Top 5 New Add-ons for Atlassian Confluence – Second Quarter 2015

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:

• CA JIRA-Confluence Issue Macro by Capital City Consultants
• Labeler – Content Organizer by Transition Technologies S.A.
• PDF Macros for Confluence by TNG Technology Consulting GmbH
• confluence-sequence-diagrams by O’Hara Group
• Tooltips by M20 Technology LLC

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.

Try it

2. Labeler – Content Organizer

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.

Try it

3. PDF Macros for Confluence

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.

Try it

4. confluence-sequence-diagrams

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.

Try it

5. Tooltips

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.

Try it

If you get any questions or want to discuss one of the add-ons, feel free to comment below.

Top 5 Rated Add-ons for Confluence Cloud

Confluence Cloud has been introduced as a new solution for companies and vendors who no longer wanted to support all internal infrastructure of the team collaboration platform. Most Atlassian Experts have embraced this initiative and added the required updates and modifications to support all capabilities of the Cloud platform. Atlassian Marketplace is also growing from a couple of add-ons for Atlassian Cloud products to more than 50 items for now. Most usually the companies migrate the top-selling add-ons to Cloud platform to preserve the positive user experience for users who have already transitioned to new products.

In the current blog post we will continue our series of blog posts about top-rated add-ons for Atlassian products. In the current blog post we will review the Top 5 rated add-ons for Confluence Cloudas of May 2015. The listing includes the following products:

• Gliffy Confluence Plugin
• Numbered Headings
• Table Filter Plugin
• Multiexcerpt Plugin
• Confluence Command Line Interface (CLI)

#1 – Gliffy Confluence Plugin

Gliffy is a convenient and user-friendly tool for building diagrams and creating drawings in Confluence. This is a Confluence replacement tool for traditional MS Visio application with the similar capabilities and features for diagram creation.

Once you have added the Gliffy macro to your Confluence page, you will be automatically redirected to the dedicated online service for diagramming. You can select among the wide range of diagram presets, as follows:

• Flowchart
• Software Design & UML
• Organization Charts
• Timeline
• Network Diagrams
• Business Process
• Website & Software UI Design
• SWOT Analysis
• Venn Diagrams
• Floorplan

Gliffy service provides a generic set of capabilities for drawing diagrams and storing them in Confluence. The set of available shapes varies depending on the selected diagram type, but you can add your own shapes if needed.

Additionally, you can import the existing diagrams into Confluence if they are of the following file formats:

• Gliffy Diagram (*.gxml)
• Gliffy Diagram (*.gon, *.gliffy)
• Visio XML Drawing (*.vdx)

Gliffy add-on supports the diagram revisions that are kept in Confluence attachments under the corresponding diagram. While editing diagram you can work with these revisions and restore the appropriate version if necessary. In addition to the source diagram file, Confluence stores the image of the created diagram, which is actually shown on the page in the view mode. You can quickly start adding modifications to the Gliffy diagram even while viewing the Confluence page.

#2 – Numbered Headings

Numbered Headings is a handy tool that applies automatic numeration to headings on Confluence pages. It allows you to paste the required text snippets into the Numbered Heading macro, which will automatically numerate the appropriate heading levels after you save the page.

The add-on provides a wide range of options that can be applied to headings on the page, as follows:

• number formats – you can select the appropriate number format (decimal, ISO-2145, full-decimal, lower or upper Roman, Greek or Latin, or set a custom number format)
• default number value to start numeration form
• heading level to start numbering from
• style for each heading level

Once you save the page, the headings placed within this macro will be automatically numbered.

#3 – Table Filter

Table Filter add-on is a useful and intuitive tool for manual data filtration in tables. Originating from the hosted version, this add-on allows you to place your data tables within the Table Filter macro. You can paste tables from MS Excel or Word, copy tables from web pages or use the native Confluence tables.

Once you have inserted the table into the macro you need to define columns which you want to filter, enable free text filters or a global filter for instant data filtration through. Optionally, you can hide the labels or the pane with filters or set the appropriate width for filters. You can find the full list of options and parameters in the add-on’s documentation.

Once you save the page, above your table you can find the filtration pane where you can either select one the cell values or enter a custom query with support for regular expressions.

#4 – Multiexcerpt Plugin

Multiexcerpt Plugin is a real catch for people who loves reading encyclopedias or browsing multiple websites and adding bookmarks or marking websites as favorites. This plugin is some sort of an on-page bookmark, which you can add on some page, place some information into it and then output this excerpt on some other Confluence page.

What does it do? This add-on adds two new macros – Multiexcerpt and Multiexcerpt Include. The Multiexcerpt macro is placed on the page, which will be used as a source for data excerpt, and the Multiexcerpt Include macro is placed on the page which will store multiple exceprts from other pages.

You can add multiple Multiexcerpts on one page and get several pieces of information from multiple pages in one place. All you need is to enter the reference name of the excerpt and the page where it is stored. Unfortunately, the add-on does not support macros placed within other macros, so this information will be unavailable to you.

#5 – Confluence Command Line Interface

Confluence Command Line Interface is a robust solution for administrators of Confluence Cloud instances. This add-on is comprised of two elements – Confluence CLI Connector add-on and CLI Client installed on some remote system or machine.

Once you have installed the add-on on your Confluence Cloud, you need to unpack the archive with CLI Client to your local computer and edit the application BAT file and write address of your Confluence instance. Once this is done you can proceed to execution of remote queries to your Confluence Cloud server.

It allows you to perform the following actions:

• add, copy or remove attachments or attachment versions within one server or between different servers
• add, copy, move, modify, export or remove blogs and pages
• add, copy, export or remove spaces
• manage users and user groups and grant or remove permissions
• add, copy, update or remove comments
• add, get or remove labels
• get information about Confluence server and other system action.

