Top 5 New Add-ons for Atlassian JIRA – First Quarter 2016
April 26, 2016
#Jira
3 min
This year we continue our regular series of posts featuring Top 5 add-ons for the most popular Atlassian products. And our new series starts from the 5-add-on pack for JIRA Server and JIRA Cloud. All these add-ons were released in the first quarter of 2016. You can also read our previous blog posts highlighting Top 5 add-ons in the first, second, third and fourth quarters of 2015.
Top 5 new add-ons for JIRA Server and Cloud includes only add-ons that appeared in the Atlassian Marketplace from January to March 2016. So, ladies and gentlemen, meet them:
Increase Employee Engagement with the 3 C’s of Internal Communication
April 13, 2016
#Confluence
1 min
This is a guest blog post from Nicholas Muldoon, creator of Better Blogs for Confluence and an Atlassian and Twitter alumnus who is passionate about improving organisational effectiveness.
Effective communication is vital to keep employees engaged and motivated. Research shows there is an “explicit positive relationship between communication satisfaction and employees’ organizational commitment”.
Authentic, frequent and collaborative conversations with employees leads to increased trust, decreased turnover and improved productivity. In this post we’ll explore how candor, cadence and collaboration can drive increased employee engagement and improve organisational performance. These are the ‘three Cs’ of effective internal communication.
Top 5 New Add-ons for Atlassian Confluence – Fourth Quarter 2015
February 4, 2016
#Confluence
2 min
It’s time to overview new add-ons appeared on the Atlassian Marketplace in the 4th quarter of 2015. Today’s post will feature 5 new plugins for Confluence that we thought can be most useful for our readers. Articles with add-ons for JIRA and DevTools are coming soon.
Earlier we have published posts about best add-ons for Confluence of the first, second and third quarters of 2015 as a part of the ‘Top New Add-ons for Atlassian Products’ series.
Top 5 new add-ons for Confluence that had their first release during October-December 2015:
Top 5 New Add-ons for Atlassian Confluence – Third Quarter 2015
October 27, 2015
#Confluence
12 min
Are you following up on our series of quarterly posts ‘Top New Add-ons for Atlassian Products’ yet? We launched it this year and you can check out the articles about add-ons for Confluence of the first and second quarters. Today’s post will highlight 5 add-ons for Confluence picked from all that were added on the Marketplace within July-September 2015. We meant this selection to be relevant for our various audience. The articles with top 5 plugins for JIRA and Bitbucket Server (Stash) are also coming soon.
Top 5 new add-ons for Confluence that had their first release during July-September 2015:
Confluence administrator creates filter groups and adds certain filters in each group. When creating a filter, it is necessary to specify its name (something that would be clear for your users) and a label that will be associated with this filter.
Let’s see what these add-ons are designed for, how you can benefit from using them and how much their licenses are.
Once you have filter groups and filters associated with certain labels, it is necessary to make sure that your Confluence content (pages, blog posts, attachments) is labeled using filter labels to make it discoverable for the add-on. When editing labels in the ‘Labels’ dialogue, you can see filters arranged in groups. By selecting needed filters, a user adds corresponding filter labels to a page.
When everything is set up, it is time to actually use the search functionality. There are several options. You can add:
When a user performs their search using the plugin search field, link or site-wide search box, they see the page with search results built based on the predefined parameters, specified in the macros settings or in the code added while setting up targeted search box. On the search results page, there are groups of filters to the left that can be used to refine search results by point-and-click.
The add-on also provides the Upload Attachment Button macro that allows you to add a button on a page, using which a user can upload files and have them attached to the current page with given labels being automatically applied to uploaded attachments.
Pricing: Brikit Targeted Search for Confluence is available for Server instances. Its commercial license costs 360$ for 25 users; 660$ for 50 users; 1200$ for 100 users.
Metadata for Confluence allows Confluence and Space administrators to assign metadata fields and sets of fields to specific pages, several pages, all pages in a space or across all spaces in order to have a congruent common structure in Confluence.
Metadata sets may be:
global – configured by Confluence administrator and available in all Confluence spaces
user-created – configured by Space admin and available in only this particular space
E.g., you want all pages in a space to have the ‘Content Info‘ metadata set with the following metadata fields: Contact Person, Page Status, Page Status Message:
To do that, you should:
Select ‘Metadata’ in the ‘Space tools’
Add the corresponding fields in the ‘Add Metadata Field’ tabHere you can add default value for a field and select type of your field:
Multi Select (Checkboxes)
Single Select (Dropdown)
Link
Single Select (Radio Buttons)
Text
Use
Create a set in the ‘Metadata Sets’ tab and fill it up with required fields
Here you can choose what Confluence templates to add this set to. As long as you want this set to be automatically applied to every newly created page in the current space, mark the ‘Default Set’ check box. Each field can be marked as hidden or required.
Every newly created page will have the ‘Content Info’ metadata set assigned to it and users will be able to view and edit metadata fields in the pop-out dialogue by clicking icon on the top right of a page.
