: Drop the video or other file into the editor. Confluence will attach the file and insert the Multimedia macro for you. Adjust parameters if necessary: Click on the Multimedia macro placeholder to set options for the macro, such as adjusting the width or height of the display, or setting autoplay on.

Displaying a multimedia file attached to the page

Once you have attached a multimedia file to a page, there are different methods for choosing where on the page the multimedia content should appear:

Inserting the Multimedia macro yourself

You can add the Multimedia macro to the page yourself using the Macro Browser. This allows you to display a multimedia file that is attached to either the current page or to another page in the Confluence site.

To insert the Multimedia macro on the page at the current cursor position:

1. In the Confluence editor, choose Insert > Other Macros.
2. Find and select the required macro.

Using autocomplete

Once a multimedia file is attached to the page, you can use autocomplete, while editing the page, to choose where the multimedia content should appear.

To position an attached multimedia file on the page using autocomplete:

1. While editing the page, position the cursor where you want to place the multimedia content.
2. Trigger the autocomplete function by typing '!'.
3. Choose the multimedia file from the list that appears.
4. If necessary, click on the Multimedia macro placeholder and choose Edit to set various options such as the width, height or autoplay.

Using drag-and-drop

Depending on the browser you are using, you can attach and position a multimedia file in one step using drag-and-drop.

To attach and position multimedia content using drag-and-drop:

1. While you are editing a page, simply drag-and-drop the multimedia file on to the page. Confluence will attach the file to the page and insert the Multimedia macro at the current cursor position for you.
2. If necessary, click on the Multimedia macro placeholder and choose Edit to set various options such as the width, height or autoplay.

Multimedia macro parameters

When editing, you can click on the macro placeholder and choose Edit to display the parameters for this macro in the Macro Browser.

Parameters are options that you can set for Confluence macros to control the content or format of the macro output. The table below lists parameters for this macro that can be set in the Macro Browser.

Parameter	Default	Description
Page Name	Current page	Name of the page to which the multimedia file is attached. If you are using the Macro Browser, just start typing the name of the page and then select it from the dropdown list that appears. The page can be in the same space or another space.
Attachment	None	File name of the multimedia file.
Width	If not specified, the browser will determine the width based on the file type.	Width of the movie window to be displayed on the page. By default, this value is specified in pixels. You can also choose to specify a percentage of the window's width, or any other value accepted by HTML.
Height	If not specified, the browser will determine the height based on the file type.	Height of the movie window to be displayed on the page. By default, this value is specified in pixels. You can also choose to specify a percentage of the window's height, or any other value accepted by HTML.
Autoplay	False	If this option is checked (that is, if the parameter is set to 'true') then the video or audio file will start playing as soon as the page is loaded. If this option is not checked (set to 'false') then the file will not play until the user clicks the icon or image on the page. See the note about autoplay below.

Notes

• The multimedia file must be attached to a Confluence page. For security reasons, files located on remote servers are not permitted. See the Widget Connector for displaying live content from external sites.

• You will need the relevant multimedia plugin for your browser. Your browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and others) needs a plugin to play the video or audio file on a Confluence page. For example, to play a Flash movie you need the Flash plugin. Many plugins are shipped with the major browsers by default. If a user does not have the required plugin installed and enabled in their browser, they will not be able to view the multimedia files on the page.

• Autoplay may not always work as expected. You can set autoplay on, so that your video or audio file should start playing as soon as the page is loaded into the browser. (See parameters.) However, this setting may not always work as expected. Confluence will send an instruction to the browser plugin that plays the multimedia file. Different browsers and different media plugins behave in different ways, and not all of them respect such instructions.

• Use the Office Connector to display Office documents. Take a look at the Office Connector for embedding Word documents, presentations and other Office documents onto your Confluence page.

• If you get the error, 'Unable to embed content of type application/octet-stream', this means the MIME type is not recognised.

• Advanced users can try styling via CSS. By default, each embedded object is wrapped in a div tag. If you wish to style the div and its contents, override the embeddedObject CSS class. Specifying an ID as a property also allows you to style different embedded objects differently. CSS class names in the format embeddedObject-ID are used.

Related Topics

Working with Macros
Widget Connector Macro
Working with the Office Connector
Working with Attachments

Take me back to Confluence User's Guide

Using of the Include Page Macro The answer displayed above is using the Include Page Macro which allows you to include a Confluence page from the same instance in another Confluence page

 Functionality that allows users to "promote" or vote on content, to show which ideas are most popular.  Is this possible with Confluence?

