Implementing Atlassian Confluence

Implementing Atlassian Confluence

by Eren Kalelioğlu
Released September 2023
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781800560420

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Book description

Harness the Power of Atlassian Confluence to achieve sustainable enterprise collaboration with this one-stop guide covering real-world business scenarios

Key Features

  • Manage cross-functional distributed teams working on enterprise resources with ease
  • Extend Confluence with Atlassian tools such as Jira, Bitbucket, and third-party tools like Miro, Figma, and Dropbox
  • Create a single source of truth for enterprise-wide projects for productive collaboration
  • Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Book Description

Implementing Atlassian Confluence is an all-encompassing guide to the essential concepts of distributed work and leveraging Confluence to create a world-class collaboration environment.

This book begins with an introduction to enterprise collaboration concepts and explains how to set up Confluence. You’ll quickly proceed to creating and maintaining dynamic content, effective cross-functional collaboration, and employing Confluence applications in scenarios such as software project management and knowledge bases.

You’ll discover how to use Jira Service Management together with Confluence, set up personal spaces, implement centralized user management, address security risks, and explore suggested solutions on Confluence. Furthermore, you’ll integrate and extend Confluence with other Atlassian and third-party software. The book also contains tips and guidance on managing Confluence adoption, enabling you to focus on your team and provide them with a state-of-the-art remote collaboration environment.

Complete with practical business scenarios, best practices, and examples, this book will help you gain a comprehensive understanding of Atlassian Confluence’s capabilities for enhancing collaboration within cross-functional teams.

What you will learn

  • Create, organize, and manage sustainable content on Confluence while enhancing collaboration
  • Learn effective team collaboration techniques to boost productivity and efficiency
  • Grasp the essential principles of scaling Confluence to meet your organizational needs
  • Configure Confluence as a hub for external systems
  • Use Jira Service Management and Confluence together
  • Integrate Confluence with tools such as Google Workspace, Slack, Jira, and Teams for a seamless workflow
  • Enhance Confluence by adding and personalizing new functionalities for your unique requirements

Who this book is for

This Atlassian Confluence book is for anyone looking to leverage the world-class collaboration platform for remote and distributed teams to collaborate efficiently, securely, and enjoyably. Whether you are a Confluence administrator, Confluence user, project manager, agile team leader, member of a management information systems team, or part of an asynchronous team looking to adopt Atlassian Confluence, you’ll find value in this guide.

