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Building a knowledgebase with Confluence and JIRA
JIRA is used by many organisations as a Helpdesk system to keep track of their user queries and requests. Over time, it becomes a valuable Knowledge Base. These solved cases will have details on:
- how to replicate the error,
- what was the root cause and
- the desired solution
By opening up the Knowledge Base, it improves productivity by enabling end users to search for the solution first. If it is available, the end user will get his/her issues fixed and the Helpdesk team can handle difficult cases.
For organisations already have this arrangement, it can be further enhanced by tapping onto Confluence.
When tackling FAQs that require a detailed write-up, a new page can be created in Confluence via a standard template. As long as the JIRA issue is mentioned in the Confluence page (see red arrow in diagram below)
a corresponding link will be created in JIRA (see red arrow below)
Users can click on the link to Confluence to read the detailed solution.
The benefits of using Confluence are:
- rich content can be included (e.g. videos, screenshots, diagrams)
- content can be easily organised in user-friendly layout
- easy to search as FAQs can be organised by topics
- easy to find the solution in a page instead of digging long list of comments (in JIRA)
- protects sensitive information from public viewing
As a user, do you prefer the red pill or the blue pill?
Solution in JIRA
Solution in Confluence
By investing a small effort in Confluence, it will reduce a big effort in JIRA subsequently.
You can start with a Doc Sprint to jumpstart your Knowledge Base with your own FAQs.
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Infographic: Atlassian OnDemand vs in-Premise
We have been asked many times on the differences between OnDemand hosting versus hosting the Atlassian apps within the premises.
Here’s a chart we did that lists down the various factors for consideration together with a rating for each option.
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Using JIRA for Purchase Requests
A lot of people has the misconception that JIRA is used purely as a Bug Tracker. In fact, it can be used for many other purposes due to the key features (such as searching, dashboards, email notifications, workflows, permissions, issue types) provided by an Issue Tracker.
Whenever there is an item required (e.g. printer cartridges) or wished (e.g. OSIM uDivine), the person will create a new Wish in our Wishing Well project in JIRA.
The wish will be reviewed and fulfilled depending on the need, cost, urgency and usefulness. Periodically, we will review outstanding wishes as part of our Office Improvement Project.
OSIM uDivine
The good thing about using JIRA is that all wishes remains tracked so that we don’t miss out any of them. Wishers can also find out on the status of their wishes by logging into JIRA. And now, we welcome Well-wishers to come in to grant our wish for an Osim uDivine.
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Book Review: JIRA 5.x Developer Cookbook
I was very happy to get the invitation to do a book review for the latest edition of the JIRA 5.x Development Cookbook.
While I do not know Jobin (the author) personally, he has been participating activiely in the JIRA developers’ community from sharing tips in blog posts to answering fellow developers’ questions in the Developer Forum.
So when he published the first edition of the JIRA Developer Cookbook, I ordered a copy for myself. It was a worthwhile buy. The book was well organized and catered to readers who are new to JIRA development to experienced developers trying to hunt for new tricks.
New developers are led through the Plugin Development Process (Chapter 1) and Understanding the Plugin Framework (Chapter 2). For those very experienced, the chapter on Useful Recipes (Chapter 11) gave me new ideas on how certain things can be done more effectively.
This latest edition revises those sections with up-to-date information for JIRA 5.
In addition, new sections are added to elaborate on certain concepts (e.g. Types of plugin modules and Architecture explained, …) and introduce new stuff (e.g. FastDev, Issue Link Renderers, ….).
For those who are interesting to start developing their own JIRA plugins, this book will be a useful jumpstart and reference.
Bonus: From now till 10th July 2013, 2 lucky participants who post comment on their expectations of the book at the JTricks’ blog post will get a chance to win a copy of the JIRA 5.x Developer Cookbook.
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Modern. Fast. Mobile. Simple. JIRA 6
We have just upgraded our own JIRA instance to the latest version of 6.0.1 over the last weekend. And this week, our team members are giving positive feedback with the new features in JIRA 6.
Fresh Look
The JIRA interface has been revamped significantly according to the Atlassian Design Guidelines. Initially, there is a slight learning curve trying to find the buttons and links. After a while, we find that it is easier to find information and do common tasks.