Space administrators can make bulk changes to metadata instead of editing fields per page. It is very convenient when you need to:
add or remove metadata sets to/from multiple pages at once
make same changes in same fields on several pages
The add-on includes 3 macros:
Display Metadata Macro – shows metadata of the current page. You can select if all metadata is displayed or only the fields or sets you select
Pricing: Metadata for Confluence is available for Server instances. Its commercial license costs 240$ for 25 users; 440$ for 50 users; 800$ for 100 users.
With Presenter for Confluence you can easily make a slideshow from any Confluence page directly in your browser. The plugin adds the ‘Present’ option in the page ‘Tools’ menu.
As you click it, the content of a Confluence page turns into a slideshow with its structure preserved. You don’t have to work on separate decks, the add-on does the whole thing for you.
To get started, Confluence administrators should set up presentation profiles with different presentation styling and behavior by choosing a base theme or styling presentation with custom CSS and selecting the style and speed of the animation used for transitions between slides.
Other options include:
Display controls in the bottom right corner
Display a presentation progress bar
Display the page number of the current slide
Center slides vertically
Loop the presentation
Enable slide navigation via mouse wheel
Once done, users can pick a suitable presentation profile when selecting ‘Present’ in the ‘Tools’ page menu.
Permission Assistant provides global admins with the capability to manage user and group space permissions in bulk, see indirect permissions. It saves a lot of time in cases when you need to grant or edit permissions for a specific user or group across multiple spaces, as you get to do that in one place and no longer need to navigate to each space.
Features:
Search for users and groups
See all spaces with permissions (direct an inherited)
Add and remove permissions in bulk
Filter categorized, archived and personal spaces
See if a user receives permissions through a direct or group permission
Pricing: Permission Assistant is available for Server instances. Its commercial license costs 60$ for 25 users; 110$ for 50 users; 200$ for 100 users.
Sponsored Development: How We Improved No Email Storm Add-on
October 2, 2015
#Confluence
5 min
Mercy Ships uses Confluence as a way to collaborate between our 16 offices around the world and our Hospital Ship off the coast of Africa. Keeping informed and aware of documentation, processes, and policies is crucial in our work. StiltSoft’s No Email Storm has made it easier for our users to Save & Notify watchers when important changes are being made and Save for repeated or minor changes reducing the unnecessary and overwhelming notifications in each person’s inbox. In addition, StiltSoft worked with us to make a minor change to their product that made it an even better tool for us. Thank you StiltSoft for a great and easy to use product and for being very helpful and responsive in your services!
Michelle Vincent,
Mercy Ships
Release of No Email Storm 2.1.0 has been coordinated with Mercy Ships organization that requested a change in the user exeperience of the add-on. The client wanted to have a capability to alternate the prominence of Save and Save & Notify buttons in Confluence editor. Our company willingly provides the options of crowdfunding and sponsored development, but for this organization the requested functionality was added for free as a bit of help from our side for their noble activities. Our company will also appreciate if users of No Email Storm make small donations to Mercy Ships organization as these people are doing really great things.
About the Customer
Mercy Ships uses hospital ships to deliver free, world-class healthcare services, capacity building and sustainable development to those without access in the developing world. Founded in 1978 by Don and Deyon Stephens, Mercy Ships has worked in more than 70 countries providing services valued at more than $1 billion, treating more than 2.5 million direct beneficiaries. Each year Mercy Ships has more than 1,600 volunteers from more than 40 nations. Professionals including surgeons, dentists, nurses, healthcare trainers, teachers, cooks, seamen, engineers, and agriculturalists donate their time and skills to the effort. Mercy Ships seeks to transform individuals and serve nations one at a time. For more information click on https://www.mercyships.org/.
Details of the Release
As everybody knows, No Email Storm was created to allow better user experience while saving the page with minor updates that are not needed to share with the rest of the team through email notifications.
The current release of the add-on was decided to make public and available in the Marketplace as we at StiltSoft think that this new feature will be in-demand. So what was actually added and updated?
The configuration section of the add-on has received a new option to set the primary button for Confluence editor. So if you deal with thousands of Confluence pages, but you only add light corrections and updates so you woud not like to distract other colleagues of yours with the constant stream of notifications about added letter or corrected word. Using the native Notify Watchers option is quite inconvenient as you need all the time not to forget check or uncheck it depending on the updates you added.
With the current release of the add-on you can select which button to make prominent in Confluence editor. The other thing about this is that the key combination Ctrl + S is automatically mapped to this prominent button. So if you are a fan of hotkeys but you do not want to notify page watchers, you can set the Save button as pominent and keep pressing Ctrl + S keys for saving pages. No notifications will be sent in this case.
If you always want everybody to be updated on the page updates you made, select the Save & Notify button as prominent.
Want new functionality in our add-on in the nearest time? Send the request to us and we will discuss details of this custom enhancement with you.
