That Was The Week
Another fairly quiet wiki week as I've been doing on a lot of writing for the latest release, as well as preparing for the next using the info coming from the Agile meetings.

We're still inching towards 4.2: I think that should be with us this coming week. To that end I've been studying all the changes Atlassian have made and have set up a page listing the updates and who should be interested in what changes. 


I'm not trying to dictate to our users who can use what - in fact everyone can see the full list, so can look at what they want. What I've done is to suggest which departments the changes affect the most, and the updates that will be of most interest too them. In other words, to supply a level of focus so that people can see what's most important to them, rather than wading through a list playing spot-the-benefit. 

I find that making a person's ability to use Confluence easier is the best way to get them to become more active within the wiki.

While I was looking through the updates, I came across an enormous list of functions that are either already available in the current version, or will be with 4.2. 

Although I like to think of myself as a fairly experienced user, there's clearly a lot that I wasn't aware of. Which is great: now there's even more to play with. BTW, if you're reading this and you're my boss, I mean 'there's even more functionality that will help make me even more productive.'

This list is called the 'Full Features List 180 features.' And comes with this helpful advice: Get comfortable.


Tip of the Week
A brief look at one of Confluence's many functions.

Name: Status Macro
Available from: Insert/Other Macros

Have you seen the coloured Status macro that you can use to label a page's content? They come in four colours (grey, red, yellow and green) so you can use them to show an easy-to-see view of, for example, a task's status. You can add your own custom caption too. So you could use red to mean 'on hold', yellow for 'on going' and green to mean 'finished'.


You can also use them to help organise your tasks in your own way. For example, I might have finished a piece of writing that's been sent for review. To save me having to trawl all the words on a page looking for its current status, I could add a yellow label at the top of the page saying 'Sent for review'. Which means I'll be able to see the page's status almost as quickly as it can load.

I'm not sure if there's maximum number of characters you can use as I gave up counting at 100. That's not very practical as you can't use line breaks, which means it extends across the page without breaking.


Which isn't very handy, but I suspect that Atlassian didn't design it with that in mind.
Cheers
 
That Was The Week
At the moment I'm involved in a lot of writing, both for our new release, which is for clients, and the Sprint releases, which are still internal. So I'm doing a lot less wiki work (boo hoo).  Or am I?

Well yes, there are (still) only so many hours in the day, but there's still plenty to do on both sides of my job. For example, we're still integrating the existing systems and users from the companies we recently aquired - which means investigating how we'll import data from another wiki and integrate Sharepoint, and discussing how all this is going to be achieved. Fortunately Confluence and Sharepoint can do this, though it's too big a topic to discuss here (and I've never done it) but you can find out everything you need to know here.


Living In Exciting Times
I've been having some great conversations with new colleagues about using the wiki to bring all our disperate documentation together, how to manage corporate standards, agreeing what these are, what kinds of docs are we creating, and who is producing the docs in the first place.

Although there's a mountain to climb on this front - and just identifying those who might be involved is a challenge - what I know is that there are more than a few people who see the value of using Confluence to share and collaborate. So I'm expecting to get much busier on the documentation management front over the coming months. 

Not only will the effort needed go on the docs themselves, a lot of energy will be spent on encouraging people to us the wiki. I won't pretend that take up isn't on the slow side at times, but once people begin to use it, once they see the advantages and benefits for themselves, then you find they (very quietly) become fans. 

To this end, I've set up a global docs space which all those involved in this area will use as the hub of all our activities and communications. The plan is to draw people in by getting them to use it without making a song and dance about it. Apart from using the wiki to keep all our thinking in one place, I'm also going to use it to eliminate using email by making sure we all use the Share and @mentions functionality. Just imagine: more results and less emails - bliss!

So watch this space - and feel free to offer advice!


Feet Up On The Desk Time
My copy of Sarah Maddox's book Confluence, Tech Comm and Chocolate, finally arrived yesterday. I've only glanced at it but it's stuffed with useful info. And given Sarah's experience as both a programmer and tech author, you can't go wrong buying this book if you're interested in using wikis and documentation. I'm just wondering about how much of my working day I can justify spending reading it.

