We created a special piece of collateral to hand out at our booth at last week's Enterprise 2.0 conference. Confluence 3.0 has some great, new social features, but rather than tell the story through a typical sales datasheet, we invented Bill and John, two cartoon characters trying to overcome a few coworker TMI issues — too much information. Fortunately, Confluence-man comes to the rescue.

Let us know what you think! Excelsior!

A huge congratulations goes out to Walton Smith and team at Booz Allen Hamilton for their winning the Open Enterprise Innovation Award at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston this week.

Booz Allen's Hamilton is a 90-year-old consulting firm with over 20K employees. Walton helped create Hello.bah.com, a platform combining 'best of breed enterprise 2.0 tools' including Confluence. It's a great example of a large, mature firm can innovate with new ways to communicate, collaborate and share knowledge.

Stephen Walling at ReadWriteWeb also gives a great summary of Walton's Enterprise 2.0 presentation in Boston on Thursday. If you missed it, Walton also presented hello.bah in our March Voice of the Customer webinar which you can watch on Atlassian.com/tv.

As the video below shows, no longer do users need to concern themselves with typing inside of curly brackets and figuring out what parameters need to be set. All that's needed is an idea of what content you'd like to show and Confluence takes care of the rest. Matt showed you the old way of doing things. This video shows how much simpler it is today in Confluence 3.0.

The evolution of macros is, in a way, a reflection of Atlassian's own growth as a company. Atlassian has evolved from a highly technical team, mainly of developers, to a diverse range of departments. Teams such as Marketing, Customer Service, and Talent that did not exist before are now essential parts of Atlassian. Like many business users, our non-technical departments are thrilled to be able to embed task lists, charts, RSS feeds and other dynamic content into their wiki pages.

The future is bright for the Macro Browser. Plugins 2.0 and Atlassian Plugin Exchange set the foundation for building and discovering new plugins, while the Macro Browser makes the magic accessible to all users.

What are you doing still reading this post? Download Confluence 3.0 and see for yourself already!

If you can't make it all the way to The Netherlands or down to Sydney, then you can always check out this quick video about what's new in Confluence 3.0

Where did they come from?

Veteran Confluence Architect, Charles Miller, did some digging for me and highlighted that what is now the Confluence plugin system, was originally the Confluence macro system. See below:

Now from what we remember, the first macro ever written was the original tasklist macro by our co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, to demonstrate how the macro system worked. It has since evolved into the super useful Dynamic Tasklist 2 plugin. You may be wondering what's all this business between macros and plugins? Well, macros became plugins in Confluence 1.3 because we wanted a way to easily add themes themes into Confluence, the same way you could with macros.

With each subsequent release we exposed more and more Confluence functionality to plugins, basically because our awesome plugin authors were becoming more ambitious with what their plugins were trying to do. In Confluence 1.4 we made it possible to install plugins and use them straight away without the need to restart Confluence.

What we were still lacking was the ability to install plugins via the Confluence Admin interface. Alas, that came in Confluence 2.3 which shipped with Adaptivist's Plugin Repository Client giving admins a directory of plugins they could install dynamically over the web:

What's coming next for plugin management for Confluence? Well, really it's not just for Confluence, but for all our products. The Plugin Exchange Manager is on its way.

Oh how they've grown!

The chart below illustrates the growth in the total number of plugins ever written for Confluence:

Note: These numbers are for all plugins ever written. We've since eliminated a lot of obsolete plugins during the migration to the Atlassian Plugin Exchange, dropping us down to about 300 actively maintained plugins.

I'm more popular than you

So, what are the top 3 most popular plugins for Confluence, you may ask? Well, thanks to the awesomeness that is the Atlassian Plugin Exchange we can now track the number of downloads to give us a rough idea, and the winners are...

1. The Calendar Plugin which puts a dynamically updated calendar into any page.

2. The Theme Builder Plugin which allows you to completely customise the look and feel of Confluence.

3. The WebDAV Plugin which allows you to use Confluence like a network drive with drag and drop file operations.

These plugins are all FREE! But, let's not forget that Confluence ships with a huge amount of bundled plugins that provide some really kick ass functionality. Some highlights are:

1. The Office Connector which brings Confluence to the masses, and lets anyone participate in creating and editing pages using Microsoft Word, embed Office documents and PDF files on a page and even import Word documents into Confluence.

2. The Widget Connector which allows you to embed content from across the web in your Confluence pages.

3. The Chart Plugin which can generate sexy charts in a Confluence page using data from a table on a page or external sources, via SQL queries.

What's changed?

I'd love to tell you but you will have to wait for Boots' second part of this series....coming to you soon!

