Welcome
I’m providing this resource page to help new and beginner YMCA wiki users to be proficient in navigating the wiki environment as well as accessing editing and creating content in the wiki. In the spirit of shared content development, you are encouraged (possibly even expected) to modify pages in the workspaces with improvements. Also feel free to Add Comments to any page and provide feedback.
Wiki, what’s a Wiki?
According to Wikipedia, “a wiki is a website that allows visitors to add, remove, edit and change content. It also allows for linking among any number of pages. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring.”
What is Confluence?
Confluence is an enterprise wiki that makes it easy for people to collaborate and share knowledge. It is developed and maintained by an Australian company Atlassian and is used by more than 2,500 organizations around the world.
What’s so Great About Wikis?
“Wikis are simple, efficient tools for managing knowledge and collaborating. They’re particularly convenient in today’s busy and international workplace.
They’re easy to learn and use. Wikis aren’t as complicated as other types of content management systems.
With wikis, knowledge doesn’t get buried in emails, locked into file systems, hard drives or servers, intranets or extranets, or closed in more specialised data management systems and knowledge management systems.
Wikis are online so users can access, collaborate on, and share content, knowledge and files anytime, anywhere.
Wikis are also exceptionally flexible. You can customise them and also connect a wiki to other applications, databases, and file systems.
Most wikis are a fraction of the cost of most enterprise software.”
What is the Dashboard?
The Dashboard is the default home page (space) for Confluence. It is the jumping off point for accessing all public and private spaces. Depending on the the rights that you have, you can also mark spaces as favourites, see a list of recently updated pages, search the whole Confluence site, make changes to your user Profile, and create new spaces.
What is the Confluence Structure and How Do I Browse?
As previously mentioned, Confluence defines a section of the wiki as a “Space”. Each Space is organized hierarchically and is made up Parent and Child Pages.
Notice the Breadcrumbs on top of the screen. Breadcrumbs help you determine where in the wiki you are and will also help you quickly navigate to other places in the wiki.
When viewing the list of child pages, the icons that appear to have a tiny sun peeking from behind them indicate those pages that have recently been changed.
From this area, you have many options, including:
- clicking on a specific page
You can select View in hierarchy which will provide a more graphical representation of the pages in your space. You can then expand pages, which will show that pages children, by clicking on the Plus icon in front of the page title.
Can I Search?
Certainly. There’s a search box in the upper right hand corner of the screen. I’m pretty sure this does a full text search across all of the wiki spaces.
How About Editting Pages?
If you select the Edit tab on any page, you will be brought into the WYSIWYG (What You See Is what You Get) editor. You can then make changes to the page. Once you complete your edits, remember to select one of the two Save buttons on the top and bottom right hand side of the screen.
Can I Create New Pages?
You can add child pages to any existing page, by clicking on Add Page in the upper right hand side of the screen.
How can I Watch a Space?
When you watch a space, you are notified by email whenever content is added to it or updated. To start watching a space,
Click on the Browse Space link for the space.
Go to the Advanced tab. In the left panel, click on Start watching this space. This link will be replaced with a new link to Stop watching this space.
How do I Get Notification of Changes to Pages that I am Watching?
Confluence provies the daily notification of changes to pages that you are watching. This is an awesome feature which immediately highlights wiki activity.
Click on the Preferences link located below the breadcrumbs at the top of the page.
Go to the Edit Profile tab, then click the Email link.
Check the Notify on my actions box if you want Confluence to include your own actions in your notifications for your watches. Deselect this if you do not want to be notified of your own actions. Note that this option only applies to your watches and not to the Daily Report .
Check the Subscribe to daily updates box if you want Confluence to notify you of any changes made to the spaces that you can see.
Use the Email Format drop-down menu to choose whether you want to receive your notifications as HTML or plain text. Note that this will apply to the Daily Report as well as to your notifications for watches.
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