Detailed View
The newly introduced Detailed View is one of my favourite feature. Now, it is much easier to work with set of issues without having to switching between Issue View and Issue Navigator. This really saves a lot of time.
JIRA Mobile
While it has been possible to view JIRA on my iPhone previously, the new mobile view for JIRA make it easier to use JIRA on the go. The interface is finger friendly for common tasks and is comparable to a native mobile app. And the best thing – it is free.
More…
For other features, please refer either to the JIRA 6.0 release notes or the video below
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Why People Choose JIRA
A picture tells a thousand words on why JIRA is used by nearly 20,000 teams, spanning 115 countries around the globe. The tool that makes a difference.
For more details, you can refer to this blog post – Make Growth Easy: Why People Choose JIRA 6
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Make your diagrams more professional
Our favourite diagramming editor has just got better!
Gliffy has recently released updates to their Gliffy Confluence Plugin. In this latest version, improvements have been made to allow users to create their diagrams easier and more professional with Templates and Themes
For more details, check out the video below
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Stash 2.0 – Giving you more control with DVCS
Atlassian has launched Stash 2.0 together with Enterprise Support for it. Stash is an on-premise Git Repository Management solution that allows teams a central way to manage all the distributed and growing code base.
With Stash, it will be possible to
- integrate with corporate LDAP
- enforce permissions at project or branch level
- integrate with JIRA issue tracker
- extend new features with plugins
- and others
For those who are not heard of Git, it is fastest growing DVCS (Distributed Version Control System) that has increased from 13% (2011) to 27% (2012). People are switching from Subversion to DVCS to be more efficient, reduce dependencies among developers and to take advantage of the workflows.
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Gliffy releases a better, faster Confluence plugin — in HTML5!
Our partner, Gliffy has launched their newest version of its popular Gliffy Confluence Plugin. The Gliffy plugin is a Confluence plugin that enables users add/edit diagrams like flowcharts, wireframes, and UML diagrams directly to their wiki pages without leaving the web browser.
This 5th major release brings Gliffy onto HTML5 to be faster, smoother, and better integrated with Confluence than ever before.
The HTML5 Revolution
The Gliffy plugin was originally built in Flash — at the time, the best technology available for complicated in-browser apps. But the web has evolved. The diversity of web-enabled devices, the introduction of HTML5, and the vast community building open-source code for HTML5 developers make supporting a totally Flash-based application feel kind of… old fashioned.
Gliffy’s developers are thrilled about the move to HTML5. According Kohlhardt, “HTML5 is a superior technology to Flash. Developers prefer it, our customers prefer it, and browsers support HTML5 better than Flash because it’s an open web standard.”
New features
If you’ve used Gliffy before, never fear! It’s still the same Plugin you know and love. It just loads twice as fast and operates much more smoothly.But since they were in there, anyway, the Gliffy engineers took the liberty of making a few improvements:
- The new color picker keeps track of your most recently used colors, so it’s easier to create beautiful diagrams with custom colors
- The revamped interface is lighter, cleaner, and more tightly integrated with the Confluence environment.
- Undo/redo have been amped up for more control, and now they have buttons on the toolbar!
- Snap-to-grid placement and drawing guides make it easy to create sharp, perfectly aligned diagrams.
- Smart copy and paste remember relative positioning, so you can create grid layouts with the push of a button.
- Keyboard shortcuts work much better in the new HTML5 app, even on Macs!
To learn more (and download the app for yourself), check out the Gliffy Confluence Plugin 5.0.
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Confluence 4.3 released to improve productivity
Do you know that an average worker receives more than 300 emails weekly?
If you are one of them, you might want to click on the infographic below to see how much time you have wasted.
In this release of Confluence, Atlassian has focused on helping users on becoming more productive.
From the studies conducted, they have added these features below:
- In-app notifications – to de-clutter your inbox and context switching
- Personal task lists – to create tasks at the source and to facilitate tracking
- iPhone & iPad mobile interface – to allow users to use Confluence while on the move
- In-line actions – Add notifications to your personal task list as a reminder for later action
There are still many other features. For more details on the new features introduced in Confluence 4.3, check out the release notes posted within Confluence
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