confluence apps

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5 New Confluence Apps to Get Work Done Faster – First Quarter 2018

April 5, 2018
#How To#Confluence
11 min

Atlassian app ecosystem offers a lot of nice solutions to our daily challenges at work. Every quarter we share the list of our favorite new apps for Confluence, Jira, and Bitbucket that can help you stay productive.

So we have reviewed all the newest Confluence add-ons appeared on the Atlassian Marketplace in the first quarter of 2018 and selected the ones that may help you power up your Confluence.

Our Top 5 listing for this quarter includes the following apps:

  1. Favorite Pages for Confluence Server by StiltSoft.
  2. Image Grid for Confluence Sever by FUCHSTEUFELS GbR.
  3. EZ Survey for Confluence Cloud by AppSentia.
  4. Confluence Readers for Confluence Server by MustHave Technology.
  5. Purge Recycle Bin for Confluence Server by scmenthusiast.

Below is a list of these simple and useful solutions with a short description of what each one offers.

Favorite Pages for Confluence

Favorite Pages for Confluence provides you with a single list of your top-visited pages. It helps you quickly access any of the pages you have recently worked on, visited, or saved for later. You can lock any page by clicking the padlock icon or even assign a hotkey to the locked page to always have it at hand.

Moreover, you can proceed to editing your saved for later pages in one click with no need to browse through spaces or look for the required page on the dashboard.

This useful tool saves your time and effort when you need to quickly resume your work in Confluence.

Pricing: The pricing for Favorite Pages for Confluence Server starts from $25 for 25 users and ends at $1,500 for the unlimited license.

Image Grid

The Image Grid app helps you arrange your images in a visually appealing way. You just upload the required images and add the Image Grid macro to your Confluence page. There is no need to click the Insert button to add the images to the page.

You can set the required image size that will be applied to all the images of the grid.

When you change the width of your browser window or collapse the Confluence sidebar, the image grid automatically adapts to the page view.

This simple tool helps you keep multiple images lined up and organized.

Pricing: Image Grid for Confluence Server is free to use.

EZ Survey

You can use surveys to measure a variety of things in a workplace. EZ Survey allows you to easily create surveys that can be populated with different types of questions. You just need to add the EZ Survey macro to the required Confluence page and create as many questions as you need.

This solution helps you obtain crucial feedback from your colleagues to the benefit of your company and working environment.

You can check the report that will show you the information about each question in your survey. The table shows the detailed information and the pie chart illustrates it.

This add-on will help you to create surveys, polls, and votes right in Confluence.

Pricing: The price for the EZ Survey app for Confluence Cloud starts at $5/mo for up to 10 users and ends at $445/mo for 2,000 users.

Confluence Readers

Confluence Readers is an app that helps you make sure that the recipients of your content get it and read it.

After installation of this add-on, you will find a new tab called Readers in the menu of every Confluence page. You just need to select a certain user or a group of users, set the due date, and check the box Notify added users.

The users from the list will receive the notifications not to miss this information. The good thing is that every recipient can see the due date.

This way you can easily track the activity of the readers. You can add new requests to the existing list of readers.

It can be a nice solution for sharing some time-sensitive information with your colleagues.

Pricing: The pricing for Confluence Readers starts from $100 for 25 users and ends at $3,000 for the unlimited number of users.

Purge Recycle Bin for Confluence

Purge Recycle Bin for Confluence is a simple solution that helps you automatically purge your recycle bin content keeping the Confluence database and attachments clean and compact. When you click the Configure button in the Manage add-ons section of this app, you can configure the purge retention period.

This way the app sets the purge schedule. By default it is performed every Saturday at 3:00 AM.

This tool allows you to avoid errors during XML export/import and helps you speed up the Confluence site.

Pricing: Purge Recycle Bin for Confluence for Confluence Server is free to use.

Give each one of these apps a fair trial and try them for free for a week or so, and see which one works for you and allows you to become more productive.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment on this blog post below. Tell us more about your favorite Confluence apps.

