Rob Hean Community Champion

Hey all - we had another great "Getting Started with Confluence" session earlier today with lots of great questions! I've copied them all in below and answered them as best I can - enjoy! Questions Can spaces have different permissions? For example, everyone can see the HR space but only HR staff can add or change content.…

Hey all, I keep thinking about my experience learning Confluence (which amounted to "there's how to log in") and how I help others avoid that frustration. So, I've got a plan. I'll drop weekly posts on Tuesday about how to use Confluence, related topics, etc. Those posts will be in this group, and will be linked below.…

Now that we have some basic concepts down (check out this post for them!) let’s dig into permissions. Permissions control what we can do in Confluence. For example, there is a permission that lets you archive content, and another one that makes you a Space admin. To add some more complexity there are two types of…

What are they? Live docs look like a page, act (mostly) like a page and (maybe) even smell like a page, but they’re not pages! They’re a relatively new addition to Confluence, and another tool we have in helping folks quickly find information and help collaborate. Join me on Feb 26th for a live session where we explore…

Hey all - in addition to the articles I'm posting here I'm also hosting free training on the Confluence Essentials (ACA-920) certification! This covers the topics found in that certification series (what confluence is, how pages work, how to edit, and advanced things like whiteboards). Even if you don't want to earn the…

Hey all - wanted to share that I've published my next set of study sessions for the Managing Jira Projects for Cloud ACP certification. I managed to pass this exam at TEAM '25 Europe (if you go to team you can take exams there! it's also cheaper than doing it elsewhere....). It's got a strong focus on what Space (Project)…

Recently I did a live session on building an Atlassian Enablement program, and realized that there’s even more we can explore - onboarding individuals. The Enablement session was geared more towards org-wide adoption, but most of the time teams need help getting a small group (or even single person) sped up. One of my just…

tl;dr * "Basic" search isn't so basic * JQL ("Jayquill") is awesome (link to Atlassian's JQL documentation) * Come learn it with me in this free, live training One of the biggest sources of frustration I've seen in Jira is that folks struggle to find work items. One one hand it sounds a bit silly - after all there is that…

Hey all - wanted to share that I've published my next set of study sessions for the Jira Service Management Agent Essentials certification! This certification focuses on the skills agents need to successfully use Jira Service Management. This includes things like ticket management, access, advanced features and more! Sign…

You’ve likely heard about Rovo - Atlassian AI assistant - and maybe you’ve even used it! Regardless, it can be very easy to either miss features, or just not know they exist. So below is a quick “at-a-glance” guide to what Rovo can help you do inside Confluence. This is not intended to be a comprehensive guide - just a…

I’m betting you’re REALLY familiar with Confluence pages - but how familiar are you with Blogs? Also join me in this free, live, session to learn more! Originally there were two content types - pages and blogs. Pages were for “evergreen” content and blogs were for “point in time”. They look and feel VERY similar - they…

Confluence's content hierarchy is where most people will spend most of their time, and this makes complete sense since it's where the content lives. What is it The content hierarchy is a visual representation of all the content in a space. This includes all the pages, databases, whiteboards, live docs, smart links and…

The first time I became a Project (now Space) admin it felt great! I had all the power to do whatever I wanted to shape Jira to support my team. Except, I didn’t… I couldn’t change workflows… or permissions… or make fields… basically all of the stuff that I associate with being an admin. So, what CAN Space (formerly…

In addition to a series on "Know Your Content" I'm starting this one on "Know Your Role(s)". This will cover the various roles an individual can have in the Atlassian stack - starting with the Confluence Space Admin. What is a Space Admin? A Confluence Space Admin is responsible for managing a space in Confluence. This is…

tl;dr * There are multiple layers to Jira - each one serves a specific purpose * From big to small they are - Organization, Site, App, Space, Work Item, Field Understanding how Jira is structured is incredibly important in being able to use it effectively. For example, if you don't understand what a Site it you can get…

