Documentation: Context-based help articles with Confluence

[Rainer Schneider]

Hello,

I would like to use Confluence as a help authoring tool and I would like to know whether I can link Confluence to our ERP software so that the user can press F1 (for example) in a specific dialogue and immediately gets the appropriate help article to this dialogue. Is that possible with Confluence? 

I hope, you can understand what I mean.

Thanks in advance.

Best,

Rainer

[Kristian Klima]

Hello @Rainer Schneider and welcome to the community.

Yes, with some coding / engineering or an app.

App option

Scroll Viewport by K15 allows you to embed specific articles directly in the product. So how it works is that Viewport creates a documentation website for you from Confluence content. Than you assign specific URL IDs to specific pages, do a bit of coding, and then the article appears right in the product. The advantage is that you only need to update the article in Confluence.

Review their topic-specific docs here.

This is their own implementation in their product (the Confluence app. You click the ? icon and the modal with the docs/tiles appears.

Coding option

You can use Confluence API and then code the modal that would pull in content directly from Confluence and/or display the confluence page as an iframe. (this is very high level but this approach works).

Differences

Viewport site is independent from Confluence permissions. To display Confluence pages in your product 'as is', you will have to sort out permissions.

[Rainer Schneider]

Hi Kristian, 

thank you for your helpful answer. Sounds like a very interesting approach that I will take into account.

You said that a bit of coding is needed for connecting the Confluence content with the documentation website by using Scroll Viewport. How much coding is it approximately?  

How do you manage to make the respective documentation websites appear directly in the product? You also use keyboard shortcuts such as F1? 

Best,

Rainer

[Kristian Klima]

@Rainer Schneider 

Not much, I guess - https://help.k15t.com/scroll-viewport/how-to-embed-in-app-help#EmbedIn-AppHelp-InserttheHelpCenterWidgetScript

Reaching out to K15t might be the best option to get the details.

[Rainer Schneider]

Hi Kristian,

thanks again for your quick and helpful reply. 

I will reach out to K15t. But it is good to know that this option of embedding articles to the software does actually exist. 

Best,
Rainer