Don’t forget to subscribe for email notifications about new blog posts in this series!

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    5 New Confluence Apps to Level Up Your Productivity – Fourth Quarter 2017

    January 31, 2018
    #How To#Confluence
    14 min

    Today we want to present you with our Top 5 Confluence apps of the fourth quarter of the past year. We have checked all new Confluence solutions released between October 1 and December 31 and selected the five most useful ones for you to try.

    You can check our previous blog posts featuring Confluence add-ons that appeared on the Atlassian Marketplace in the first, second, and third quarters of 2017.

    Here is our list of apps for Confuence that can boost your team’s productivity:

    1. Infavor – Decisions for Confluence Server by Candylio.
    2. Team Playbook – OKRs for Confluence Server by Atlassian Labs.
    3. Niko Calendar Confluence – Happy Teams for Confuence Cloud by Designextech.
    4. Page Branching for Confluence for Confluence Server by Scandio GmbH.
    5. xTables for Confluence Server by TechUp.

    Now let’s check the most interesting features and capabilities of these Confluence add-ons.

    Infavor – Decisions for Confluence

    Let’s face it, team decision making can be tricky and sometimes painful. However, the chances of the decision being a success increase when team members with complementary skills are involved. But at the same time putting a bunch of people together at a meeting may cause confusion that sometimes leads to chaos.

    If you are looking for additional ways to enhance the effectiveness of your team, you can try the Infavor app. This solution offers you a simple way to save the time you usually spend on discussions with your colleagues.

    After installation of this app, you will find a new tab called Decisions in every space of your Confluence site. Now you can easily create new proposals. You just need to write the title of your idea, add the colleagues you want to discuss it with, and set the deadline.

    The participants will vote for your idea depending on their point of view.

    You can add comments to describe your decision. Other users will see this information on the page of your proposal. You can also add new participants to vote for your idea.

    When you click the Decisions tab of your space, you can see the list of all proposals created by you and other users.

    The Infavor app helps you quickly get feedback from your colleagues with no need to set up a meeting to discuss something. This way you can:

    • keep track of all the details of your current project;
    • find volunteers among your teammates;
    • use this solution as a team health monitor.

    Pricing: Infavor Decisions for Confluence Server is free to use.

    Team Playbook – OKRs

    When your team doesn’t have a clear goal, it is impossible to make right decisions and to know what to focus on. Today you can find a lot of goal-setting tools that help you set, track, and execute goals.

    Atlassian shared their best practices in Atlassian Team Playbook that can help your team work better together. Atlassian provides you with step-by-step instructions you can use to get all team members on track towards achieving your goals.

    Team Playbook – OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) is one of the blueprints Atlassian offers you to easily manage objectives within a team. This tool provides you with some tips how to understand what is important at the moment and helps you plan ahead to get closer to your goals.

    After installation of this app, click the Create button on the Confluence menu, and choose the OKRs blueprint. You will get a pre-formatted page with helpful instructions and a table to fill in.

    This way you can set strategies and execute your determined targets. Moreover, this useful tool helps you evaluate the performance of each team member.

    To achieve better results, you can try the Objectives and Key Results play introduced by Atlassian.

    Pricing: Team Playbook – OKRs for Confluence Server is free to use.

    Niko Calendar Confluence – Happy Teams

    We’ve already found a good way to collect your team’s feedback. Moreover, we know how to keep the team focused on what really matters. Now we will tell you more about the tool that helps you track the well-being of your team.

    The Niko Calendar Confluence app is a tracker that asks for your mood of the day.

    This simple tool shows you the mood of each team member in particular and the overall mood of the selected team. You can also check the team happiness metric that allows you to be proactive and avoid a point of no return.

    These stats help you identify problems early. You can choose any of your projects and track its progress using Niko Calendar Confluence.

