Prior to joining Atlassian on the Confluence Marketing team, I had never used Confluence, so I understand what it’s like to learn it from scratch. There are tons of useful features for any kind of Confluence user that I’m still learning, but I found concentrating on a few basics helped me get comfortable quickly.
1. Keep track of Pages with Favorites
I quickly realized that there are a few Confluence spaces and pages I visit often, like the Marketing space and my team’s page. There are other pages that I need to reference occasionally like our GoToMarket Plan, but I don’t want to have to search for them every time I need them. I added these pages to my Favorites so I can easily reference them later. To Favorite a page, click on the “Tools” button in the top right of any page and select “Favorite” from the drop down menu.
You can access your Favorites by clicking on your personal icon in the top right of your screen. Click on “Favorites” from the drop down to bring up your list of Favorite pages and spaces.
2. Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate faster
In my first few weeks with Confluence, I used Search A LOT to find the pages and spaces I needed. I love working fast, so I quickly learned I could make searching even more efficient with the keyboard shortcut “/”:
type “/” at any time to search
and start typing what you’re looking for in the search field
I also started creating a lot of content – my introductory blog post, pages for upcoming launches, etc. To save time, I started to use the keyboard shortcut for Create, “c,” to get to the create screen faster than clicking!
type “c” to open the create dialog
then select what type of Confluence Page you want to create
Want to learn more keyboard shortcuts? Find the whole list in the Help drop down, located in the global header, or check out Matt Hodges’ post, Five Keyboard Shortcuts I Can’t Live Without.
3. @mention other users to get their input
One of my first projects was planning an infographic campaign. I had to coordinate with product marketers, designers, and data scientists. I created a page with all the requirements for everyone to reference, and then “@” mentioned each person on the page so they would see it and could comment on the plan. You can “@” mention other users on pages, posts and comments – any time you want to bring someone’s attention to something.
Type “@” followed by the person’s name anywhere on Confluence to mention someone – a list of suggested users will populate as you type.
Once you publish the page or comment, the person will receive a notification in their WorkBox, directing them to the page on which they have been mentioned.
4. Reply and Like straight from WorkBox
Everyone at Atlassian writes an introductory blog post in their first week. I included a bit about the merits of different kinds of Southern barbeque here in the U.S., which led to spirited debate in the comments. Each time someone commented, Liked my post, or “@” mentioned me, I got a notification in my WorkBox. I was able to quickly reply to the confused Australians to explain what “barbeque” means in America or “Like” welcoming comments others had left, straight from the WorkBox.
Click the WorkBox icon in the upper right to see your notifications, and click on one to expand it. You can Reply or Like the comment right there, or Open it to see it on the page or post.
5. Save drafts for later
While writing my introductory blog post, I wanted to make sure it had the right combination of fascinating information and witty remarks, so I went through a few rounds of edits. Confluence automatically saves what you are working on as a draft, so I could work on it for a bit, and then close it and come back to it later.
You can see when the Draft was last saved in the bottom right, below the “Preview” and “Save” buttons.
Access your drafts by clicking on “Drafts” in the drop down below your profile icon. When you’re ready to publish your page, click “Save” in the bottom right corner.
Learning these features helped me get up to speed quickly. Any other beginner favorites I missed? Tweet it to @Confluence.