Recommended plugins and solutions for collecting user feedback

[Stan Ry]

Howdy,

We are looking into getting in touch with our Confluence users and would love to hear from you on what methods, plugins, etc. are you using to collect user feedback out your site?

I really liked what I saw on this page here, so do you mind my asking: what are you using at Atlassian to collect your feedback?

It would've been great if we could expand this thread with suggetions on that matter.

We are planning to use this set:

1. Jira Issue Collector

Pros:

• Integrates with Jira.
• Allows to automatically create issue in Jira whenever user leaves a feedback on a Confluence page.

Cons

• Unstable integration. We've had issues integrating it: custom button that calls the feedback form didn't appear when following the instructions, and we had to modify the code provided by developer (the caller, not the internals) by adding delays.
• No localzation. For some reason, the form that shows to the user always appears in English and does not reflect the language settings in Confluence.
• No form customization. We haven't found any way to customize the form, remove uncessary radio buttons, add custom forms, and set default settings for form UI controls. For example, the check box that enables the form to provide environment data is cleared by default. This environment data is vital is it provides the source page address and environment configurations such as user agent of user's browser. Whithout this information, it's not possible to understand for which page the specific feedback was provided. And there's no way to specify that this check box must be set by default.

2. Form for Confluence

We liked the Yes / No buttons provided on Atlassian support pages. As far as I get it, these were made by using this plugin.

Please share your experience. I'd love hearing from you.

[Davin Studer]

Another option to look into that we use is ConfiForms. By far this is the most versatile and useful app that we have purchased for Confluence. You can use it to create forms that can do all sorts of things such as send emails, create Jira tickets, create/update/delete pages, store structured data, post to web services, etc. The uses are pretty vast and most all the setup is done just using macros. However, if you are a bit more developer minded you can also tie into custom JavaScript and create custom workflows with programmatic logic. So, it's uses can be anywhere from beginner level to expert.

[Alex Medved _ConfiForms_]

Thank you @Davin Studer for sharing your experience with ConfiForms.

Appreciate this a lot.

ConfiForms is fully integrated with your Confluence and with server/data center versions, the data you store, never leaves your servers (in contrast to other web forms offering solutions)

Also, creating custom feedback forms and creating Jira issues with totally custom and dynamic forms is absolutely possible, among the other things the app can do

[Stan Ry]

Thank you, everyone for sharing your experience!

@Davin Studer and @Alex Medved _ConfiForms_ Does integration of ConfiForms require using JavaScript on the client side?

I've checked this page, and it contains a lot of client JS. Our security policies do not allow us to deploy JavaScript on client Conflluence pages.

• Does it mean that we won't benefit from using ConifForm?
• Will we be able to craft a custom feedback form with custom radio buttons and fields without having to use HTML macro or Markdown macro and inject custom JavaScript on client pages? 

Thank you for your feedback!

[Davin Studer]

Absolutely. Most of the use cases that you could think of just require using the built-in macros. It's only if you want to extend it that there are hook points for adding in custom JavaScript.

[Alex Medved _ConfiForms_]

Hi @Stan Ry

No, absolutely not - using JavaScript is not a requirement

You can build forms without using JavaScript, but just by using macros. And building a simple form with radio buttons does not require anything else, but use of couple of macros from the plugin

And if you want, you can "go beyond" and build a much more complicated integrations and forms - real apps in Confluence

[Davin Studer]

@Stan Ry Sorry, my "absolutely" above was referring to your "Thank you ...". Like Alex said JavaScript is not required at all. You can do A LOT with just the built-in macros.

[Stan Ry]

Thank you, gentlemen, for your recommendations. Plugin looks sweet. We'll sure have a look at it.

[Susan Ostreicher]

We recently started using Jotform to collect feedback. You can build various kinds of forms, but the one we went with is a floating feedback button that you can insert in Custom HTML if you're using Server. I wish there was something more integrated that would do the same thing, but I had the same concerns as you with not being able to customize the Jira issue collector and not being able to automatically collect the URL (which Jotform does). 

Edited to add: Jotform is also extremely affordable. 

[Stan Ry]

@Susan Ostreicher

Thank you for this tip, Suzan. Wasn't lucky to find Jotform over at Atlassian's marketplace. Could you please share a link?

Looking for details here, it feels like Jotform stores form data on external servers. Is that true? Out security policies do not allow us storing data outside the corporate infrastructure. Are locked down environments supported?

Also, in your post you've mentined Custom HTML plugin. Does it mean that Jotform requires inserting custom JavaScript on client Confluence pages though this plugin? We've had to quit with the idea to integrate Jira Issue Collector because this plugin requires inserting client JavaScript on user pages, which is restricted by our security policies... Is that client JS required for proper functioning?

Thank you for your feedback!

[Susan Ostreicher]

Hi Stan, 

Happy to share my experience! I should clarify, Jotform isn't a Marketplace app, it's just a webform that can be used in a Confluence site by inserting a line of Javascript. You can find their privacy and security policies here: 

https://www.jotform.com/privacy/

https://www.jotform.com/security/

We ended up going this route because it seemed to meet our need better than any of the other options I could find, but understand you may need to make a different choice based on your situation. Good luck, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be interested to hear what you decide. User feedback seems to be a popular topic. 

[Stan Ry]

@Susan Ostreicher

Thank you, Susan, to add these details. We are looking for a JS-free soution and these clarifications of yours are important.

[Sergey Rodin]

I'm unable to paste anything into the body of the HTML macro (Confluence server 7.13.0). Just when I press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V), the macro disappears. I only managed to insert a piece of JS code with a Jotform link once. Saved the document, and the form was visible at the bottom of the page as expected. However, then I updated the form and tried to paste the updated code, and the macro started disappearing from the page.

Has anybody else ran into this issue?