Table of contents

  1. Implementing Atlassian Confluence
  2. Foreword
  3. Contributors
  4. About the author
  5. About the reviewers
  6. Preface
    1. Who this book is for
    2. What this book covers
    3. To get the most out of this book
    4. Conventions used
    5. Get in touch
    6. Share Your Thoughts
    7. Download a free PDF copy of this book
  7. Part 1:Preparing for Confluence
  8. Chapter 1: Introducing Enterprise Collaboration
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Introducing Confluence and Atlassian as a company
      1. Introduction to Atlassian
      2. Introduction to Confluence
      3. Atlassian Marketplace
      4. Accessing the service availability information and reports for Confluence Cloud
      5. Anticipating and preparing for changes with Atlassian’s Cloud Roadmap
      6. Confluence and Jira Software
    3. Introducing enterprise collaboration concepts
      1. Enterprise collaboration
      2. Remote collaboration
      3. Hybrid working
      4. All-remote working
      5. Agility
      6. Cross-functional teams
      7. Distributed workforce
      8. Information silo
      9. Information architecture strategy
      10. Single source of truth
      11. Synchronous communication
      12. Asynchronous communication
      13. Collaboration software
    4. Which teams can benefit from Confluence?
      1. Proof of concept – how can your company benefit from Confluence?
      2. Confluence use cases for all types of teams
      3. Introduction to Confluence templates
    5. Building a Confluence team
      1. Checking out team building tips
      2. Identifying roles using RASCI within your team
      3. Maintaining your Confluence team
    6. Summary
    7. Questions
    8. Answers
    9. Further reading
  9. Chapter 2: Setting Up Confluence
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Introducing information architecture
      1. Defining the requirements of your knowledge management system
      2. Defining the content types of your knowledge management system
      3. Thinking about categorizing content
      4. Thinking about the maintenance of your knowledge management system
    3. Planning your Confluence site
      1. Introduction to iterative planning
      2. Using checklists and guiding questions for better planning
      3. Additional tips for more effective planning
    4. Installing and configuring Confluence
      1. Mastering the terminology – sites and products
      2. Installing Confluence
      3. Comparison between Standard and Premium plans
      4. Upgrading to the Premium plan
      5. Understanding the different types of administrators
      6. Managing technical and billing contacts
      7. Configuring basic security settings
      8. Configuring the default permissions
      9. Configuring global permissions
      10. Discovering security configuration
      11. Accessing the General Configuration section
    5. Managing users
      1. Managing user groups
    6. Setting up spaces – team, project, company, and personal
      1. What spaces should you create?
      2. What is the life cycle of a domain?
    7. Summary
    8. Questions
    9. Answers
    10. Further reading
  10. Chapter 3: Creating and Organizing Content
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Finding your way in Confluence
      1. Discovering the global navigation bar
      2. Finding content within Confluence
      3. Discovering the Home page
      4. Discovering the space sidebar
    3. Managing content
      1. Discovering the differences between edit mode and view mode
      2. Mastering view mode
      3. Mastering edit mode
    4. Organizing content
      1. Organizing spaces
      2. Organizing pages and attachments
    5. Summary
    6. Questions
    7. Answers
    8. Further reading
  11. Chapter 4: Collaborating with Your Team
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Preparing a team space
      1. Search (live search macro)
      2. Team
      3. Blog
      4. Recently updated
    3. Collaborating with your team
      1. Mastering commenting on a Confluence page
      2. Reactions
      3. Sharing page
      4. Watching a page
      5. What is a Confluence macro?
    4. Managing meetings
      1. Reducing the number of meetings
      2. Organizing more productive meetings
    5. Managing decisions
      1. Using Decision for simple decisions
      2. Using Decision Report to list decisions
      3. Using templates for managing complex decisions
    6. Inspiring ideas for your team space
    7. Summary
    8. Questions
    9. Answers
    10. Further reading
  12. Chapter 5: Mastering Dynamic Contents
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Labeling pages
    3. Getting to know macros
      1. Exploring macros that use labels
      2. Discovering macros that interact with pages
    4. Adding macros to Confluence
      1. Adding macros via the Atlassian Marketplace
      2. Develop a new macro
    5. Discovering Smart Links
    6. Summary
    7. Questions
    8. Answers
  13. Part 2:Building a Real Confluence Site
  14. Chapter 6: Creating a Space for a Software Project
    1. Discovering different roles in a software development project
    2. Creating a single source of truth for a software development project
    3. Discovering the software project space template
      1. Product requirements template
      2. The Meeting Notes template
      3. Decision document template
      4. Atlassian’s tips on managing your software project space
    4. Customizing Confluence’s software development template for project-based needs
      1. Example content you can add to your space
      2. Using Confluence as a hub with external tools
      3. Using Confluence and Jira together for software project management
    5. The step-by-step guide to creating a software project space on Confluence
    6. Summary
    7. Questions
    8. Answers
  15. Chapter 7: Creating a Space for Product Management
    1. Exploring product management roles
      1. Product manager
      2. Product owner
      3. Product designer
      4. Product analyst
    2. Remote product management challenges
      1. Prioritization and roadmap visibility
      2. Cross-functional collaboration
      3. Customer feedback collection
      4. Knowledge transfer
      5. Product releases and change management
    3. Cloud-based tools used by product managers
    4. Exploring the product management templates in Confluence
      1. MVP ideation
      2. Product launch
      3. Product requirements
    5. Creating a single source of truth for product management
      1. Why do product managers need an SSOT?
      2. How to create an SSOT optimized for product management using Confluence
    6. Using Confluence in conjunction with product management tools
      1. Project management tools (e.g., Jira and Trello)
      2. Communication tools (e.g., Slack and Microsoft Teams)
      3. File storage and sharing tools (e.g., Google Drive and Dropbox):
      4. Design tools (e.g., Figma and Adobe XD)
      5. Code repositories (e.g., GitHub and Bitbucket)
    7. Leveraging Confluence and Jira for effective product management in remote and asynchronous teams
      1. Scenario 1 – project planning and tracking
      2. Scenario 2 – managing product requirements
      3. Scenario 3 – collaborative decision-making
      4. Scenario 4 – team and project spaces
      5. Scenario 5 – documenting and sharing knowledge
    8. Summary
    9. Questions
    10. Answers
  16. Chapter 8: Setting Up a Knowledge Base
