Confluence Crash Course: Set up for Product Teams & Business

1. Documentation is essential in all corporate operations. This task might sometimes take a long time and effort to complete. It diverts your attention away from what is more essential - your business.

2. Confluence's Templates make documentation simpler and more efficient. These templates feature ready-to-use solutions for your daily documentation. You can also build and customize your own templates.

3. You also get to edit and everyone can view those changes at once. Dynamic pages give your team a place to create, capture, and collaborate on any project or idea. Moreover, multiple users can edit simultaneously.

4. When you make changes to a project or contribution, Confluence produces a version that you can simply return to when needed.

5. Spaces help your team structure, organize, and share work, so every team member has visibility into institutional knowledge and access to the information they need to do their best work.

6. Confluence, while storing all of your information in one location, allows you to create individual workspaces for each department. This would allow you to have well-organized data as well as a seamless process.

7. Confluence is easier to get started with than SharePoint and doesn't have a very steep learning curve for new users.

8. Users can author or edit “How to” articles and any other reference materials and tips about internal processes

9. Users can exchange links and documents with their networks through chat, status updates, and conversations, however posting sensitive content and/or sharing beyond the network can be appropriately restricted.

10. Users can respond to activities and projects by posting comments to the item. This may also include the capability to "like" or vote on items. Users can follow other users and/or join specific projects, electing to receive notifications when there are changes and updates.

Confluence is a product developed by Atlassian. It is the same company behind other software like Jira Software, Jira Align, Trello, and BitBucket. It is a collaboration tool designed for sharing, storing, and working on different things.Confluence is a collaboration solution. It may be used to document procedures and centralise key information, making it easier for team members to access and participate on projects. This can boost a company's efficiency and output by simplifying communication and decreasing the need for duplicate efforts. Furthermore, adopting Confluence for procedures and documentation may assist in guaranteeing that critical information is structured and readily available, reducing misunderstandings and errors.

1. Page - Your content lives in pages – it is living documents you create on your Confluence site. You can create pages for almost anything, from project plans to meeting notes, troubleshooting guides, policies, and more. Confluence comes bundled with templates to help you make beautiful pages for almost any kind of content.

2. Space - Pages are stored in workspaces where you can collaborate on work and keep all your content organized. It is a good practice to give every Department its own space.

3. Page Tree - Organize space content with a hierarchical page tree that makes finding work quick and easy. Nest pages under related spaces and pages to organize it in just about any way.

Use the site navigation menu to find people, pages, and apps no matter where you are in your Confluence Cloud site:

• Tap Home or the Confluence logo to return to your Confluence dashboard.

• Tap Recent to see a list of pages and blog posts you’ve visited or worked on, plus drafts and starred content.

• Tap Spaces to move between your starred or recently visited spaces, or to access the space directory.

• Tap People to visit the people directory, where you can find information about the people you work with and create teams.

• Tap Apps to see a list of the apps that are installed on your site or visit an app’s dashboard.

• Tap PLus Sign to create a new page from anywhere on your site.

In addition, you can:

• Tap your avatar to provide feedback, edit your profile, and change your settings

• Tap to get help, see what’s new, view keyboard shortcuts, and more

• Tap the bell icon to see notifications for your Atlassian apps

• Search for content in the search bar

• Tap the 9-dot icon to switch to another Atlassian app

Confluence uses spaces to organise material into meaningful categories. Consider them to be distinct folders in which you may save your work. For example, it is a good practice to give every department or project teams its own space in confluence. Main reasons for doing this is the simplified set up of the pages, the ability to use the predefined widgets and templates that will pull the information from the specific space. In addition, each space in Confluence has an overview, pages, and a blog; it can have its own logo and has its own set of permissions, that can be set by the space admin(s).

When you create the new page, The view that you can see right now is called the edit mode. You can see that the page is in the edit mode, because you can see the toolbar with the various editing options.

