Confluence Screenshot tour
Solutions – Documentation
Let your writers focus on what they do best.
Why use Confluence for developing and publishing documentation?
Publishing documentation is often a complicated process that involves expensive software and advanced technical skills. In the case of online documentation, some systems require knowledge of HTML, XML, etc. Hiring a good writer isn't enough — you also need them to be a web expert.
Publish it in Confluence
Confluence, the most advanced enterprise wiki, is an inexpensive, easy-to-use online tool allowing writers to quickly create and publish documentation. No technical knowledge or complex uploading procedures are required.
These enterprise-grade features make Confluence ideal for documentation:
- instant online publishing
- secure 'staging' capabilities
- built-in search
- export capabilities for print publishing
Documentation made easy
The intuitive editor in Confluence makes it easy for everyone, given proper permission, to create and update documentation instantly.
Case study
- Confluence definitely eases the bottleneck we were experiencing before, where only the technical writers could make changes to the documentation. We've expanded the pool of resources contributing to the wiki to include our superiors and a few other people who are trusted content providers — and that alone has made a significant difference in the content creation cycle.
- Gilad David Maayan, GigaSpaces
Confluence provides a hierarchical page structure that is perfect for creating chapters, pages and sub-pages.
Write internally, publish externally
Restrict particular content by utilising Confluence's fine-grained permissioning system. Develop new material within internal Confluence webpages that only the appropriate teams and individuals can access — then when it's finished, publish it for the world to view.
Usage example
For an upcoming product version, the technical writer has been drafting the necessary documentation. She asks the development team lead to review the new pages. Later, when the product is released, she makes these pages public, allowing visitors to now view the documentation. Of course, only appointed internal staff can make changes.
Searching that brings results
Your readers will love the search-box that appears on every Confluence page, allowing them to quickly find what they are looking for. That said, Confluence only allows visitors to search the webpages to which they have access.
Usage example
If a customer searches your online help system (Confluence site) for documentation about a feature you have not yet released, nothing will appear in the search results. Alternatively, if the company's technical writer searches for that same feature, she will see as many search results as there are webpages associated with that feature, because she has complete access.
Automatic version control
For most companies, it is important to have a complete archive of every version of their documentation. Confluence automatically creates a new version whenever a document is saved, including the date, time, author and details of exactly which words were added or deleted.
Your site, your look
Confluence is customisable — give it your corporate look-and-feel. Here are some examples of public documentation on a customised Confluence instance:
With the help of Adaptavist's Theme Builder, you can completely redesign the wiki to meet your brand requirements.
Case study
- We use Confluence mainly for our documentation, which is currently about 500 pages. ... With Adaptavist's Builder we were able to design the wiki to follow our main website. You can hardly tell when you're looking at our actual website and when you're looking at a Confluence page.
- Ross Mason, MuleSource
Publish in print
For documents that need to be printed, Confluence makes it easy export your online documentation to PDF or Microsoft Word format.