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, we have a variety of customers using our products in interesting and different ways. One such example is the Mambo Foundation.

Mambo is an open source full-featured content management system that can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications.

Lynne Pope, has been the core developer for Mambo since 2006 and is currently president of the Mambo Foundation, Inc.

Tell us a bit about your organization:

The Mambo Foundation is a non-profit incorporation that governs the Mambo open source content management system project. Mambo is a multi-award-winning, free, CMS that has been around since 2000 and open source under the GNU General Public License since 2001. It has been downloaded over 9 million times.

The Foundation, like the project, is manned by unpaid volunteers. It is charged with protecting the intellectual property, facilitating development by providing the infrastructure, and always keeping Mambo free under an approved open source license.

How do you use Confluence?

Mambo, while having a nominal home, is a virtual organisation with the teams distributed globally. As the years passed we found that knowledge was becoming too distributed and was not being kept readily available to new and future team members. We were using a wiki for user documentation and wanted to extend this to developer documentation, team notes, collaboration on planning, etc.

Confluence allows us to have different spaces with access controls so that each team is able to have their own area, including areas for private discussion. Unlike traditional wiki's, it also allows us to have private work areas where we can each work on our own projects while preparing them for submission to the team.

Combined with the ability to have comments and forums, Confluence has become a key factor in facilitating communication while also keeping the discussions, notes, etc available for future team members.

How has Confluence helped?

Mambo had no developer documentation and now has a growing collection. It is the most visited space on the wiki. While we did not measure specifically, as visitor traffic to the wiki increases we are seeing a corresponding decrease in traffic to the support forums. The decrease in support questions allows the Mambo team to concentrate more on the code, which brings a benefit to everyone using Mambo.

Atlassian's free open source license and the generosity of Adaptavist in hosting our wiki has enabled Mambo to provide documentation resources to thousands of people and has directly facilitated the development of Mambo itself.

Atlassian has given over $10 million in free licenses to open source projects and non-profits. To apply for a free community license or learn more, click here.

Columns allowed me to display the information on my page in a more engaging and friendly manner. It also gave me more freedom to choose where I put certain things. You can create a column by:

1. Typing: {section}
2. Then typing: {column:width=_%} use whatever width you would like
3. Add whatever you would like in the column
4. Typing: {column}
5. Repeat steps 2-4 to add another column
6. Type {section} again

Adding Panels

I wrote a short description of myself so that visitors to my page could quickly learn some important facts about me. I wanted it to stand out a little, so I put it in a panel (a strategy I learned from looking at other pages). You make use of this feature by:

1. Typing: {panel}
2. Writing the text you would like to be in the panel
3. Then type: {panel} again

Displaying Your Blog

Then I wanted to give my company blog more visibility by including some of the recent entries on my page. You can do this with the Macro Browser:

1. Open the browser
2. Select the Blog Posts tool
3. Choose from a number of different ways to display your blog
4. Then click insert

Adding Movies

I wanted my personal page to show my coworkers what my interests are as well as what I'm working on. I play lacrosse in college and love to ski, and my personal page provided me with the opportunity to show other employees some videos of me taking part in those activities. This turned out to be a great way to meet people with similar interests because they saw my personal page and came up to me to talk about lacrosse or skiing. The Macro Browser made it much easier than I had expected to display videos on my page. All you have to do is:

1. Place the cursor where you would like the video
2. Open the browser
3. Select the Widget Connector tool
4. Enter the URL for the video
5. And click insert

Adding RSS Feeds

There are a number of blogs that I check everyday, and I wanted to include some of my favorites on my page. Again the Macro Browser made the task astonishingly easy. After a few clicks, I had three RSS feeds displayed on my page so my coworkers could get an even better idea of what my interests are. To add RSS feeds to your space just:

1. Place the cursor where you would like the feed
2. Open the browser
3. Select the RSS Feed tool
4. Enter the URL for the RSS feed
5. Specify the amount of entries to display
6. Then click insert

Benefits of Using Personal Pages in Confluence

The whole process of deciding what I wanted to show on my page, learning how to navigate through Confluence, observing different methods of presenting information, learning how to use those techniques, and actually building the page took only a couple of hours. For a new user with zero relevant experience, Confluence 3.0 was incredibly easy to use. At the same time, I anticipate that the Macro Browser will enable experienced users to construct their pages more quickly and easily.

Within a couple of days, several employees had commented on my blog and personal space. Coworkers that shared some of my interests remarked on the movies or mentioned a related experience they have had. This allowed me to connect with several employees who I had not met yet or who lived in Sydney. Confluence made it easy for me to create an identity and network with other employees who have the same interests.