Confluence has most of the standard formatting options you'd see in other document editors. The text you add to the page is formatted as normal text, but you can assign up to six levels of headings by changing the paragraph style. You can also add emphasis to your text with formatting such as italics, bold, underline as well as text color and alignment.

The Layout of your pages may have a significant impact on how they are read and the visual impact of your information. Narrower columns, for example, optimise for reading by allowing 50-75 characters per line, although broader page widths are preferable for showing tabular data. After adding a basic layout with the Layouts tool, you may construct alternative layouts in Confluence, giving different portions of your page a distinct column configuration.

There are several column layouts available. After inserting a layout, you can easily switch between the options. Content doesn't get lost when you change the column layout; additional columns are added to the right, and when you change to a layout with fewer columns, the content moves to the left. Layouts can be removed from the page by selecting the trash can icon in the floating toolbar.

To insert a link on a page:

1. Select some text, or position your cursor where you want to insert the link.

2. Choose Link on the toolbar.

3. Select a page, blog post, or enter an external URL (see Links and Anchors for how to link to particular types of content).

4. Enter or modify the link text. This is the text that will appear on the page. If this field is left blank, the page name or URL will be used as the link text.

5. Press Enter.

To Add an image onto a Confluence page select the Files & images button on the toolbar. Either upload your image into Confluence, or display an image from another web page using its URL. You can also Drag files, like images, multimedia, Office files and PDFs, from your computer and drop them directly into the editor. The contents of the file will be embedded into the page or blog post.

You can drag images to resize.

To add a table, select Table in the toolbar. A three-column, three-row table (including a header row) will appear on the page.

The width selector to the right of the table lets you switch between centered, wide, and full-width. All tables are responsive and scale to the screen size that provides the best view.

When viewing a table on a page, you can sort the content by selecting the sort icons in the header row. Your sorting choices don’t impact what other people see and are not saved.

When you're editing a page and have selected some portion of the table, table options will appear. Use table options to:

• Make a row a header row with a grey shaded background and bold text

• Make a column a header column with a grey shaded background and bold text

• Insert a numbered column to automatically number each row

In a cell (or when selecting multiple cells, rows, or columns), select the down arrow to access the following actions:

• Change cell color

• Insert column to the right

• Insert row below

• Remove column

• Remove row

• Merge cells

• Split cell

• Distribute columns

• Clear cells

The following actions are accessible when editing a previously published page.

The most commonly used items in this menu are: Publish without notifying watchers, Publish with version comment, Preview and View Changes.

1. Publish without notifying watchers — Publish the page without triggering any notifications to people who are watching the space or the page. This is really helpful when making small changes that don't require a notification.

2. Publish with version comment — Comment about what you changed so it's easier to keep track of how a document is progressing.

3. Preview — See what the published page will look like.

4. View changes — See the changes to the page between the previously published version and now. This will also let you see a summary of the changes which have happened during a collaborative editing session.

Other options include:

1. Schedule publish — Set a date and time when you want the page to be published. No notifications will happen until the page is published.

2. Add labels — Tag the page with descriptive terms that can be used when searching or by macros added to pages and blogs.

3. Resolved comments — If the page had inline comments that were resolved, you can see how many there are, and selecting this item displays all the comments that were resolved, who resolved them, and provides the ability to reopen the comment.

4. Revert to last published version — Lets you close the page and discard any changes that were made since the last published version.

When you have many individuals working on the same page, version control comes in handy. With each succeeding publication, you can observe how the page has evolved over time. You may also go back to an earlier version if you don't like some of the current modifications.

1. Go to the page and select > Page History

Comparing versions

Want to see what's changed between versions? Use the comparison view to help you figure it out.

Go to the page and select > Page History

Select the versions you want to compare by selecting the check boxes beside them

Select Compare selected versions

You'll see the page comparison view showing the differences between the selected versions. To make the changes more distinguishable, all large sections of unchanged text are hidden and reduced to an ellipsis ().

