Atlassian for Non-Tech Teams - Administration

In line with the article, Atlassian for Non-Tech Teams - Human Resources, I explored the use of Atlassian product, Confluence, for another important non-tech department, Administration. Confluence wikis can fulfill document management requirements of the Administration departments through the use of Plugins.

Plugins (or Add-ons) are like apps to a mobile phone. They enhance and add new features, or change the behaviour of existing features of a software, making it more useful for different people.

The Atlassian marketplace supports several free and paid Confluence plugins. I shortlisted a few free plugins, which will be useful for Administration (and other non-tech) department(s):

• Ratings for Confluence: Easily collect and display user-ratings on pages and blog posts in Confluence. Users who have voted can retract their vote and re-cast it.

Administration Use Case: We have a Like based system on our default Confluence pages, which means that either you Like a page or you don't. Information and policy content should instead follow a ratings based system, allowing one to identify pages with better ratings. Analyzing the pages with better ratings will allow us to model less-rated pages on a similar pattern.

• Announcement Banner for Confluence: Displays pertinent information at the top of your Confluence instance.
• Countdown Timer: For informing employees about some approaching deadlines, a countdown timer as a banner of a Confluence instance can be useful.
• E-Mail this Page: Send whole Confluence pages via email, e.g. a newsletter. All images are compressed and attached to the e-mail. If you share a page, it only provides a link to view the page. In such a case, you then need to connect to the VPN (or company's intranet) to access Confluence and read the page contents.

Administration Use Case: The email, sent using this plugin, will contain the Confluence page contents, and thus can be used by people who want to read the pages' content, offline, at their own convenience.

• Page Approval for Confluence: A simple and flexible way of managing and processing the approval of Confluence pages.

Administration Use Case: Policy pages may need to be reviewed by multiple people, before they can be deemed fit for publishing. This plugin will help take page approvals, and then publish finalized content.

• Group Mentions Macro: Specify a group in a Confluence page, displaying all group users. All group members will receive notifications like a regular @mention.
• Reactions for Confluence: React to page contents and comments with emojis.

Administration Use Case: Make relevant wiki pages, a fun place to interact and share ideas. Helpful in gauging reactions on to-be-implemented policies.

• Attachment Download for Confluence: This plugin provides a fix URL for your attachments that don't change and respects permissions you've set in the Confluence.
• qr2wiki - Printable QR Codes for Pages: Print QR codes directly from a Confluence page, and attach them to objects so people can easily access further information.

Administration Use Case: Confluence page information can be accessed by scanning a QR code, which can be affixed at appropriate locations, throughout the office. This ensures that people, even if they are away from desks, going home, and are trying to access Confluence for finding out some specific data or contact can scan the code, and get the required information. An example is affixing a printer with a QR code, which when scanned can provide information on how to set up one's system to print pages. This plugin can also be useful for HR and IT teams.

• Remind me Later for Confluence: We all get busy. Someone shares us a page to review or asks us to draft up a new post, but we don't have time now. Just use Remind me Later plugin and let Confluence notify you back, as per your set timeline. This can be important for employees wanting to retain, or act upon different information shared by Finance, Administration, Legal, HR, Purchase, and IT departments.
• Pathways Lite for Confluence: This plugin allows to easily link and sequence content residing in one or more Confluence projects or spaces. It groups important information in step-by-step tutorial-like structures for users, like providing onboarding information to new joiners.
• Word4Teams - MS Word attachments editor: Edit Microsoft Word documents attached to Confluence Pages without download/ upload. ONLYOFFICE Connector for Confluence is a similar plugin which allows to view, edit and collaborate on text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations within Confluence.