Upgrade 4.2 Is Go!
Yes, we're just about to upgrade to 4.2 and I'm dead excited about that! It's full of great new features and improvements which are not only going to make my life as a tech writer easier, but also a lot more fun. I can't wait to get my hands on the new Editor and to see how the What's Popular voting buttons will enable us to improve our user content.

Another benefit of upgrading is, as mentioned in last week's blog, that we'll be able to link JIRA and Confluence. For me, this means better access to the info that I need for my documentation, but it will also benefit development and testing, because they'll have also have easier access to the same info. This means, for the first time, that we're all able to use the same info in one easy-to-find place. 

And just to make that even easier (have to stop using that word...) we'll all be able to use single sign-ons to access both systems. An additional bonus is the fact that we will be able to share the plugins that both JIRA and Confluence use between each other. This means you only have to have the plugin installed in one to be able to use it in the other - how neat is that?

Atlassian have also been busy working on the new Atlassian Marketplace, which, if I understand it properly, is pretty much a one-stop shop for all plugins. It should ensure that not only are plugins easy to find, but they will also be compatible with the latest version of Confluence. This means that when you upgrade in the future, you won't have to wait for the plugins you use to be upgraded too. Which cuts out a lot of hassle or not being able to use a plugin until it has also been upgraded and is compatible. And how neat is that?
Cheers.

 
That Was The Week That Was
Earlier this year my employer bought two companies who are also in the trading arena. One's based in Norway and Scotland, and the other's in Switzerland. This means we have even more wiki users to cater for and bring together. 

One of the problems any organisation faces when it's spread around the globe is creating unity. What can we do to bring people together so that we're connected?

The answer is, of course, the wiki: home of sharing and collaboration. 

But you knew I'd say that. But it isn't so simple is it? 

Well, no. You have to get people involved and the only way to do that is to show how it benefits them. And how do you do that when there's 400 people working in offices as far apart as the USA, the UK and Singapore? Good question: it's not going to be easy, but I have a cunning plan.

But First, This!
When pages are edited one of the things that has to happen is that anyone who's interested in the page should be notified of the change. This is easy enough if they were the page's creator or if they're someone who's edited the page already - they get updated automatically. As does anyone who's been added to the page as a Watcher.

But what about clients, how do they find out? Well it's very easy, all you have to do is add the Recently Updated macro to the home page of the space you want to take the data from, set up a couple of parameters - such as the way you want results displayed and the number of results shown, and press Save. Bingo! Finished.

Every time the page is opened or refreshed the list updates automatically. By having this on our user information's home page, anyone who opens it can see not only the most recent updates, but who made them and when. These are all shown as links, and there's a link to the page itself so users can jump directly to it. Which is very handy if it's of particular interest to them. 

And it saves me bags of time too: in our previous wiki I had to add all this data manually, so I've saved myself as much as 30 mins or more per day just by using one simple macro that takes about two minutes to set up (and forget).

Share and Collaborate
With something like eight different parts of the company producing a wide variety of documentation (everything from user info to sales and marketing) one of our challenges is making sure we're all using the corporate ID etc, but there's something else that's just as important: knowledge sharing.

And knowledge can be anything from the sort of docs each office produces to the tools we use. So what can we do about sharing our knowledge, skills and experience? Where can we keep it and how to make sure everyone who's involved knows where they can find this info AND stay in the conversation loop?

There's only one place of course: our very own wiki home; the Global Documentation space. 

At the moment this has very little info but it has it's own blog already (which is automatically included when you create a new space), plus a couple of other pages listing the team members and their 
details, including their areas of knowledge and skills.

Over the next few days I intend to add some info about what our office produces and how, and once that's done I'll be adding all the documentalists as Watchers (Tools/Manage Watchers) so they'll all be updated when I publicise the space to them (by editing the home page, which will have a welcome message and explanation about what the space is for). 

Once that's done, we will run all our conversations through the wiki and not use email. That way everyone will be kept up to date with everything as it happens, and all the conversations, content updates and comments will be in one easy-to-search space, and nothing will be lost or duplicated.

And once we've had that up and running for a couple of months, I intend to demo it to other departments and show them how, with very little effort, they can achieve the same thing and enjoy the benefits of sharing and collaborating.

You can find out more about wiki collaboration by clicking here.