writing a user guide

[Gilbert Louis]

Hi, New to confluence and JIRA which we use and I am usiing confluence to write a user guid for our client so everyone in the team can contribute. But the formatting is very limited to make it a visually interesting manual.

So I like the cooperation in confluence to put together the manual but the export in pdf to the client is very limited. what is the best way to leverage the advantages of confluence to write the manual but may be publishing it in a site so I can "Jazz" it up more so it visually look better for the client to access and use?

[Mike Rathwell]

Gilbert,

I agree that Confluence (with little in the way of plugins added) is somewhat limited for content formatting. It gets the job done but it is somewhat rudimentary.

There are a couple of approaches I can suggest:

1. Make the content visually interesting in Confluence by way of adding a variety of content formatting plugins/macros from the Atlassian Marketplace. I have added a TON of plugins and the visual appeal of Confluence pages in my org has skyrocketed. Many of the coolest ones I added are free, some low cost, and some a bit pricey but all used extensively.
2. Make the content visually interesting after creation in Confluence. For this approach, I'd suggest getting the Scroll Office plugin that takes Confluence content and exports it out through a MS Word template format. That way you can use Confluence to collaboratively create the content and then export to MS Word (with all its page layout and presentation elements available) via a neatly pre-defined Word template. Quick and easy and has the visual appeal and "finished" feel to it.

Not much to go on, I know but either approach will work. For the plugins, I found that pretty much anything I wanted to so (and some things I didn't even KNOW I wanted to do) have a cool plugin to support the need.

mike