Writing a Client's Technical Manuals in Confluence

[Keith Glanville]

A new client of ours would like us to write their product's technical manual in Confluence. We've used Confluence for our own purposes but not prepared a manual which effectively will be owned by a client.

How is this best achieved? Do they create a Space and we ask to get invited to it or can we create a Space and somehow transfer it to them later? Any thoughts on this?

[Kristian Klima · Accepted solution]

Hi @Keith Glanville 

You can set up a Confluence space / a new site in your Atlassian org that'd be dedicated to your client docs.

Depending on the relationship between you and the client, it can be either on your or your clients' Confluence.

Then, you can grant the other party access in the form of full user-seat or guest access.

Also to consider is whether the documentation should be publicly available or only behind login. Also consider that there are apps that can create a doc portal behind your client's SSO which would be non-public yet accessible to your client's users without a Confluence seat. Which, judging by your Free tier, might be of interest as Free tier does not support public spaces.

If you need to use specific apps to cater for your client's specific doc needs, authoring the docs on a Confluence with fewer paid seats might be beneficial.

I'd create a list of reqs, access requirements for both authoring and consuming, count the cost and approach the solution with an open mind taking advantage of elastic and flexible nature of Atlassian cloud org.

[Keith Glanville]

Hi Kristian, I like the sound of creating the manual's Space in our own Organisation as I am assuming that this gives us better control over when the documents can be commented on by the invited client. I am keen to avoid the client making direct changes while we are preparing a draft. One the manual is complete, do you know if we can then transfer or copy over the Space to the client's organisation? We can pay for seats if we need to.

[Kristian Klima]

@Keith Glanville 

Check Space Sync for Confluence, this app can sync spaces across multiple Confluence sites, that I tested, but I don't know if it can do the same across sites in two orgs - I'd check with Ricksoft, the app's vendor.

Alternative is to use Scroll Viewport by K15t. It's an app that creates a static website from a Confluence space - outside of Confluence - so you can use a private (no anonymous access space as a source).

Now, the great thing about that app is support for a) custom domain b) SSO.

So you can create a dedicated documentation website for a specific customer which they would access via their SSO.

You will control what and when gets published to the Viewport site, you'll have control over that site, it will 'read only', and your client will control who in their org gets to access this.

You can, of course, create multiple Viewport sites, one for each customer.

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked- · Accepted solution]

If the customer "owns" the manual, I'd recommend that the customer creates a space in their Confluence and invites you.  In that case the customer keeps a copy of the history of the document/manual.

[Keith Glanville]

The customer will eventually own the manual, once the content has been signed off. I would prefer to have as much 'control' as possible until sign off - so assume it would be better to be in our organisation and then copied over. If that is even possible. If not, I think your answer is the way to.

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

One way to copy over the manual would be use a separate space with an unique name in both Confluence instances.  This would allow you to write the manual in one instance, export the space and import it in the other Confluence instance.

If you use any addons, make sure they are present in both instances.

[Daniel_Domene_Kolekti]

Hi @Keith Glanville ,

My name is Daniel, and I'm a Product Marketing Manager at Kolekti. We're developing an app for Confluence called Guided Pathways, and we're always looking for feedback from users like yourself.

Your work as a technical writer caught my eye. I'm really interested in learning more about how technical writers use Confluence to create manuals, interactive guides, handbooks, and other content.

Would you or someone on your team be open to a quick chat about your experiences and needs when it comes to using Confluence for technical writing? We'd love to hear your feedback on how we can make Confluence even better for your workflow.

Feel free to reply here or reach out to me directly at dmartinez@kolekti.com 

Thanks!
Daniel