Top 5 New Add-ons for Atlassian Confluence – Third Quarter 2015
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:
- Brikit Targeted Search for Confluence by Brikit
- Metadata for Confluence by Communardo Software GmbH
- Presenter for Confluence by Incloud GmbH
- Permission Assistant by Xidras GmbH
- Log Downloader by Artemis Software
1. Brikit Targeted Search for Confluence
Brikit Targeted Search for Confluence helps with finding relevant content in Confluence fast and easy. How does it work?
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.
It is possible to set visibility of each filter group based on space category.
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:
- search fields, links and buttons with pre-configured search parameters on a page using the Targeted Search Field and Targeted Search Link macros
- add the Targeted Search box site-wide
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.
2. Metadata for Confluence
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
- Metadata Overview Macro – displays metadata of multiple pages based on a search criteria
- Metadata History Macro – provides the metadata history of the current page
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.
3. Presenter for Confluence
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.
Watch the add-on demo to see it in action.
Pricing: Presenter for Confluence is available for both Server and Cloud instances.
Its commercial license costs 150$ for 25 users; 250$ for 50 users; 400$ for 100 users (Server version).
And subscription is 15$/month for 25 users; 20$/month for 50 users; 30$/month for 100 users (Cloud version).
4. Permission Assistant
Permission Assistant provides global admins with the capability to manage user and group space permissions in bulk, see indirect permissions. It saves a lot of time in cases when you need to grant or edit permissions for a specific user or group across multiple spaces, as you get to do that in one place and no longer need to navigate to each space.
Features:
- Search for users and groups
- See all spaces with permissions (direct an inherited)
- Add and remove permissions in bulk
- Filter categorized, archived and personal spaces
- See if a user receives permissions through a direct or group permission
Pricing: Permission Assistant is available for Server instances. Its commercial license costs 60$ for 25 users; 110$ for 50 users; 200$ for 100 users.
5. Log Downloader
With Log Downloader Confluence administrators can download Confluence logs right on the add-on page in Confluence administration.
It’s a simple add-on that helps admins save time and efforts, which makes it handy and valuable.
Pricing: Log Downloader 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.
