Team Calendars

Confluence has a new calendar plugin called Team Calendars. Unlike the free Calendar plugin, this pay-version allows users to create three types of calendars:

• Events - track work-related events.
• People - track the coming's and going's of people.
• JIRA - track JIRA issues.

Being able to see these types of calendars all together can help teams better organize people, tasks and events.

Users can also subscribe to and watch calendars. (Adding another user's calendar to your calendar makes you a subscriber of that calendar.) When another user creates, edits or deletes an event, Confluence sends an email notification to the subscribers. Most important is the automatic backup/export of deleted calendars. When a user deletes a calendar, Confluence sends the exported file to all subscribers.

Other features include the ability to:

• import Outlook, Google or iCal calendars and 
• to embed calendars into Confluence pages.

Adding and Configuring

So far, adding this plugin to Confluence has been frustrating and time consuming. The old Calendar plugin must be removed for Team Calendars to work properly. For instance, having both plugins installed causes the embedding features of Team Calendars to not work. Therefore, administrators must backup this data, export it as an .ics file, then provide it to users for import.

Figure 1. Export of the Sub-calendar "Birthdays"

For the JIRA calendar option to work in Confluence, a customer's instance of JIRA must be 4.3 to 4.3.4. These versions allow for the installation of the Team Calendars for JIRA Integration plugin. Administrators must also set application links between Confluence and JIRA (within each product). Review the Configuring Application Links documentation for help. NOTE: Administrators should use the following URL patterns when configuring trusted application access:

For the Local Instance of JIRA

/plugins/servlet/streams 

/sr/jira.issueviews:searchrequest 

/secure/RunPortlet 

/rest 

/rpc/soap

For the Local Instance of Confluence

/plugins/servlet/streams 

/plugins/servlet/applinks/whoami

Cost

As usual, the number of licenses for Team Calendars must match the number of Confluence user licenses. A user-base of 10 costs $10 while 2,000 or more users costs $6,000 ($3,600 with the discount). According to Atlassian, "Software licenses entitle you to perpetual use and include 12 months maintenance of updates and support. Renewing maintenance is entirely optional." See their pricing page for additional information.

Use

When using this feature for the first time to add a new calendar:

1. Select your login name in the top-right corner of Confluence.
2. Select Calendar from the dropdown.











3. If necessary, select your time zone.
4. Choose the Create a Calendar option. (This will be an Events calendar.)











5. Fill in the appropriate fields then press OK.













6. The calendar appears to the right of the My Calendars page.
7. To add more calendars, click the Add Calendar dropdown.
8. To add events:
1. Click on a particular day in your calendar.
2. The Create Event window opens.
















3. Choose the appropriate calendar from the Calendar dropdown.
4. Fill in the appropriate fields then press OK.

Documentation and Support

Upon purchasing a licensing package, users can contact Atlassian for support. Contact is most often made in the form of a JIRA ticket. User documentation for this plugin is available at their Team Calendars Home page.

Issues

The following lists a few issues with this plugin.

• Requires JIRA 4.3 to 4.3.4 for the installation of the Team Calendars for JIRA Integration plugin.
• Must backup/download old calendars, uninstall old Calendar plugin, then import them into new calendar.
• No ability to set permissions. Calendars are visible and editable by all.

Conclusion

I am rather surprised that this plugin is not free. Organizations looking for an alternative to Outlook may find it worthwhile; however, Team Calendars provides only a few extra features when compared to the free version. The top two being the ability to add JIRA calendars and recover deleted calendars.

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Check out these links for additional information.

• 1.1 Release Notes
• Licensing and Installing
  
• JIRA ticket regarding permissions
• Atlassian Blog
• AppFusions Blog (search for "Staying-up-to-date just got easier")
  

Gliffy

For users that want an easy way to create diagrams in Confluence, Gliffy is a good choice. Users can create network diagrams, organizational charts, general flowcharts and many others. Users do not have to attach an external flowchart and debate whether to embed the file or list it on a page. Once users save and close the plugin's interface, the diagram appears on the selected page.

Adding and Configuring

As usual, a Confluence administrator must add the plugin. Depending on your version of Confluence, there are a few options:

• Download the .jar file and upload through the Plugin Repository or Universal Plugin Manager.

• Use the Universal Plugin Manager to search for and intall the plugin.

This plugin also has specific configuration settings, including the ability to open the Gliffy editor in its own window and set the autosave interval.

Cost

Gliffy provides a 45-day trial license and allows users to test the plugin on its website. A yearly commercial license for one node ranges from free for 10 users to $6,000 for an unlimited amount of users. The academic price for unlimited users costs $3,000. The number of Gliffy licenses must match the number of Confluence users. For specific prices, see their Purchase page.

Use

Here are a few images to show basic functionality.

Add
Select Type
Save and Close
View

Documentation and Support

User documentation for this plugin is an online manual. Be sure to select the Gliffy Confluence Plugin option to see relevant information. After taking a glance at the documentation, it seems clear and useful for a beginner.

So far, in two years of use, I have not contacted Gliffy for support. No one company-wide (about 20 regular users) has either. I usually try all known options before contacting them. Gliffy support options include:

• help with installation,
• help with Gliffy troubleshooting problems and
• help with identifying work-arounds.

If you want usage help, see the online manual. Also, try their forums site.

Issues

I hear very few complaints from my coworkers, and rarely do people ask for help with how to use Gliffy. From my own experience, the most frustrating thing has been moving pages containing Gliffy diagrams. On more than two occasions, they have disappeared from the page. Most of the time, I found them again using Gliffy's Use an Existing Diagram option. On another occasion, I had to pull one out of a space backup. (Luckily, I had the space backup.) Always back up the page or space before moving a page containing a Gliffy diagram. While backing up can be a pain, and most of the time not used, you will be very thankful on the day you need it. (I do now know whether this is a Gliffy issue or an issue with our servers.)

Conclusion

I still prefer Visio to Gliffy. I rarely need to back up my diagram because I create it on my computer then upload it to Confluence. Visio also has other features (rulers, place-able guides, certain right-click options, zooming features, ...) that are very helpful. But if you're looking for something easy to use and integrated into Confluence, Gliffy is an excellent tool.

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If only I could write this blog using Confluence markup. Those images would totally be clickable thumbnails.