Exporting documentation for modifications and then somehow importing those changes back to Confluence?

[Jay A]

Say I have a document that needs modification by a client. I cannot give the client access to the Confluence system due to security policy and regulatory requirements. So, my only option is to export the document, possibly into MS Word, send to the client, and then have the client send it back to me after changes have been made.

Is there a way to easily get those changes back into Confluence or some level of automation? Or am I pretty much out of luck?

[SarahA]

Hallo Jay

That's an interesting question. The answer depends on the level of complexity of the document, and on whether the client has their own Confluence system.

If your document is fairly simple in form, you can export it to Word (https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Exporting+to+a+Word+document) and then import it again (https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Importing+a+Word+Document+into+Confluence). But this process will remove any macros that you may have on the Confluence page. For example, if you have a Table of Contents macro on a page, that will be converted to a static HTML list when you export to Word. When you reimport, you'll get the static list again, not the macro.

If the customer is running their own Confluence site, and it is using the same version of Confluence as your site, then you can export one or more pages to XML (https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Exporting+Confluence+Pages+and+Spaces+to+XML), and ask the customer to import the pages into their own site. The customer can then adapt the pages, send you the XML, and you can import the XML back into Confluence. (https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Restoring+a+Space) This will retain your macros. I'd strongly recommend testing this process on a test site before doing it in production, to ensure that you don't overwrite other content by mistake. It's a reasonably complex process. :)

I hope this helps!

Cheers

Sarah