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Top 5 New Add-ons for Atlassian Confluence – Second Quarter 2015
July 7, 2015
#Confluence
10 min
In April, we launched the series of quarterly posts ‘Top New Add-ons for Atlassian Products’ to highlight 5 of the add-ons our team especially liked from those appeared on the Marketplace for key Atlassian platforms during the previous quarter. It included articles about plugins of the 1st quarter for Confluence, JIRA and Stash. Now the 2nd quarter is up and after reviewing add-ons it brought, there are 3 new posts that will be coming out in the following weeks. Today’s the first of them and it’ll cover top 5 new add-ons for Confluence which had their first release during April-June 2015:
Let’s go through problems these add-ons are meant to solve, possible benefits using them could give you and their pricing.
1. CA JIRA-Confluence Issue Macro
CA JIRA-Confluence Issue Macro allows you to pull your JIRA Issue data from connected JIRA instances and have it displayed on a Confluence page in a layout you can set up as you prefer. In other words, you get to create custom JIRA Issue reports for one or multiple issues in Confluence. It provides two macros, JIRA-Confluence Issue and JIRA-Confluence Issue Field, and a blueprint, JIRA Issue Report.
With this add-on you can:
Easily select what JIRA instance to pull issue data from
Use a predefined template of JIRA Issue Report blueprint to get started quickly. If needed, its layout can be easily modified by adding, removing or rearranging issue field macros
Create your own template from scratch using add-on macros. JIRA-Confluence Issue macro is for defining a template block. While inserting it on a page, you select the JIRA Application Link and enter JIRA Query, which can be an Issue Key, Filter ID, or JQL Query. Then you need to fill it up with JIRA-Confluence Issue Field macros. Each Issue Field macro is for one issue field. You select the name of the JIRA field to display when adding macro. To organize issue field macros, you can use native Confluence styling macros, such as Section and Column macros
View Linked Issues and Sub-tasks
Pricing: CA JIRA-Confluence Issue Macro is available for Server instances. Its commercial license costs 150$ for 25 users; 400$ for 50 users; 900$ for 100 users.
With Labeler – Content Organizer users are not able to create new labels, but can only choose from those defined by administrator. It makes it easier for you to have your Confluence content organized in a better way by managing labels and attachments. To get going, label groups have to be created. Each group can consist of one or several labels. After that, when users click the Labels button while adding or editing a Confluence page or when editing labels for page attachments, instead of the standard Confluence Labels pop-up window, they will be getting the Labeler window with two sections, groups and labels.
In Groups you can see buttons for each label group. As you click one of them, all labels of the selected group are displayed in the Labels section below. You can pick the appropriate ones and switch to another group if need to add labels from some other group as well.
Another helpful thing is the Labeler macro that allows you to get a list of all attachments with a chosen label(s) from all pages and spaces, for which the add-on is enabled.
Other features:
Children pages inherit labels from their parent (you can modify them)
Changes to labels of a page automatically apply to its children pages and attachments
Selecting what spaces the add-on is enabled for
Pricing: Labeler – Content Organizer is available for Server instances.Its commercial license costs 50$ for 25 users; 100$ for 50 users; 200$ for 100 users.
PDF Macros for Confluence is a tool for customizing the way your Confluence page content is exported to PDF.
It comes with 5 macros:
PDF Pagebreak: insert this macro in the place a page break should be in a PDF file and have the content of your Confluence page broken into PDF pages the way you want it to be
PDF Landscape: the content included in this macro is displayed in the landscape page orientation in PDF
PDF Hidden Content: the content included in this macro is hidden when exporting to PDF
Hide in Web View: the content included in this macro is not visible while viewing a Confluence page but is shown when exporting to PDF
Current Date and Time: this macro inserts the current date and time on your Confluence page which can be used as a timestamp for your export to PDF
Pricing: PDF Macros for Confluence is available for Server instances and is free.
The confluence-sequence-diagrams add-on provides you with a way to create sequence diagrams from plain-text instructions. Sequence diagrams are used to show the collaboration between objects based on a time sequence, model how objects interact with each other in different use case scenarios, describe the sequence of actions that need to be performed to complete a task. This tool can be useful for developing, business, design and analysts teams. With sequence diagrams you can design, communicate and validate the architecture, interfaces and logic of the system, document the dynamics and flow within a system, capture how different business objects interact, to document requirements for system implementation and more.
This add-on allows you to quickly create a diagram with participants, notes, messages and responses by inserting corresponding plain text notations into the Sequence diagram macro. To customize the look of your diagram, you can choose diagram theme. There are two options, simple and hand.
Pricing: confluence-sequence-diagrams is available for Server instances and is free.
Tooltips is a neat add-on for adding pop-up tooltips with helpful information, which is displayed when you hover over text or images on your Confluence pages. It doesn’t require any macro and works via the link dialogue.
All you have to do to add a tooltip is:
select some content
click ‘Insert link’
choose ‘Tooltip’
insert your tooltip text
click ‘Insert’
Being set up as links, tooltips do not overload your editor with additional macro and are easy to edit.
Pricing: Tooltips is available for Server instances and is free.
If you get any questions or want to discuss one of the add-ons, feel free to comment below.
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