Yes, there are two plugins that can facilitate this.  One is the Rate Macro:

    http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/TzYC

The other is the survey macro which poses questions/polls and collects results:

    http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/WosC

{expand:Ability to handle different languages and international characters within wikis?

}

Absolutely, we're committed to making our applications available to everyone. That's why you'll find a growing collection of professional and user-generated translations.

Completed Language Packs:

• German
• Russian
• English (US)
• Spanish (Spain)
• Swedish
• Japanese

Languages that in still in translation, but can be packaged into language packs:

• Chinese CN Translation
• Danish_DK_Translation
• English_US Translation
• Finnish_FI Translation
• French_FR Translation
• German_DE Translation
• Greek_EL Translation
• Hungarian Translation
• Korean_KR Translation
• Portuguese_BR Translation
• Russian_RU Translation
• Simplified Chinese zh_CN Translations
• Spanish ES_es Translation
• Traditional Chinese TW Translation

 Can you assign a watch for other users?

Out of the box, "watches" are initiated by the users themselves, and cannot be assigned by anyone else.

However, there is the Autowatch Plugin that will allow Confluence Administrators to specify whether a logged-in user who contributes a page, news item, comment or attachment is automatically added as a watcher for the related page or news item, so that they are notified on future changes.

 Permissions

What a user is allowed to do in Confluence is determined by the permissions they have assigned to them. Managing the users of a Confluence installation consists of giving the right users the right permissions.

Traditionally, security is determined by the Principle of Least Privilege: you give each person the minimum amount of permissions that allow them to do their job. Unless someone can demonstrate a specific need to see or change some data, they are not given the authority to do so. For Confluence this is entirely the opposite approach. Confluence is a tool for communication and collaboration. You get the most value out of Confluence the more people you have participating in its discussions and editing its pages. Because Confluence keeps histories of all changes, it is very easy to see who has changed what, and reverse any edits that should not have been made. In short, you should design the security of a Confluence installation in accordance with the principle of Most Privilege. Give people the ability to do anything that you can't think of a good reason to restrict them from doing.

There are three levels of permissions in Confluence: Global Permissions, Space Permissions and Page Restrictions.

To understand how Space Permissions and Page Restrictions affect each other, please see Security Overview.

  Are links controlled by permissions, are they hidden if you don't have permission to view the page, can you give read only access?

Pages are protected by permissions, so when you link to a page that another user is not allowed to see, users without permissions who access that link will get a generic message that states, "Page Not Permitted".

The link itself is not hidden, you will still be able to see the link.

Also to note, restricted pages will not show up in a search. So users are only allowed to see content that they have permissions to see.

You can certainly assign read only access to either pages or spaces, as long as the Space Admin give you the restrict page rights.

 How much can we change the interface to hide functionality, etc?

This depends entirely on which component you wish to hide. For example, hiding the "Bookmarking" feature takes only a few clicks, disabling the bookmark plugin, while other components such as hiding the print button will involve modifying the decorator files that requires one to have coding knowledge.

So even though you have complete flexibility with the control of the look and feel with Confluence, some are more involved than others, we have made a guide available which can be found here.

 Reporting - Can you view activity by user? Exporting this info to some format to be combined with other customer data?

Statistics on each space's activity are available, including:

1. How many pages and news posts have been
   • viewed
   • added
   • edited
2. Which content is the most popular (i.e. most frequently viewed)
3. Which content is the most active (i.e. most frequently edited)
4. Which people are the most active contributors/editors of content

You can view a space's activity by clicking on the Activity button in the Space Menu.

Further, the Contributors Plugin contains macros to display contributors and statistics from a page or a set of pages.

Out of the box, Confluence does not have a way to export activities data. However, if you are looking to get more statistics from Confluence you may wish to view this documentation which describes methods in which you can get more statistics from Confluence, as well as other applications you can leverage.

 We have content we want to seed into the wiki--and then ask users to edit, revise, comment. Any limit on amount of content the platform can handle? Also, in what form would content need to be for uploading?

There are no space limitations for Confluence beyond what your IT infrastructure allows.  

For uploading, you can attach any form of file as an attachment.  Attachments are versioned when they are edited or revised (and you can include comments when you upload a new version).  This means that you can view the history of an attachment's progess with Confluence.  

Also, with the Office Connector, you can easily turn MS Word documents into Confluence wiki pages.  More on the Office Connector here:

    http://www.atlassian.com/office/

If you are looking to upload content that was previously on another wiki, you can take advantage of our Univerisal Wiki Converter:

    http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/R8IC

If you are looking at hosted solutions for Confluence, there are space limitations.  Look here for more information

 Is this or other presentations available for download?

Yes.

You can download the Confluence Overview Video from here.

