Does anyone have any jump starts for SaaS B2B product documentation and training in Confluence?

[Annette Kramer]

I took the short training on setting up documentation and knowledge spaces, but are there jump start resources or community members who have started from scratch before and could help me avoid pitfalls. We are new to using confluence for this, I am learning how to use Confluence to begin with.  But I have a tech background, so I am willing to dig in.  I tried looking for this in the community but searching on "documentation" or "product documentation" brings up a ton of irrelevant links. This is a training and documentation team, very new and green - not all hired. Small-ish company with a great demand planning software tool - just never invested in creating documentation and training. I want to help catch us up. Thank you in advance!

[Barbara Szczesniak · Accepted solution]

@Annette Kramer Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

I have 30+ years as a Technical Writer and have been documenting a product for my company in Confluence for the last 11 months or so (my first time writing in Confluence). 

You don't say if you're using Cloud or Data Center. I am using Cloud, so my comments below may be influenced by that.

Some things I've done/learned:

• When I created my space, I selected the Documentation Space blueprint. The main thing this gave me was a page that I use as my Overview page for the Space. It has a Live Search macro for readers to search within the space.
• I then made templates for a couple of pages. I called them Chapter_page and Non-chapter_page. My "chapter" pages are the Parent pages for a section and have a summary with links to the main topics in that section. For normal pages, I have a 3-panel layout at the top with Table of Contents macros in the first 2 panels—1 for Headings in the page and 1 for the heading level I use for my procedure titles. 
• Then I just created pages in my outline: Chapter page, then all the child pages under that page. In a few places, I have gone down an additional level where the content lends itself to warranting separate pages. Note: I started out just making all the draft pages, but I found that, if you want to link to a page from another page, you have to publish the page.
• There are 3rd-party apps that you can use to help with styling and layout, but for most you are charged per Confluence user (not just the users that are actually using the app).
• I am making this documentation for our internal users, but we will be using a 3rd-party app to generate a web site of the documentation when it is published, since 1) these people only need to read the documentation; 2) I can have a drafting location in Confluence and publish the updates to the web site; and 3) paying for the app for the number of Confluence users we do have is less than paying for Confluence licenses for all of the people who just need to view the documentation.
• If you are going to be making your documentation available to guests or the public, you should review the Confluence documentation related to these types of users.

Hope this helps. Others may have additional tips. Please feel free to ask additional questions here. 

[Annette Kramer]

• We are running confluence server version 7.19.12 currently in prod.  we are running confluence 8.5 in dev.  Working with my organization on an approach to replicate spaces to an external confluence version for licensing (admittedly, I don't understand the details of the approach yet) Would you mind sharing which 3rd party app you are considering? I need to follow up with my team on our approach
• Are you keeping all product documentation in one space (user and technical)?
• How are you managing product versions if you have them? pages under each product?
• Are you only documenting one product? I have multiple products to document and I am not sure if I should do one space per product or just use a page that allows you to choose the product and go to sub-pages. I am leaning toward the latter, keeping all documentation in one space. 
• Are users accessing anything "in product"? or are you just giving them a link to the documentation URL?

Thank you for your reply.  I am neither a tech writer, trainer or UI expert - rather the GSD resource, so when they need a project jump started I get called in.  Luckily we are hiring for training and tech writer roles, and I have access to UI help.  I just an not getting the  experience level I would like to have in the hires day 1. 

[Barbara Szczesniak]

@Annette Kramer The first thing I would consider is that Atlassian is stopping support of the Server version in 10 days (February 15), so you might want to think about a plan to migrate to Data Center or Cloud.

I am writing user documentation for one product, and my readers will all be employees at my company. My development team will place the technical documentation in a separate space.

When I publish this guide, I will maintain it for updates and start writing for the next product (still within my company). I will make a new space for the documentation for that application. That document will have a different audience, so it makes sense to keep it separated.

We have only one version, so I don't need to worry about how to manage different versions. 

We are considering using Scroll Viewport for Confluence to generate a web site that is like a help system that we can host within our company. You can generate a site with the output from multiple spaces and host it how you want. You can watch videos and look at their documentation to learn whether this would work for your use case.

[Annette Kramer]

I brought up versions and the team is working on it.  Our IT team also mentioned Scroll Viewpoint as well.  Do you have any experience with SmartCourses or izi for confluence - they are add-ins for training. I am working on hiring a training resource next.  One thing at a time! :) Thank you!

[Barbara Szczesniak]

It's been 30 years since I created a training course, so I do not have any experience of doing it in Confluence.

If you look through the pages for various apps in the Marketplace, there should be links to the documentation and company web site, which may lead you to videos or sample courses made with the app.

[Anna Mitina (Stiltsoft)]

Hi @Annette Kramer ,

Apologies for a delay in my answer. My name is Anna and I'm a Product Marketing Manager for izi LMS.

I see you have done your own Marketplace digging and found our app. If you haven't yet decided on which add-on to choose I would happily show you a quick demo of izi LMS.

Just pick a suitable time slot and let's explore your use case :)