I felt like it took me less than a few hours of messing around to become comfortable using Confluence. I was so impressed that I started promoting the product around my family friends. In no way is this part of my job description, but it's not every day you come across software that combines utility and ease of use so effectively.

What are your favorite techniques for customizing your personal page? What has your personal page enabled you to do in your organization?

Confluence 3.0 comes bundled with over 80 out-of-the box macros and can be extended with hundreds of other third party plugins like Balsamiq mockups or Gliffy diagrams.


Creating Social Interactions
Confluence 3.0 also includes a series of new features that help people discover new colleagues and experts through the content they contribute to the wiki, and establish valuable connections and networks to coworkers.

The features that improve people discovery include:

• Hover Profile - hover over a users name wherever it appears in Confluence to view summary profile information, follow the user or click into his complete user profile;


• Enhanced User Profiles - personal profiles now let users enter personal information like position, department and location while displaying the user's recent activity, current status and people in their network.


• Redesigned Personal Spaces - Each user's personal space now includes a collapsible side panel that shows detailed profile information such as recent activity, current status and people in their network.

• Status Updates - post a 140-character message to share links, ask questions or simply inform coworkers on what you're working on;


• Networks - follow other users to add them to your personal network and track their activity throughout your Confluence site;


• Activity Streams - view an aggregated stream of all the activity recently undertaken by all the users in your network;

• Upgraded PDF Export - PDF export now produces higher quality output and provides greater control through customized stylesheets, title pages, headers and footers.


• Major performance improvements - Response times for clustered environments are up to 100% faster while response times for standalone environments are up to 40% faster.

C'mon, tell me what it is?

Have you ever wanted to add a form or survey to a Confluence page to capture information from your users, or even customers? Well, you've had a few options for a while now. If you are looking to capture data in Confluence, you can use CustomWare's free Scaffolding plugin, and if you are looking to create forms on a Confluence page with a behind-the-firewall option, you can check out frevvo's Live Forms commercial plugin. We've outlined all your options here.

So, what's this new addition to the Widget Connector...support for Wufoo forms! Wufoo strives to be the easiest way to collect information over the Internet and they have a top notch HTML form builder, which helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect all the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code.

It is so easy to use and I was so excited to try it that I whipped together a quick demo for your viewing pleasure. Keep in mind that I created the video using the latest beta release of Confluence 3.0, so you might see some features that aren't yet available. Check it out below:

How can I start using Confluence + Wufoo together?

You can sign up to Wufoo for free and instantly create up to three forms, without paying a single cent. If you need to create more than 3 forms, check out Wufoo's generous pricing. If you are using Confluence 2.10 +, just update to the latest version of the Widget Connector for this new feature to be available. Remember that the Widget Connector is a free bundled plugin for Confluence. 

More exciting news is just around the corner with our first ever world-wide user conference, Atlassian Summit, so stay tuned!

This plugin is extremely diverse; you can completely customize the plugin's use by setting up each individual workflow. Due to this customization, it is no wonder that almost every customer has a unique use for it. During the Q&A session, Roberto commented that a standout use he knows of regards a financial institution using the plugin during the credit check process for customers applying for lines of credit. Watch the video now:

For past webinars, please hop on over to Atlassian TV where you can now sort videos by products and categories. For upcoming webinars, please visit our events page. If you would like to be in our webinar series, please contact us.
Also, don't forget about following us on

The lively format for the event was "Pecha Kucha" (pronounced "pe-chak-cha") a presentation style that was created in 2003 by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham two architects from Tokyo. Pecha Kucha limits each presentation to 20 slides, and 20 seconds per slide which keeps presenters on track and allows for more presentations to fit into a single event.

Watching Pecha Kucha presentations is quite exciting, the fast pace really keeps the speaker on their toes, and as an audience member I found myself able to absorb a lot more information than I typically would get out of a one hour presentation on a single topic. Atlassian sponsored a live webcast of the event, and also videotaped the event so it can be archived.

The Pecha Kucha presentations are as follows:

• National Geographic Society (NGS)
• Karen Huffman -- Wikis.... almost better than chocolate.
• Whitney Hall -- Sharing information through wikis.
• Ariel Deiaco-Lohr - Going Greener: New ways for sharing resources & research
• Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)
• Diane Schnurrpusch -- Development of DC Chapter of SLA's wiki
• Executive Office of the President -- Office of Management & Budget (EOP-OMB)
• Emily Fort -- Discuss government-wide collaboration and management of a large Confluence instance.
• National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• Doug Joubert -- Implementing wikis at a federal institution.
• Dan Wendling -- A Confluence wiki's design pattern library and thoughts about usability.
• Jeremy Swan -- Review the Confluence architecture and method for developing templates.

