Quick Guide to using Confluence

To work in Confluence you need an account. Use the sign up form to apply for a Confluence/Jira account.

The navigation bar located on the left side of the Home page contains three main Confluence controls which appear on all pages. These provide access to the files and attachments in each space.

• Page Operations - Actions that change, modify or remove a page. Clicking on the title Page Operations displays and collapses the list of operations.
• Browse Space - View your space, files, attachments, etc. Clicking on the title Browse Space displays and collapses the list of items.
• Add Content  - Creates a new page or news. Clicking on the title Add Content displays and collapses the list of items you can add.
  

Basic operations, create, edit and delete. You must have the right permissions to make changes to pages.

• Create a new page -  Select Add Content  then select *Add Page. *You will be put into edit mode where you can name your page and enter the content. The default method of adding content is Rich Text format. The tool bar provides bulleted lists, unordered lists, html elements and style elements to be added to the page by selecting the element.  If you choose Wiki Markup, a list of elements and their syntax is provided on the right side of the page.  Refer to the full notation guide for Wiki Markup. Please verify that the box indicating the parent for the newly created page points to a location which is correct for the hierarchy structure you have in mind. It's always possible to change the parent page later in order to modify the hierarchy structure.
• Edit an existing page - Click Pages under Browse Space and find the page you want to edit. Select the page and click Edit. Make your changes and then click save.
• Add an attachment - Select the page that will receive the attachment (Confluence will associate the attached file to the selected page by default). Find the attachment by clicking Attachments under Page Operations. Fill in the name or browse to find the filename and then attach the file. Once in Confluence space you can assign the attachment to a page in Confluence. If the file is outside of Confluence you may try  wget  from the Unix command line to upload the file. For example the following would recursively copy the files under exp into your machine:

wget -r -np http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/

• Remove an existing page - Click Pages under Browse Space and select the page then select Remove.
  

Miscellaneous Facts, Tips

• A file can only be attached if it exists in Confluence Space. Files outside of the selected space must be uploaded or imported.
• If a filename already exists during upload/import Confluence will not overwrite the file but append a suffix to make it distinct from the original file.
• You must be logged in and have edit privileges to make changes to a page. If you are not logged Page Operations will only show 'View' and 'Info'. Make sure Page Operations is selected to see the 'Edit' option.
• Browse Space -> Space Admin allows the page owner to setup permissions for users and manage the space, including the "look and feel" of a space.
• Browse Space -> Activity shows the number of visitors to the page and who has been contributing to the page.
• Browse Space -> Pages displays pages in 3 different views, 'Recently Updated',  'Alphabetical' and 'Tree'.
• Browse Space -> Advanced tracks page status (e.g. orphaned, undefined), subscriptions to RSS feeds and export information
• If you are using Wiki Markup and want to attach a non-html page (e.g. ppt, pdf, etc) as a link use the following syntax:  * [page title|^page_name] where page title is the name you want the user to see and ^page_name is the name of a file in Confluence. The caret ( ^ ) alerts Confluence that the file is not an html file.
• The option 'Hide Children' is a toggle on/off. If you click 'Hide Children' the subsequent visits to the page will not show the children until you click 'Hide Children' again.