Hey all, I keep thinking about my experience learning Jira (which amounted to "there's how to log in") and how I help others avoid that frustration. So, I've got a plan. I'll drop weekly posts about how to use Jira, related topics, etc. Those posts will be in this group, and will be linked below. Think of this post like an…

Tl;dr Pages are the most common content type They support text, images, links and more What most people think of when they think of content Join me in this free live learning on pages! Pages are the foundation of pretty much every Confluence space and the stereotypical content type that most people think of when they think…

This is the first in a mini series called 'know your contents'. Over the course of it well cover every content type in Confluence, and we're starting with Whiteboards! What whiteboards you ask? Well, I've got a free live training coming up soon on this topic :D (linked here and below). What are Confluence Whiteboards…

Hey all! I've just published my next series on ACA-level certifications - this time for Loom Essentials (link to exam info). I chose this one because Loom is a system I've used, but haven't had any training in, and haven't made enough time to fully explore. It is, however, something I heavily rely on to get my job done, so…

NOTE ****** - This post refers to various admin roles that can impact how Confluence is used. This does NOT refer to the Space Permissions Roles feature that was recently released....My live session a week or so back was on roles - collections of permissions and responsibilities in a system. Roles are found in almost every…

tl;dr * Confluence has a few main layers - Organization, Site, App, Space, Content * Each layer offers different features and challenges * Understanding the layers is important to understanding how to use Confluence (and avoid frustration) There are a ton of features and capabilities in Confluence. They all, however, sit…

Go Go Automations! (Sing this in your head to the 1990's Power Rangers theme and you'll get where I"m going :D ) Automations allow users to setup a series of steps a system should follow to take some action for them. This makes them especially useful for administrative actions (keeping track of pages to archive, missing…

Hey all, I'm excited to get to go to Team '25 Europe this year! I'm in a bit of an odd position since most of my interaction with this community is either asynchronous (e.g. these forms) or very one-sided (e.g. via recorded content or live streams). This makes my trips to events like Team a special opportunity to actually…

Hey all, I recently passed the Confluence Cloud Admin ACP exam and wanted to share I'm starting free, live, study sessions for folks next week (more on them below)! I found preparing for this exam helped me understand a LOT of the various features Confluence admins have, and also helped put into context a lot of random…

Thrilled to share I'm now ACA-905 Jira Software Board Configuration certified! This particular certification focuses on how to setup and manage boards in Jira - both of the scrum and kanban variety. Like many things this is something I originally learned by doing... which meant I had a TON of gaps in my knowledge! Things…

Hey all, I was thrilled to partner with @Brittany Joiner earlier for a live session on Trello for Project Managers! We had a lot of fun talking about Trello and how it can help project managers (as well as a load of basics... and not-so-basics!). I've been in project management most of my career, and typically the tools…

Hey all - the fourth ACP-420 Jira Service Projects study session was last Monday! (Check out the recording here). We didn't get quite as far as I had hoped, but still learned a lot (see below). To get more in depth with what we covered check out this blog post. Would love to have y'all join me for session #5 which is on…

Happy to share I'm now ACA-910 certified! This certification covers IT Service Management (ITSM) and Jira Service Management foundations - the core skills someone working on a service desk needs. While the exam is heavily weighted to JSM (70%!) it does include some conceptual information around IT service management (e.g.…

In today's highly unscientific survey, MOST people find not knowing field names to be the most frustrating part of finding work items in Jira... and to be honest, a few years ago I would have definitely agree with it! Thats aid, this doesn't surprise me one bit. There are a few system-provided fields (looking at you…

tl;dr - Carlos Sainz (four time Grand Prix winner!) from the Atlassian Williams Racing Formula 1 Driver, is giving a keynote at Team Euopre '25 on teamwork... I'm excited! See why below.... I realized today that an F1 team is 3600 times faster than me at changing tires: * I take 30 minutes (on a good day) to change ONE…