    This app allows you to get feedback from changes. If your team accepts the change, the overall mood will lighten up. And in case of a bad change, the mood of your team will change accordingly.

    Pricing: The price for this app for Confluence Cloud starts at $3/mo for 20 users and ends at $110/mo for 2,000 users.

    Page Branching for Confluence

    Earlier we wrote about an efficient way to update the public content discreetly preventing users from viewing the drafts. The Page Branching app is one more solution to solve this problem. It allows you to create a separate branch of your Confluence page you can edit.

    You just need to enable this app in the space tools.

    Now each page of the space contains the Page Branching button. So you create a new branch you can edit. Meanwhile, the original page remains untouched until you merge the branched page.

    Each branch you create will copy the page restrictions from the parent page. However, you can easily edit the page restrictions for the branches. You can also create as many branches of one page as you need. When you want to update the content of your page, you just need to click the Merge button.

    This useful tool allows you to merge your pages in both directions. So if you’ve changed the content in the original document, you can still merge them to your branch files. You will get a note if the changes are contradictory and can solve the conflict of two versions right in the editor mode. The good thing is that you can always retrieve the previous version of your document.

    Your team can work on multiple versions of your content at the same time with the help of this app.

    Pricing: Page Branching for Confluence Server is free to use.

    xTables

    This simple tool helps you quickly filter and calculate the content of your tables in Confluence. You just install this app and it starts working with no need to add any macros to the page with the table.

    Just hover over the required table column, click the loupe icon, and start typing. This option supports grouped rows and columns.

    You can also perform some simple calculations with the help of this app. You just need to choose either row or column and choose the action you want to perform.

    These operations are available only in the edit mode. It is a good solution for small tables because you still need to perform the most of work manually.

    If you need to filter complex Confluence tables, aggregate data in pivot table reports, and build dynamic Confluence charts on the fly, we recommend you to try Table Filter and Charts for Confluence.

    Pricing: xTables for Confluence Server is free at the moment.

    These were our five favorite apps in the fourth quarter of 2017. Implementing any of these add-ons will definitely help you get your tasks done the right way. You can try any of them for free and make your own choice.

    If you have any questions, feel free to comment on this blog post below. Don’t forget to subscribe for email notifications about new blog posts in this series!

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      How to Produce Better Internal Documentation Using Comala Workflows and StiltSoft Talk

      December 21, 2017
      #Confluence#Collaboration
      11 min

      This blog post was created in cooperation with Mike Rink – Product Evangelist at Comalatech. We will show you a better way to update your public content discreetly preventing anonymous users from viewing your drafts and internal discussions.

      Atlassian Confluence is a team collaboration platform that helps you create, share, and keep your information in one place. Teams who choose it discover improvements to internal communication, document management, and project development processes.

      But Confluence is more than a document repository. A number of companies have found Confluence to be an extremely effective tool for knowledge sharing, specifically as an extranet site for public documentation. Many Atlassian Vendors use Confluence as a product documentation portal to share essential information about their apps with their current and potential customers.

      For companies that need to communicate internally, Confluence can be configured as an intranet site to share information with teammates who don’t have an account in Confluence. In this case only members of your corporate network can access your Confluence site, but the information is still shared with stakeholders. It can be a great solution for large companies where only certain departments can log in to Confluence and other employees have read-only access to Confluence spaces.

      Whether working on public content using Confluence as an extranet or an intranet site, both have one thing in common: the number of content editors is smaller than the number of information users. The editors may encounter difficulty in updating the content discreetly because any change they make or any inline comment they add to the public content in Confluence will be visible for anonymous users.

      In this blog post, you will discover how two apps, Comala Workflows and Talk – Advanced Inline Comments, help teams to update public content internally, preventing anonymous users from viewing drafts and internal discussions.

      Issue Overview

      Consider a common case when HR departments produce Confluence content, and other employees in the company have read-only access to the information the HR team shares.