    1. Exploring the fundamentals of a knowledge base
    2. Distinguishing different types of knowledge bases
    3. Identifying the audience for a knowledge base
    4. Acknowledging the importance of a knowledge base
    5. Recognizing the risks and disadvantages of not having a knowledge base
    6. Establishing a knowledge base with Confluence
    7. Exploring the benefits of a cloud-based and mobile-friendly knowledge base
    8. Understanding the role of a knowledge base in problem-solving for remote teams
    9. Realizing the value that a knowledge base adds to remote teams
    10. Understanding the role of governance in a knowledge base
    11. Summary
    12. Questions
    13. Answers
    14. Further reading
  17. Chapter 9: Setting Up a Personal Space
    1. Understanding personal spaces
      1. The benefits of creating a personal space
      2. The role of personal spaces
      3. A concrete example of using personal spaces
      4. Enriching personal spaces
      5. Maintaining personal spaces
    2. Creating, deleting, and managing personal spaces
      1. Creating and deleting personal spaces
      2. Managing personal spaces
    3. Addressing remote team challenges with personal spaces
      1. Tackling asynchronous communication
      2. Setting guidelines for personal spaces
    4. Strategizing, implementing, and overcoming challenges with personal spaces
      1. Strategizing with personal spaces
      2. Implementing personal spaces
      3. Overcoming challenges with personal spaces
      4. Personal spaces of employees leaving the company
    5. Summary
    6. Questions
    7. Answers
  18. Chapter 10: Connecting All Teams with Confluence
    1. Constructing a comprehensive company space with Confluence for distributed teams
      1. Creating a company-wide knowledge repository
      2. Facilitating company culture and community building
      3. Enhancing accessibility, organization, and inter-departmental collaboration
      4. Implementing security measures and access controls
      5. Maintaining regular updates and active content
    2. Confluence for project and program managers, PMOs, and portfolio management in remote teams
      1. Connecting and managing concurrent projects
      2. Archiving and learning from completed projects
      3. Planning future projects
      4. Confluence for program and portfolio management
      5. PMO content and ideas
      6. Leveraging Confluence as a project knowledge bank
      7. Designing a Confluence space as a collective lesson-learned repository
    3. Building a comprehensive company handbook with Confluence for remote teams
      1. Creating an interactive table of contents
      2. Detailed document examples
      3. Tips for an effective handbook
      4. Learning from other companies’ handbooks
      5. Why Confluence is a good choice for managing your company handbook
    4. Creating a human resources space in your company that will attract the interest of all teams
      1. Why Confluence is an optimal tool for HR resources
      2. Benefits of centralizing HR resources for remote teams
      3. Risks of not having a centralized HR resource space
      4. Maintaining updated HR resources
      5. Access management and stakeholder roles
      6. The outcome for remote teams and companies
      7. What can you include within your HR resources space?
    5. Summary
    6. Questions
    7. Answers
  19. Part 3:Scaling Business
  20. Chapter 11: Introduction to Scaling Confluence
    1. Understanding the concept and need for scaling Confluence
      1. Why choose Confluence for scaling your business operations?
      2. Identifying teams that require Confluence scaling
    2. Exploring the challenges and risks of scaling Confluence
      1. Recognizing potential risks
    3. Crafting and implementing an effective scaling strategy
      1. Crafting a scaling strategy
      2. Implementing your scaling strategy
      3. Monitoring and adjusting your strategy
    4. Optimizing user management in Confluence
      1. Strategies for centralizing user management
      2. Implementing automation and tools
      3. Regular training and support
    5. Ensuring security while scaling Confluence
      1. Identifying security requirements in scaling
      2. Implementing robust access control
      3. Auditing and monitoring
      4. Data security and backup in Confluence Cloud
      5. Security checklist essentials for scaling Confluence
      6. Strategies for maintaining secure Confluence operations at scale
    6. Summary
    7. Questions
    8. Answers
    9. Further reading
  21. Chapter 12: Assuring Security and Compliance
    1. The basic concepts of information security
    2. The advantages of the Confluence Cloud edition over the Server and Data Center editions
      1. Atlassian Cloud security shared responsibilities
      2. What security risks should remote teams be aware of when using Confluence Cloud?
    3. Security measures on Confluence
      1. Atlassian site and Confluence security settings
      2. Securing user accounts
      3. Securing Confluence spaces
      4. Securing Confluence pages
      5. Security on Atlassian Marketplace apps
      6. Securing the Confluence Cloud mobile application
      7. Securing integrations
    4. Atlassian Access
    5. Additional recommendations for security
    6. Summary
    7. Questions
    8. Answers
    9. Further reading
  22. Chapter 13: Integrating and Extending Confluence
    1. Integration with Atlassian tools
      1. Using Confluence and Jira Software together
      2. Using Confluence and Jira Service Management together
      3. Using Confluence and Trello together
    2. Integration with non-Atlassian tools
      1. Using Confluence and Microsoft Teams together
      2. Using Confluence and Slack together
      3. Smart Links
      4. Using Confluence with other tools
    3. Extending Confluence
      1. Installing applications via the Atlassian Marketplace
      2. Developing an app
    4. Summary
    5. Questions
    6. Answers
  23. Chapter 14: Challenges and Solutions
    1. The challenges of remote collaboration
      1. Understanding the importance of focusing on people
      2. Managing Confluence adoption
    2. Solutions for remote collaboration
      1. An iterative approach
      2. Open work and distributed work
    3. Working with consultants
      1. Tips when working with consultants
    4. A sustainable approach to Confluence
      1. Supporting open work
      2. Training and developing people
      3. Managing financial aspects
    5. Summary
    6. Questions
    7. Answers
    8. Further reading
  24. Chapter 15: What’s Next?
    1. Predictions for remote collaboration
      1. Short-term predictions
      2. Medium-term predictions
    2. How to improve in Confluence and remote working
    3. Artificial intelligence in remote collaboration
      1. Atlassian Intelligence
    4. Atlassian partners and Ponsatlas
      1. Atlassian Solution Partners
      2. Atlassian Training Partners
      3. Atlassian Marketplace Partners
      4. Ponsatlas
    5. Summary
    6. Questions
    7. Answers
    8. Further reading
  25. Index
    1. Why subscribe?
  26. Other Books You May Enjoy
    1. Packt is searching for authors like you
    2. Share Your Thoughts
    3. Download a free PDF copy of this book

Product information

  • Title: Implementing Atlassian Confluence
  • Author(s): Eren Kalelioğlu
  • Release date: September 2023
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781800560420