Each video has been edited to bite sized chunks and comes as close to watching a live Pecha Kucha presentation as you can get! So grab a mini bag of popcorn and enjoy Atlassian's Wiki Theater presents "Sharing our stories about wikis the Pecha Kucha way"

I will kick off with the introduction where Karen describes Pecha Kucha and introduces each of the speakers:

What's new in Confluence 3.0?

Macro Browser

The new macro browser exposes hundreds of page editing capabilities --- charts, tasklists, photo galleries, RSS feeds and more --- through a point-and-click graphical interface.

New Community Features for improved sharing of content

• Status Updates: users can post a 140-character message to share links, ask questions or simply tell co-workers what they're up to
• Personal Networks: users can build a personal network by following other users in the system
• Activity Streams: users can view all the activity happening within their network including page edits, blog posts, comments and status updates
• Hover Profile: users can hover over a user's name wherever it appears in Confluence to follow the user, navigate to their personal space or view summary profile information
• Improved Personal Spaces: each user's personal space now includes a collapsible side panel that shows detailed profile information such as current status and recent activities

More Improvements

• Improved PDF export: PDF export has been vastly improved so that the exported PDF more closely resembles the content in the page
• Context Menu: users can edit links, images and tables by right clicking into the rich text editor
• Notification improvements: email notifications for page edits show what changed in the edit
• Performance improvements: Clustered performance has been improved by a factor of 2 in our testing environment, standalone Confluence has improved by 30% and makes better use of powerful hardware.

Where do I download it?

Please follow this link to download the Beta release

I do not have time to download and install the Beta, is there a public instance already set up that I can test?

• You can view people's profiles, start following them, and so on, on our public documentation server
• To try out the new Macro Browser, the PDF export, and updating your status, please visit our sandbox space

Where do I get release notes and screenshots for the Beta?

Our official release notes for Confluence 3.0 will be shipped on the day of the final release. In the meantime, we provide brief overviews on our Beta discussion forums, and if you'd like to know more about the details of the features and how they evolved, you can have a look at our fortnightly announcements that were provided over the course of the release cycle.

How do I provide feedback?

There are three main ways to provide feedback:
* For general feedback, please visit our Confluence 3 Beta Discussion site
* If you encounter a bug, please create a new issue in our public JIRA instance for Confluence. Be sure to select an "affects version" of 3.0-beta2.
* If you'd like to speak to us in person, drop us a mail. Depending on the topic of your comment, someone from our development team or from the product management team will get in touch.

Can I get support for this release?

No, there is no Atlassian Support available for this release. Please log bugs, issues or feature requests in our public JIRA installation and be sure to select Confluence, affects version 3.0-beta2.

How Long will the Beta last?

The Beta will last approximately 2 weeks, ending on June 1, 2009.

We look forward to hearing from you on results of your beta testing. If you have any questions, please send email to confluence3-beta@atlassian.com

Certain controls required by SOX, FDA, ISO 9001, and general governance practices have limited the areas in which collaboration tools can be used. The Approvals Workflow plugin integrates seamlessly with Confluence to provide an innovative way of managing workflows and content approvals, without compromising the open and collaborative philosophy of a wiki. In this webinar, see different scenarios in which the plugin has been used in areas requiring formal controls and processes.

REGISTER NOW: Thursday, May 21, 2009 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PDT

Each speaker will have 6-minutes to present 20 slides on how they're using a wiki in their organization. Many of the participants will talk about Confluence, but a handful of other wikis will be highlighted as well. The presentations will center on technological configuration, wiki architecture, deployment of wikis and methods for fostering and growing knowledge spaces across organizations and professional associations.

Speakers include:

Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)

• Diane Schnurrpusch -- Development of DC Chapter of SLA's wiki.
  

Executive Office of the President -- Office of Management & Budget (EOP-OMB)

• Emily Fort -- Government-wide collaboration and management of a large Confluence instance.
  

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

• Doug Joubert -- Compare the differences between MediaWiki vs. Confluence, and the change management involved in implementing Wikis.
  
• Jeremy Swan -- Review the Confluence architecture and method for developing templates.
  
• Dan Wendling -- A Confluence wiki's design pattern library and thoughts about usability.
  

National Geographic Society (NGS)

• Ariel Deiaco-Lohr and Whitney Hall -- Discuss going greener, new ways for sharing resources and research material for staff and partners.
  
• Karen Huffman -- Show the many uses and limitless potential, while focusing also on Confluence's features/functionality and the establishment of policies and roles.