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While Confluence does not have a proper offline client, there are a few manual workarounds are available. The request for a offline client is being tracked in at CONF-3726 as all the current read/write options don't have conflict resolution. This means that users must be careful that their updates don't overwrite changes made while they were offline.

Read/Write Options

Export To Microsoft Word

Use the Office Connector plugin or the commercial Office Add-in to import Microsoft Word documents into Confluence as wiki pages. Users can disconnect with local copies in Word format, view or edit those inside Word and upload the new versions later, or create new pages offline.

(plus) Allows updates
(minus) No conflict/merge for updates
(minus) Best with a small number of pages

This is recommended for:

  • Editing Word documents
  • Editing pages, if the user isn't comfortable with editing wiki markup

Use Network Drive Access

Use the WebDAV plugin to mount Confluence as a network drive. When going offline, users can copy across attachments and wiki pages they wish to work on. Updated files can be uploaded later. Users confident with wiki markup can also edit pages directly and upload those changes later.

(plus) Allows updates
(minus) No conflict/merge for updates
(minus) Slow
(minus) Pages shown as wiki markup

This is recommended for:

  • Editing any attachment that is not a Word document
  • Editing pages, if the user is comfortable with wiki markup

Road Runner

Still in early aplpha. Please see author's comments on the bottom of this page.

RoadRunner for Confluence

Feedback? brendan@artemissoftware.biz

Read-Only Options

Local Confluence Mirror

Users can have their own copy of public wiki, or a public space from a private wiki, on their local machine. Each user installs Confluence Standalone on their machine with a starter license. An administrator makes the site or space XML backups available for download, then each user downloads and imports the most recent XML backup into their local instance whenever they need offline access.

(plus) Confluence UI
(plus) Can include attachments
(plus) Searchable
(minus) Importing the local mirror back will overwrite the project or site
(minus) XML backups expose all protected page content
(minus) Requires hosting backup files
(minus) Unsuitable for large instances
(minus)  free personal licenses were discontinued, so each mirror requires at least a $10 starter license

One way to make the latest backups automatically available for download would be to write a custom script to periodically determine the most recent backup file in the Confluence backup directory and upload it to a specific Confluence backups page using the remote API.

HTML Export

Users with administrative rights can use either the AutoExport Plugin or manually export a space to HTML. This export can be made freely available.

(plus) Easy
(plus) Can be hosted online
(minus) No search
(minus) No attachments

PDF Export

Users with administrative rights can export a space to PDF or if you need control over the content hierarchy, layout and font styles then use the PDF Documentation Generator. This export can be made freely available.

(plus) Easy
(plus) Searchable
(minus) No attachments

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6 Comments

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  1. Dec 21, 2008

    Brendan Patterson

    Hi Everyone,

    This is something I've been thinking about for a long time and the recent AtlasCamp inspired me to write it.

    I have released an early alpha version. If you find this is moving in a possible direction to solve your needs please send me feedback. I have big plans for this and a feature list a mile long but really need some help in terms of where to take it to most efficiently serve people's needs. Comments, critiques, criticisms appreciated!!
    brendan@artemissoftware.biz

    RoadRunner for Confluence

    This might not solve all of these issues for all users, but for some that are willing to install a personal Confluence this should offer many of these features.

    Thank you!!
    Brendan Patterson

    1. Dec 22, 2008

      Boots Wang [atlassian]

      Thanks Brendan, I'll include Road Runner in the list of options.

      Cheers,
      Boots

    2. Dec 22, 2008

      Andy Brook

      Hi Brendan,
      In its current form its certainly a nice front-end to the functionality in Remote Import plugin, however, a 'killer' feature for your application (and something Ive been asked for in the past) is to be able to detect changes and do a reverse sync, updating as appropriate, and providing some kind of method to reconcile pages updated in both places. Is this kind of thing on your roadmap?

      1. Dec 22, 2008

        Brendan Patterson

        Hi Andy,

        Thanks so much for having a look!

        To answer your question yes - a reverse sync is on the roadmap. That was actually what I started implementing off the bat, but a friend recommended I should start with a simpler case. Two way sync seems like it shouldn't be all that hard but the algorithms are a bit complex and the edge cases to deal with are numerous. However that is definitely on the roadmap.

        In the meantime I am trying to help people get most of the way there much sooner:

        • The current sync down from the remote to local Confluence server does detect changes and after the first sync only gets content (pages and attachments) that have been updated. So that should generally be very efficient.
        • You CAN also send content back using the 'page copy' feature. In discussing use cases with a couple of people it often seems that on the local side you'll be editing a known subset of the content. So right now you can select those pages in the tree and send them back with a click. I'll soon be prompting the user to select from a list of 'recently updated content' if they choose to send back.

        I do completely agree with you about the killer feature and it is coming, but in the meantime I'm hoping to give people the ability to move content back and forth almost as easily.

        That might be more information than you were looking for (smile)

        Please continue to send along any other thoughts, ideas, features (killer or otherwise).

        Many thanks!
        Brendan

        1. Dec 22, 2008

          Andy Brook

          Ok Brendan, thats great, I'm wathcing the plugin page so will checkout developments (hrm).

  2. Sep 10, 2009

    Ulf Slunga

    Consider this scenario:

    We write technical documentation & user manuals in Confluence for a web system. This documentation needs to be made available both online & as printed documentation.
    The printed documentation is no problem, exporting spaces as pdf is OK (not brilliant, but acceptable).
    Regarding the online user manual, there are (at least) two alternatives:

    • Linking from the customer deployed system to our own confluence server. This is in many ways great, it assures that the information is updated. Not a problem, and this is a suggested solution for installations where possible.
    • Linking from the customer deployed system to a customer in-house "online" manual. There are customers who for security reasons simply do not accept the solution above. There are obvious drawbacks with this (not as easily to update frequently), but if the solution above is not acceptable, this could be the second best solution. This would imply snapshot distribution of manuals to be deployed at customer installations. Now...I could export my space as HTML and deploy this as an archive at the customer installation, but the lack of search and navigation that is supported by confluence deployed content, makes this a rather primitive solution.

    What I really would like to do is to run a (probably read-only) confluence hosted solution locally at the customer installation, in the cases where the external access to our own server is not accepted by the customer.

    • What are the best alternatives for this solution ?
    • Do I have to install/license a full confluence server at the customer ?
    • What about hosting a read-only "confluence-engine" ?
    • Any other ideas on read-only options ?