Atlassian Confluence blogs atWikiConsulting.com

Chris Kohlhardt of Gliffy presents in the Theatre

I organized the Wikipatterns.com Theatre in the Atlassian booth at Web 2.0 Expo last week, and I'm very happy to report that over the three days 254 people attended presentations on wiki adoption tips, best practices, and strategies.

To everyone who attended, a huge thank you!

I hope you came away with new ideas and inspiration for how to use a wiki to reduce email, improve meetings, better manage projects, create documentation, and build an organizational knowledge base that helps everyone be more efficient, productive, and happy. (Yes, you can have happier, more satisfied employees!)

To everyone who gave a presentation, a huge thank you!

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We'd like to invite everyone in the San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, DC areas to join us at the upcoming Atlassian User Group meetings. We've got a lot of great stuff planned:

• Presentations by Atlassian and members of the community
• A preview of the upcoming JIRA 4.0 in SF
• A tour of the new JIRA Studio hosted development suite in SF and DC
• Birds of a Feather sessions
• Time to socialize afterwards with free food and drinks!

Plenty of Atlassian developers will be on hand to answer questions and just shoot the breeze.

These are all free to attend. Just sign up at http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AUG/Atlassian+User+Group

Details

San Francisco Bay Area

Date	May 1, 2008
Time	Registration from 11:00am - 12:00pm The User Group will be running from 12:00pm - 5:00pm
Location	Stanford University Schwab Residential Center, Vidalakis Room 680 Serra Street, Stanford, CA
Signup & Details	http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/7QEQCQ

Washington DC Area

Date	May 15, 2008
Time	TBD
Location	Near Infinity Corporation 1881 Campus Commons Drive Suite 205 Reston, VA 20191
Signup & Details	http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/7wEQCQ

Boston Area

Date	June 12, 2008
Time	TBD
Location	TBD
Signup & Details	http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/swIQCQ

P.S. We've still got space for more presenters in DC and Boston, so if you're interested in speaking at one of those events, please email Laura Khalil at lkhalil [at] atlassian [dot] com

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Introducing the Atlassian IDE plugin for IntellijIDEA (Eclipse plugin coming soon!). With the new plugin, you never have to leave your IDE to access and work with JIRA, Bamboo, or Crucible. The plugin is free and can be installed through the IDEA plugin manager.

The IDE plugin allows you to pull in and work with the Atlassian products within your IDE — youdon't have to switch between websites, email messages and new feeds to see what's happening to your project and your code. Check it out, please let us know what you think, and happy coding!

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It hasn't taken long for Skitch to become part of our team's kit-bag and vocabulary - so much that we've even coined a term for when skitch gets used to shame someone into fixing problems with their work.

I proposed the following definition, backed up with examples on our internal blog recently:

(v) skitchslap: the act of denigrating something by annotating a screenshot or image of it, using skitch. "Man, my CSS didn't work in IE7 - got majorly skitchslapped for it".

For example, this

was an attempt to vent my frustration at ThePlugin not telling me why it couldn't connect to Crucible.

Sometimes a skitchslap requires the arrow tool to help over emphasize the point

or my personal favourite:

A couple of well placed circles over a shot:

is often enough to leave a developer feeling like they've just been 'Barry Halled':

Skitchslapping is by no means, nor should it be limited to our own software. Charles has already taken a lead here with this little gem:

In posting this, I knew I'd receive at least a bit of skitchslapping, but wasn't quite prepared for what did ensue:

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It hasn't taken long for Skitch to become part of our team's kit-bag and vocabulary - so much that we've even coined a term for when skitch gets used to shame someone into fixing problems with their work.

I proposed the following definition, backed up with examples on our internal blog recently:

(v) skitchslap: the act of denigrating something by annotating a screenshot or image of it, using skitch. "Man, my CSS didn't work in IE7 - got majorly skitchslapped for it".

For example, this

was an attempt to vent my frustration at ThePlugin not telling me why it couldn't connect to Crucible.

Sometimes a skitchslap requires the arrow tool to help over emphasize the point

or my personal favourite:

A couple of well placed circles over a shot:

is often enough to leave a developer feeling like they've just been 'Barry Halled':

Skitchslapping is by no means, nor should it be limited to our own software. Charles has already taken a lead here with this little gem:

In posting this, I knew I'd receive at least a bit of skitchslapping, but wasn't quite prepared for what did ensue:

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We're happy to announce the release of FishEye 1.5 and Crucible 1.5.