You may also like to view a recording a recent webinars, conducted by Matt Hodges. The webinar recording is split into two parts which can be downloaded from here:

• Part 1
• Part 2

The slides used in today's demonstration can be found here.

 If we don't use our internal IT team to develop a custom look and feel, who do we use?

We have Partners around the globe who help implement, customize, configure, and support Atlassian products. Our network of partners offer a wide range of software development skills, consulting expertise, and best practices experience to help customers leverage their investment.

To look at procuring Atlassian professional services from one of our official Atlassian Partners, please visit:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/QqoC

Feel free to contact any suitable partners directly, or if you would like a recommendation then just forward your requirements to partners@atlassian.com and our business development manager will respond to you shortly.

  Is there anywhere I can find what's new in confluence 2.9 compared to confluence 2.8 or earlier versions?

You can read the Atlassian's blog press release about Confluence 2.9 here:

http://tinyurl.com/Conf29

Further, you can view full release notes here:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/I4V0CQ

And if you are thinking about upgrading the official Confluence Upgrade guide can be found here:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/4hE

 What happens to all of our content if we choose to not continue with Atlassian Confluence?

Confluence is a low-risk investment in the sense that it doesn't hide your information.  If you chose not to continue, you can backup your entire instance (attachments included)as an XML file:

    http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/_n4C

Additionally, you can export individual spaces in XML, HTML and PDF formats allowing them to be easily transferred.  A guide to exporting can be found here:

    http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/0yAC

 How does Confluence Integrate with JIRA?

Use of the Include Page Macro The answer displayed below is using the Include Page Macro which allows you to include a Confluence page from the same instance in another Confluence page

Please refer to the guide to Installing Confluence and JIRA Together. JIRA and Confluence are designed to complement each other. 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. Below are some ways you can get JIRA and Confluence working together.

On this page: Setting Up Trusted Communication between JIRA and Confluence Inserting JIRA issues Combining Confluence Shortcuts and JIRA Quick Search Viewing Confluence Content in JIRA or JIRA Content in Confluence Integrating JIRA and Confluence User Management Useful Plugins The information on this page does not apply to Confluence OnDemand.

Setting Up Trusted Communication between JIRA and Confluence

An administrator can configure JIRA (3.12.0 or later) and Confluence to communicate in a trusted way, so that Confluence can request information from JIRA on behalf of the currently logged-in user. JIRA will not ask the user to log in again or to supply a password.

Trusted communication is used when embedding information from one application (for example, a list of JIRA issues) into another application (for example, a Confluence page).

Read more about trusted communication.

Inserting JIRA issues

You can insert issues from a JIRA site onto your Confluence page using the 'Insert JIRA Issue' dialogue box. You can also use this dialogue box to create a new issue on the JIRA site. See Inserting JIRA Issues.

Combining Confluence Shortcuts and JIRA Quick Search

In our Confluence site's global configuration (Administration > Shorcut Links) we have the following shortcut defined:

JIRA: http://jira.atlassian.com/secure/QuickSearch.jspa?searchString=

Use the above option to create links using Confluence's shortcut notation.

• Link directly to JIRA issues like this: CONF-1000
• Use JIRA's quick-search functionality to create links to particular groups of issues. The following link will display a list of all open issues in the Confluence project of type 'Improvement': CONF open improvements

Viewing Confluence Content in JIRA or JIRA Content in Confluence

Using Gadgets

You can embed a Confluence activity stream or a Confluence page in JIRA's dashboard. Likewise, JIRA gadgets can be rendered on a Confluence page. See Adding a Confluence Gadget to a JIRA Dashboard and Gadget Macro for information on how to set up gadgets.

Using the JIRA Issues macro

For versions earlier than Confluence 3.1 and JIRA 4.0, use the {jiraissues} and {jiraportlet} macros to embed JIRA reports and portlets into your Confluence site

Any JIRA search result can be embedded in a Confluence page using the JIRA Issues macro with your choice of included fields and field ordering, and any JIRA dashboard portlet can be embedded in a Confluence page using the JIRA Portlet macro.

Integrating JIRA and Confluence User Management

To save you having to enter users into both JIRA and Confluence, you may benefit from using Atlassian Crowd as the user repository for both applications. Alternatively you can configure Confluence to use JIRA's user database. See Connecting to Crowd or JIRA for User Management.

Useful Plugins

Before installing a plugin into your Confluence site, please check the plugin's information page to see whether it is supported by Atlassian, by another vendor, or not at all. See our guidelines on plugin support.

• The JIRA Linker plugin provides a custom field that helps you find an URL, particularly a Confluence page, so you can add a page link into a JIRA issue.