Three Useful Tips from Atlassian Vendor

[#1]

Hi, my name is Katerina and I’m a product analyst at the Stiltsoft Europe, the Table Filter and Charts for Confluence team if to be specific. Here are some useful tips from me as an Atlassian vendor:

• Check your macrobrowser from time to time

Sometimes, especially if your company is rather big, you won’t even know that a new app is installed for your instance (for example, if not your department was an initiator to purchase the add-on).

By checking, you may find some new macro names, google them, and see what new extensions you’ve got, and even if not at this precise moment but later along the way they may come in very handy.

You may also read the highlights of the documentation related to these apps: just to know about the new capabilities in general. So that when you need to find about specific things later, you will already know where to start.

• Don’t think that your cases are unique

Here I don’t mean that no matter what company you work at, the routine is the same – just import/export some spaces from your previous place if we are talking about Confluence, for example, and you are all set. Of course, your data is different, but the patterns are the same: combine and aggregate reports, visualize and calculate numbers, get rid of manual operations and reuse content, etc.

So, go to the Community and browse similar questions. Search for more common (not very specific!) expressions and use tags. It’s more than likely that somebody has already asked something very close to your use case.

• Don’t be afraid to ask questions

If you still can’t find anything similar among existing documentation/questions, don’t be afraid to start a new thread. There are no dumb questions! And if you still think that yours is a silly one, then it should be a light one and it will be answered in a short time – try to keep this in mind and simply click the “Publish” button. 😊

Use the same guidelines: more common description, some screenshots to show the exact point where you are stuck and the right tags to let your question be found by the right people.

Besides, your questions help us to improve. We’ll be able to learn more about user requests, bottlenecks in the UI, confusing documentation and much more.

[Rob Horan]

Hi, one question - what do you mean by check your macrobrowser from time to time? 

[Katerina Kovriga {Stiltsoft}]

Hi @Rob Horan ,

I mean hit the plus icon in the page edit mode and choose the "Other macros" option to browse through all the available macros. Maybe smth new will catch your eye.

We really had such cases with our customers when they even knew that the new app was installed but used only one macro from its family cause it was available from the page view mode. And, for example, during demos or support calls we shown use cases/solutions with other macros and were asked if these macros should be purchased separately. So our customers didn't even know that the macros had been already installed as a whole bundle and came with the one app.

[Rob Horan]

There are two things that I think would be really, REALLY helpful to make standard:

1. A way of isolating all macros originating from a single plugin within the macro browser you mentioned above. 
2. Every plugin that includes macros should include a CQL reference with examples, so people know how to search for pages containing those macros.

[Jimmy Seddon]

This is extremely useful information!  Thank you for sharing @Katerina Kovriga {Stiltsoft} !