The latest versions of FishEye and Crucible include improved statistical analysis, as well as customisable charts and pages, giving both products a sleeker look while improving a company's productivity.

Crucible 1.5 brings new enhancements that make your code review activities quicker and easier. The all-new per-project page consolidates the display of work done on a particular goal or product, while filtered search for defects and comments provides rapid access to Crucible content that you need to see, now.

FishEye 1.5 adds the ability to present historical, per-author line count information. This new suite of graphs show how much each user has contributed to the code base, over time.

Check out the release notes for Crucible and FishEye and read our press release below for more details.

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We are excited to announce that the Gliffy Plugin for Confluence is now available to Confluence Hosted customers, for free.

The team over at Gliffy has been working closely with us on their Gliffy Plugin for Confluence. The results are great looking drawings that can be added to pages in Confluence with a single click. Gliffy enables you to create Flowcharts, UI wireframes, Floor plans, Network diagrams, UML diagrams, and many more diagrams or simple drawings.

Just like the office software you are familiar with, Gliffy allows you to drag and drop shapes from a comprehensive library and format them to fit your needs. The following features give you the power and flexibility to create professional looking diagrams right within Confluence.

• Extensive shape library
• Large drawing area
• Drag and drop ease
• Shape alignment
• Auto line connections
• Gradient color fills
• Document manager
• Revision Control

The Gliffy Plugin for Confluence is a secure and easy way to utilise the power of the Gliffy diagram editor within Confluence. Diagrams created with the Gliffy Plugin for Confluence are stored as attachments, allowing Confluence to manage the revision history. Take a look at how easy it is to create diagrams in Confluence using Gliffy.

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If you'll be at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco this week, you're invited to Wikipatterns Theatre Wednesday, April 23rd through Friday April 25th in the Atlassian booth, #535.

Presentations will be held every hour, on the hour during the open hours of the expo.

Presentations last about 5 minutes, with 5-10 minutes for Q&A afterward, and focus on wiki adoption and use topics. See the full schedule below for details.

FREE Book! At each session, we'll raffle off a copy of my recently published book, Wikipatterns: A Practical Guide for Improving Productivity and Collaboration in Your Organization.

Time	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
11:00 AM	What is an enterprise wiki? - Stewart Mader	3 Ways Wikis Can Help your Business - Stewart Mader	3 Ways Wikis Can Help your Business - Stewart Mader
12:00 PM	Jeffrey Walker	Manage Meetings with a Wiki - Stewart Mader	Blog. Wiki. What's the Difference? - Jon Silvers
1:00 PM	Beyond Text: What else can you do with a wiki?	Beyond Text: What else can you do with a wiki?	Beyond Text: What else can you do with a wiki?
2:00 PM	Instant diagrams in your wiki with Gliffy - Chris Kohlhardt	Manage Digital Workflow with a Wiki - Stewart Mader	Reduce Email with a Wiki - Stewart Mader
3:00 PM	Manage Digital Workflow with a Wiki - Stewart Mader	Reduce Email with a Wiki - Stewart Mader
4:00 PM		Instant diagrams in your wiki with Gliffy - Chris Kohlhardt
4:30 PM		Manage Meetings with a Wiki - Stewart Mader
5:00 PM		Jeffrey Walker
5:30 PM		The Future of Wikis - Adnan Chowdhury

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What's a "static" plugin, as seen in the Plugin Repository in Confluence? What are the ways plugins can be upgraded? For the answers to these and many of life's other important questions, see our recently-created documentation: Plugin loading strategies in Confluence.

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We're happy to announce the latest release of Confluence. The newest version includes major UI improvements with an improved interface, drag and drop page reordering and simplified menus.

Taking a look at some of the highlights of Confluence 2.8:

Dynamic menus and Simplified Screen Design

Drop-down menus now replace tabs and links. Grouping of functions is more intuitive and a cleaner screen design lets you focus more on the page's content.

Drag and drop page ordering

Manual page ordering is now possible within Confluence 2.8. Choose the order in which wiki pages are displaced and use a dynamic tree view to drag and drop you pages into the right position.

Enhanced commenting functionality

The comments on pages and news items have been beautified. Now, collapse comments onto a single line and keep better track of multi-level comment threads.

With over 90+ improvements in this release, how could you resist getting your hands on Confluence 2.8? w00t!

For more information on Confluence, or for a free 30-day evaluation, click here.

For more details on this release, check out the Confluence 2.8 Release Notes
or see the press release below:

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