A generic command is comprised of the action and one or multiple parameters (either required or optional). You can combine multiple parameters for performing complex operations outside of Confluence.

The add-on allows administrators to manage Confluence server and stored content without accessing the server itself.

Conclusion

The listing of add-ons for Confluence Cloud is continuously increasing with old or new add-ons. So if you are planing to migrate from the the hosted solution to Confluence Cloud, you will be able to continue using Confluence without any deficiencies in its functionality.

Top 5 New Add-ons for Atlassian Confluence – First Quarter 2015

New add-ons for Atlassian products are constantly coming out on the Marketplace. It’s rather hard to keep up and not to miss anything useful that’s been recently introduced by Atlassian vendors. Just like you, our StiltSoft team tries to stay up-to-date with new releases and additions. We appreciate your time and are loving to share our knowledge and work. Therefore, here comes the series of posts ‘Top New Add-ons for Atlassian Products’, in which I’ll be telling you about some of the best add-ons that have appeared on the Marketplace for Confluence, JIRA and Stash since the beginning of 2015.

Today’s post highlights top 5 new add-ons for Confluence:

• Easy Forms for Confluence by Artemis Software
• Lively Blog Posts by Scandio GmbH
• Staffing Timeline by Transition Technologies S.A
• Homepage Redirect Add-on by bitvoodoo ag
• Baselines for Confluence by OBSS

I’m going to cover the problems the add-ons intend to solve, possible benefits for you and pricing. I won’t be judgmental, as being new on the market, it’s obvious that the plugins are only at the beginning of their journey and require some time to become glossy and rich in functionality.

1. Easy Forms for Confluence

Easy Forms for Confluence allows you to easily create and insert forms on your Confluence pages. It comes with two macros. The Easy Form macro is for adding and editing forms. And the Easy Form Report macro provides a dynamic report with submission results, which can be exported in XML, JSON, CSV or XLS.

Some other handy features:

• Adding and rearranging form fields by drag&drop.
• Restricting editing forms via setting Confluence page permissions.
• E-mail and workbox notifications about form submissions.
• Allowing single or multiple submissions per user.

Pricing: Easy Forms for Confluence is available for Server instances. Its commercial license costs 120$ for 25 users; 220$ for 50 users; 400$ for 100 users.  Try it

2. Lively Blog Posts

Lively Blog Posts provides you with the macro you can use to display a blog posts feed on a Confluence page and dashboard. In addition to the functionality similar to the native Confluence Blog Posts Macro, this add-on offers some unique features:

• Adding a teaser image. To select a teaser image, label it with “teaser” in the image properties panel or in page attachments.
• Displaying highlighted posts at the top of the feed. To highlight a post, label it with ‘important’.
• Setting the teaser text length.
• Including the Lively Blog Posts macro on the Confluence dashboard by configuring the add-on settings in Confluence administration.

Pricing: Lively Blog Posts is available for Server instances and is free. Try it

3. Staffing Timeline

Staffing Timeline is a tool for planning resource allocation across different projects. To get started, insert the Staffing Timeline macro on a Confluence page and go through simple configuration. Basically, you just add your project names and users, associate them, specify working hours of each person and global non-working days. Once done and saved, you get an illustrative chart with a timeline.

Being minimalistic, Staffing Timeline provides all the basic features you might need without any excesses. Plus, it’s rather flexible, easy to use and informative:

• You get to switch between project and user views.
• It’s very convenient to navigate the timeline by dragging.
• The timeline can be zoomed in or out.
• You can view the change history.

Pricing: Staffing Timeline is available for Server instances. Its commercial license costs 15$ for 25 users; 20$ for 50 users; 50$ for 100 users. Try it

4. Homepage Redirect Add-on

Homepage Redirect Add-on makes it possible for Confluence administrators to set different homepages for different user groups. When one Confluence instance is used by multiple teams and diverse customer groups with unique needs and values, it’s convenient and user-friendly to redirect individual Confluence users to a homepage tailored especially for their user group.

A space homepage, a blog post or a Confluence page can be used as the redirect destination. All you’ve got to do is map your user groups and homepages in the Homepage Redirect section of Confluence administration.

Pricing: Homepage Redirect Add-on is available for Server instances. Its commercial license costs 20$ for 25 users; 50$ for 50 users; 80$ for 100 users. Try it

5. Baselines for Confluence

Baselines for Confluence allows you to create baseline sets of all Confluence pages within one space at a particular point in time. Confluence core Page History is not always enough, since it only provides you with a means to view the history of one specific page. And in this case, if you need to see several pages the way they were a week ago, you should look for the right version of each page. With Baselines for Confluence, you save a collection of links to documents versions that correspond to a specific moment in time. So you can go back to a certain baseline and see all space pages versions of that time.

Among other benefits:

• Setting user groups that can view and edit Baselines.
• Selecting documents based on keywords. If you provide a keyword in the “What did you change?” field when saving pages, you can use that keyword while creating a baseline. The latest document version of each document with the given keyword in its change description will be included in the baseline.

You should pay attention to the fact that currently there’s no connection between links in a baseline set. That means you are supposed to follow each link separately to see the relevant older versions of your documents. As well, if a page or its version is deleted from the space, that document version will not be accessible in the baseline set.

Pricing: Baselines for Confluence is available for Server instances. Its commercial license costs 100$ for 25 users; 150$ for 50 users; 250$ for 100 users. Try it

Hopefully, some of the add-ons from today’s overview turn out to be something you can use to facilitate and improve your collaboration in Confluence.