How to best create an FAQ page using the cloud product?

[Alison Ross]

Hi - I believe my company uses the cloud version of Confluence. I'm trying to create an FAQ page for my team, but using an expand macro for every single question is taking forever. Is there any other option besides buying something from the marketplace? What few FAQ options there are for purchase, don't even look that good.

In this tutorial, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjVf00GmimY, it looks so simple!

Edit: just using the expand macro also doesn't allow for longer questions. So I'm really looking for a better option.

[Melek Jebnoun_Vectors_ · Accepted solution]

Hello Alison,

My name is Melek and I'm Vectors' CPO. We are the vendor behind FAQ for Confluence App (The one behind the YouTube video :)

Did you managed to find the best option to build your FAQ? I would recommend strongly before orienting your self to use Confluence native macros or a marketplace app to ask the following questions:

• What expected amount of questions will be managing ?
• The FAQ content will be searched intensively ?
• The FAQ content has to be in a unique place or will be used in different pages?
• How will the information be filled (manually, imported from external system)

Based on those questions I think you have the following options:

Option 1: You're managing a small number of questions (no more than 30 or 40) , contain mainly short text.

It can be added as @Guess_ Brandi N_ specified. Adding the question within the expand macro title will make the question non searchable in Confluence native search :(

It's preferable to add content as much as possible in page for search purpose or macro bodies (NOT parameters). That's the trick with using the native or even formatting macro as the content will not be searchable so this makes the FAQ a bit useless.

Option 2: If you're managing an important amount of content or importing data from an external system and you want to avoid the nightmare of updating a question in a page containing 1000 occurrence of expand macro ;)

I would highly recommend passing by our App, FAQ for Confluence or by Atlassian Database feature (if no budget for apps :D and you're searching for a simple content storage and table listing).

The advantage of both options is the bulk import (CSV, Excel, link), the easiness to navigate content and the ability to search content in global search.

As App vendor, we deeply worked and designed the App to reply to FAQ listing management and stick to basic KM tools management where you can categorize your content by topics:

have a nice listing with questions and answesr and a strong search feature either globally or in App 

And the plus you can use all that content in Confluence pages via a macro where you can select the questions, categories and FAQ to list in your confluence content this way:

Voila, my two cents in, hope it will help in making your choice!

If you're selecting the App option we will be pleased to assist you in designing or enriching the App to match your use.

Many thanks

[Alison Ross]

Thank you so much for replying! We're going to have 100+ Q&As so I'm definitely interested in the app, especially if as you say it can be a little tailored to match our use. I'm going to take this information to IT, so hopefully we'll be getting it soon. :)

[Cyrille Martin]

Hi @Alison Ross 

There are several ways to build an FAQ.
With your issue on the expand macro, I assume you want to have all the questions on the same page and give an easy access to all the questions to the users.

Then in this case, here is what you can do.
For each new entry, you can write the question with the style H2, and on the top of your FAQ page you are calling the "Table of content" macro and set it to display the H2 title of the page. By doing that you will have the full list of the questions displayed on top to the page with the link for the user to get at the answer deeper in the page.

How many questions do you think you will have in your FAQ ?

Regards,

[Alison Ross]

Hi Cyrille,

If only we had a dozen questions, then that would be a perfect solution! We've got about 50 right now, I assume final version will be about one hundreds Q's. 

So it seems like buying an FAQ app from the marketplace is our best option after all...

Thank you for taking the time to respond to me. :)

[Guess_ Brandi N_]

even if you have a lot of questions, the former will work. heading makes the question larger than the answer so its easier to read through and seperate question from answer. 

Personally even if its 50 expands, I would use the expand for the answer. you do not have to put the question in the text of the expand though you can do heading text with an expand under it. 

Something like this.

[Alison Ross]

I think you might have the best option, using headings and the expand macro together - that would ensure the full text of the question is visible.

Thank you for answering! :)