To move a page within the same space:

1. Go to the page you want to move.

2. Select > Move. The Move page dialog box appears.

3. Use the Browse tab if you need look at the page tree to find the new parent page for your content. After moving your page, select Start over if you need to reset the page tree and try again.

4. Use the Search tab to choose the exact parent page.

5. Select Move after you've chosen the new parent page. The page – along with any attachments, comments, and child pages – will move to your chosen location.

To move a page to a different space:

1. Navigate to and view the page you want to move.

2. Select > Move. The Move page dialog box appears.

3. Select the Browse tab if you want to find the new parent page using the page tree, or select the Search tab if you know the new parent page name.

4. Select the name of the new space.
   You'll only see spaces that you have access to.

5. Drag your page to the new location or select the new parent page.

6. Select Move after you've chosen the new parent page. The page – along with any attachments, comments, and child pages – will move to your chosen location.

Action items

Add a checklist item and assign the task to another person using an @ mention. Items assigned to others show up in their tasks list under their profile. They can tick them off as the task is completed.

If a date is added, the task turns red if it becomes past due.

Type /action to quickly add this element from the slash command.

Page Tree

When you add a page tree, the system will automatically pull all the pages from the current space. If you want to show the page tree only for the current page and its child pages, select @self option in the menu:

Table of Contents

Always add a Table of contents widget to your page. To add it, type in the edit mode: /table of contents

Code snippet

Lets you format source code with numbered rows and syntax highlighting based on the language you choose.

Type /code to quickly add this element from the slash command.

Date

Make a date stand out with grey background; the default date format is Mon DD, YYYY.

Type // to bring up a date picker.

Decision

Emphasize a distinct decision made for a project or by a team by adding a grey background panel and a green icon.

Type /decision to quickly add this element from the slash command.

Divider

Separate sections of text using a horizontal line.

Type /divider to quickly add this element from the slash command.

Expand

Create a collapsed section that reveals more information for the people who seek it. This is a useful formatting element when the amount of info on a page is overwhelming at first glance.

Type /expand to quickly add this element from the slash command.

Heading

Format text to represent the hierarchy of information on a page. Once headings are created, use the Table of Contents Macro to generate a list of links pointing to the headings on the page. The list of links appears wherever you add the macro, and it automatically updates each time someone changes the wording of a heading or the heading level.

Type /heading to quickly see the options and add this element from the slash command.

Mention

Reference a person on a page and let them know about it. The user mentioned receives a notification.

Type @ and enter part of a name to narrow the list of matches

Panel

Emphasize information by choosing a preset panel type to consistently communicate ideas like info, note, error, success, and warning. The preset types include an emoji and a background color.

In addition to the five preset panel options, you can customize panels by choosing one of the 20 background colors available. Panels can have emojis, or you can remove the emoji to meet the needs of your content. The emojis available to you are the same set that you already use in Confluence; this includes custom emojis you and your teammates have added.

Type /panel to quickly see the options and add this element from the slash command.

Status

Highlight text to stand out on the page and choose the background color that fits its meaning.

Type /status to quickly add this element from the slash command.

One of the cool features of Confluence is that it allows you to customize your own templates.

Custom templates can help streamline workflows and reduce the time spent formatting documents. This can be especially useful for teams that create a lot of similar content, such as reports or proposals. Custom templates can help ensure that documents produced by different teams or departments are consistent in terms of formatting, layout, and branding. This can help improve the overall professionalism and credibility of the company. Overall, custom templates can help businesses save time, improve efficiency, and maintain consistency in their content creation processes.

In Confluence, there are two categories of page templates:

• Space templates: These page templates are available in a specific space only. If you have space administrator permission, you can define templates via the space administration screen. This video is focused on this type.

• Global templates: These page templates are available in every space on your site. If you have Confluence Administrator permission, you can define global templates via the Confluence Administration Console.