      In the example below, the public space is called “Info for all employees”. This means that everybody in the company can view any page in this space.

      In this case the management team asked the HR department to edit the Staff Regulations, Rules, and Instructions page. They need to describe their company’s new dress code policy, add information about the benefits the company offers, and explain what the term ’employee behavior’ means for their company.

      The editors have a lot of things to discuss in private while writing. Unfortunately, the native comments in Confluence have no viewing restrictions. Moreover, any update made to the content will be immediately visible to the employees.

      So what is the best way to prevent the employees from viewing the drafts and internal discussions?

      The Inefficient Way

      Imagine that the HR team doesn’t use any Confluence apps.

      In this case they will need to keep all drafts either in a separate space with viewing restrictions or use a separate Confluence instance. Otherwise all the changes made to the content are visible to everybody.

      When they are ready to publish this page, they will need to copy and paste it, or move it from this space to the public one.

      If they copy the content from another Confluence instance, they will spend even more time and effort. Especially when the document contains pictures, because they will need to insert them manually in the public page.

      The HR team needs to add three new separate documents. This means that they will repeat the process with moving their content to the public space at least three times, tripling the effort required.

      Another problem is that they can’t discuss the content discreetly in the public space. They need to resolve all comments before they move the page to the public space because Confluence native inline comments have no viewing restrictions.

      The HR team will also spend extra time resolving comments because:

      • The page shows only one inline comment at a time;
      • The editors do not see the comments in the edit mode;
      • The editors can add and resolve comments only in the view mode.

      As you can see, this process is time-consuming and bit tiresome if the team doesn’t use any apps. The good news is that there is a better way to fulfill this task.

      The Better Way

      We will show you how to work on the documents right in the public space using Comala Workflows and Talk – Advanced Inline Comments.

      Comala Workflows

      This useful solution from Comalatech helps the HR team ensure the content shared is approved, while allowing users from other teams to see the last approved version of the page.

      They start by applying a workflow to a page. Next they assign team members to review, approve, and publish pages.

      When the status of the page is ‘In progress’, the content is available only to the editors.

      They can add tasks for their colleagues.

      Users that can not edit the page will not see the content until it’s been approved and published. Editors can confidently edit documents, because users outside the editing team will always see the last approved version of the page.

      This app allows the HR team to track all the updates of the page.

      This way the Comala Workflows app simplifies the whole process. Now the editors can manage three new pages in the public space.

      Talk – Advanced Inline Comments

      This powerful tool from StiltSoft helps users add inline comments (talks) that have a wider set of capabilities than the native inline comments in Confluence.

      Now the HR team can set default space viewing permissions applied to all the talks created within the space. They can add either the whole group of users or certain users. With the help of this feature any conversation of the HR team on a public page in this space becomes private.

      This app also allows users to restrict access to specific talks for appropriate users or groups.

      With Talk, the editors can add comments anywhere on the page, both while editing (not available in native inline comments) and viewing the page content. They can also add and resolve comments in both modes.

      They can view all available comments at the same time.

      Now the HR team can review three new pages simultaneously, discuss the content in real time, and collaborate more effectively.

      Choose the Better Way

      Using Comala Workflows and Talk is a great solution for collaboration between different departments of your company when one department actively works on the content of the document and other departments see the approved versions of your content. It saves time and helps you avoid mistakes when you work on public content together with your team.

      Comalatech and StiltSoft offer a trial period for all their products. If you want to facilitate interaction between the editors of your internal documentation, you are more than welcome to try the combination of Comala Workflows and Talk – Advanced Inline Comments for free.

      Check back soon as we will tell you how Comala Checklists and StiltSoft Table Filter and Charts help software companies organize data better. To stay tuned, subscribe for email notifications about new posts in our blog (enter your email in the ‘Newsletter’ section on the sidebar).

      If you have any questions, feel free to comment on this blog post.

