This is a short user guide for Confluence. Complete user guides are available at the links below.
What is a Wiki?
- A wiki is a website that makes it easy for anyone to contribute pages, and link them together.
- "Wikis in Plain English" video
What is Confluence?
- Confluence is an enterprise wiki. It incorporates functionality appropriate for multiple users and groups, with fine grain permission capabilities so you can choose who can view, create and comment on spaces and pages, and a WYSIWYG editor for content contribution.
- Overview of Confluence video
Complete Confluence User Guides
Typical Use
There are a number of features available in Confluence. This is only an introductory guide and does not even come close to covering all of them. However, you can find more features on your own using the Complete Confluence User Guide. Browsing and reading content on the site works in the same way as any web page. This document outlines the basic features that most of you will want to know to post and share content.
Adding Pages: Pages are the main building blocks of the wiki. You will use pages to organize your content into lower-level groups. You should create a new page whenever you want to create a whole new category of content or discussion, if you want to add a set of related content that makes sense to group together in one place, or if you want the content to be accompanied by a longer description and it would take what feels like too much space on an existing page. Once a page exists, you must link to your page from at least one other page so that people can find it. Then you can link to it from as many other pages as you would like as well.
Adding links to pages: On any page, you can add as many links as you wish. The links may be:
- A link to another page on the wiki, e.g. related content that someone else posted
- A link to another web site / page (not on the Wiki) or URL address, e.g. articles, organizations, other reference information, reports posted on other web sites.
- A link to a downloadable attachment, e.g. a file you post to the Wiki to share with others. These work just like normal web links. You can add as much text around the link as you wish to describe it.
Adding attachments: On any page, you can add as many attachments as you wish. For example, PDF files of reports, or images. Note that you can also make images appear directly on the page. If the attachment you wish to share is already hosted on another Web site, sometimes it is best to simply link to the original Web page where you can download the document. This may be easier to do than uploading an attachment yourself.
Common Tasks in Confluence
- Accessing Confluence
- URL and login credentials
- Navigating through and around Confluence
- hierarchies and searching
- Working with pages
- editing a page ->update comment and minor update check box
- creating/adding a new page
- adding an attachment
- page permissions (hiding a page)
- commenting
- links
- Working with news/blogs
- viewing news
- adding news
- Tracking Updates
- watching a page/space
- digest or email on every update
- notify on your own updates
- watching a page/space
- User Profile
- editing profile
Accessing Confluence Wiki
Access to Confluence requires an internet connection and browser
- Go to http://papyrus.baruch.local:8080/confluence/pages/editpage.action?pageId=622594
- Enter your Network Username and Password (this is the same information you use to login to your computer)
Navigating through Confluence Wiki
Spaces
In Confluence, content is organized into spaces. Each space has its own pages, news items, comments and access permissions. Spaces can based on any theme or topic. Confluence treats each space as an independently managed wiki. This means that each space functions autonomously within your site.
Dashboard
The Dashboard is the front page of Confluence. It provides an overview of the site, access to all of the spaces you have view access, and a list of the most recent content updates. Read more about the Dashboard
Search
A search box, located on every page in the wiki, allows you to search Confluence wherever you happen to be in the site. By default, Confluence will search all content in all spaces (global and personal), including attachments, that you have access to view. Read more about searching and filtering results
Browse
Within a space, the 'Browse' menu, gives access to wiki content such as pages, news items, etc, and allows you to browse the People Directory. If you are an administrator, the space and site administration options appear here too.
Adding a New Page
- Go to a page in the space, open the 'Add' menu and select 'Page'. The 'Add Page' screen opens.
Alternatively, you can go to the Dashboard and click the 'Add Page' link located beside each space. In this case, Confluence will add the page at the root of the space.
The 'Add Page' links are only displayed if you have permission to create pages for the space.
- Enter a name (title) for your page.
- By default, Confluence will add the page as a child of the page you are viewing. If you need to move the new page to a different space or a different parent, you can edit the 'Location'.
- Enter content for your page using Wiki Markup or the Rich Text editor. See Writing Confluence Pages.
- Click 'Preview' if you want to see a preview of what the page will look like before saving it.
- Click 'Save'.