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        5 Add-ons to Advance in Confluence – Second Quarter 2017

        July 20, 2017
        #News#Confluence
        2 min

        2017 has passed its equator and it’s already summer time. And as usual we stick to our tradition to collect the five new tools on the Atlassian Marketplace. We have reviewed more than 50 add-ons appeared on the Marketplace between April 1 and June 30 and selected the five solutions that you may try.

        If you have reached our blog for the first time, we want to remind you that this is a regular series of blog posts. To find out the list of add-on featured in the past quarter, see our 5 Add-ons to Boost Your Confluence in Q1 2017.

        The current listing for the second quarter includes the following solutions:

        It’s high time to see what benefits each of these solutions can deliver to you.

        Continue reading “5 Add-ons to Advance in Confluence – Second Quarter 2017”

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          Case Study: How M20 Technology uses Confluence for customer and partner relationship management (CRM & PRM)

          August 3, 2016
          #Confluence#Case Study
          12 min

          About M20 Technology

          M20 Technology, an Atlassian Expert Partner in New York City, helps companies work and collaborate more effectively through the use of Atlassian tools.

          Atlassian Confluence is the knowledge base and team collaboration tool of choice for M20 Technology. Over the years they’ve gathered a great load of Confluence best practices for various cases. One of them is managing customer and partner relationships in Confluence.

          How M20 built a CRM and PRM in Confluence

          As a fast-growing business, M20 recognized the need for customer and partner relationship management (CRM & PRM). They needed an overview of their customers, prospects and partners to help build strong and sustainable relationships with them. For most organizations, such visibility is essential for continued success and growth of a business.

          As a business that specializes in building solutions in Confluence, the natural solution was to build it there and here is what it looks like today:

          This post covers a simplified solution of what M20 Technology uses today. This version makes it  easier to get started and create a basic framework you can customize and build upon. If you are interested in learning how to build a more comprehensive solution, check out this webinar hosted by ServiceRocket and M20 Technology.

          To set up such a system in Confluence, M20 Technology extended their wiki with 4 add-ons:

          • Google Apps Connector by M20 Technology – to connect Confluence with a company’s Google Apps account to retrieve contacts details
          • Reporting and Scaffolding by ServiceRocket – for building a table with contacts of customers and partners on a Confluence page
          • Table Filter and Charts for Confluence by StiltSoft – to dynamically filter the contacts table, e.g. search for a specific contact, find all contacts of a certain type (customer, prospect, or partner) or within a given location, hide columns irrelevant for a current session

          It allowed them to create a table with contacts similar to the one below:

          This example contacts table includes:

          • 6 columns that are automatically populated with data from a linked Google Apps account: Name, Company, Email, City, State, Phone
          • the Type column, which has a predefined list of options a maintainer of a contacts table needs to manually choose from (customer, prospect, partner)
          • the Notes column, where you can enter any additional contact related information

          It’s up to you to decide what columns to use in your own contacts table. You can tune it as you wish by adding new columns (e.g. contact status, job title, LinkedIn profile, lead source) and deleting those you don’t need.

          Setting up a contacts table

          Let’s see how to configure this contacts table.

          To get started:

          1. Install the Google Apps Connector, Reporting, Scaffolding, and Table Filter and Charts for Confluence add-ons.

          2. Set up a Google Service account and authorize it in Confluence. Configure Google Apps Connector (see the Administrator Guide for details). If you don’t have a Google Apps account, you can skip this step and proceed by creating a dynamic table. Though you’d need to fill out your table manually adding one row at a time.

          Then create a Confluence page for your contacts table and set up a structure of macros on it as described below. It requires some work, but it’s initial configuration that needs to be done only once.

          While editing a page, insert a Report Table macro. Inside its body, add a Google Contact Reporter macro. In reporter, specify whether to list contacts from all Google Apps accounts linked to Confluence or only from some of them.

          Below the Google Contact Reporter macro, you need to add 8 ‘Report Column’ macros:

          1. Title the first Report Column Name. Embed a ‘Report Info’ in it. Set the ‘Report Info’ key to ‘report:item’ and check the ‘Link To Item’ box. It will display the contact’s name and link to the contact’s profile page.


          2. The title for the second one is Company. Check the ‘Injected’ box for it. Insert a ‘Report Info’ inside its macro body with the key ‘contact:company’.

          3. Next four Report Columns are also injected ones. Meaning you need to check the ‘Injected’ box for them. But they don’t require ‘Report Info’ macros. Insert the following keys in their macro bodies instead:

          • %contact:email% for the Email Report Column (to output the contact’s email address)
          • %contact:work address > address:city%  for the City Report Column (to extract the city property of the contact’s work address)
          • %contact:work address > address:state% for the State Report Column (to display the state of the contact’s work address)
          • %contact:phone% for the Phone Report Column (to render the contact’s phone number)

          4. The remaining Report Columns are Type and Notes. Both of them are also injected:

          • Inside the Type Report Column insert a ‘List Data’ macro. Specify a field name for it and choose ‘Select’ as a type option. Then embed 3 ‘List Option’ macros in your ‘List Data’ with values ‘Customer’, ‘Prospect’ and ‘Partner’. This combination of macros will create a drop-down list with contact type options for you to select from
          • And the last Report Column is Notes. Add a ‘Text Data’ macro in its body. Provide a unique field name and select ‘line’ as the type of field. It will display a text field in each contact record for you to type in your notes when working with a report.

          Now the configuration of your contacts table is done. It’s time to add filtration to your report. To do that, insert a Table Filter macro on the very top of your page and move the ‘Report Table’ macro with all those macros embedded in it inside Table Filter.

          You can set up your filters right here while editing a page or later when viewing your table. Let’s first save the page, see our contacts, and then get back to filtration.

          Ta-dah. We’ve got a table with all our Google Apps account contact details right in Confluence.

          Initially Type and Notes columns are empty. To work with them, click the ‘Edit Contents’ button on the page. You’ll have your table displayed in a window, where you can select a contact type in a drop-down menu and enter text in the ‘Notes’ field.

          Filtering and finding contacts

          Your contact database is ready for you to work with. There is a variety of filters that will help you search, filter and analyze your massive contacts report. In this example we’ll use 4 of them:

          • Global filter to search in all columns of a table
          • ‘Company’ free text filter for search by Company name
          • ‘Type’ drop-down filter to filter by contact type, e.g. to see only prospects
          • Hide columns filter to select what columns are not important for your current goals and should be hidden

          You can add filters and make changes in your filtration panel right in the View mode.

          And have your report dynamically updated when you apply filters.

          Moreover, you can create pivot tables and illustrative charts to get a summary of your contact table and analyze your contact list.

          It’s incredibly convenient to manage your contacts in the platform where your collaboration happens. Hoping this detailed step-by-step guide makes it easy for you to set up CRM and PRM in your Confluence. And another amazing thing is that there are so many other ways your teams can benefit from add-ons used in this solution. So go ahead and try it!

          Start your free trial of add-ons for Confluence used in this solution today:

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            Top 5 New Add-ons for Atlassian Confluence – First Quarter 2016

            May 5, 2016
            #News#Confluence
            2 min

            The second month of spring has come, so it’s high time to see the Top 5 of Confluence Add-ons appeared in the Atlassian Marketplace in the 1st quarter of 2016. We have reviewed more than a dozen of Confluence add-ons published in the Marketplace between January 1 and March 31, and selected five add-ons  that may be useful and interesting to you.

            This is a regular series of blog posts about new add-ons, so if you have not read the already published posts, so feel free to find Top 5 Confluence add-ons in the first, second, third and fourth quarters of 2015.

            So, the actual list includes the following add-ons:

            Let’s try these solutions and use their capabilities in real life.

            Continue reading “Top 5 New Add-ons for Atlassian Confluence – First Quarter 2016”

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