How to organize multiple versions of manuals in Confluence

[Keith Nicholas]

I'm looking at how to organize multiple versions of manuals in Confluence.  I've had a look at the way Confluence itself does it.   It seems to make a space for each version of the manual, and also creates a "Latest" version space.

However, it seems to have some downsides, if you search, then you get hits on all the different versions, and the latest is not necessarily at the top.  Also if other spaces also have info, then they are swamped out by all the hits in the many versions of the manual.  Meaning cross space  searches becomes semi useless

Is there a better way to organize multiple versions of manuals into Confluence?

Is there a way to perhaps control search, so if you use Atlassians method, that only the latest version of a manual can be searched along with all the other spaces.  Of course if you wanted to search a particular version you could go to that space and search just within that space.  However, normally I'd want to search across a manual, the knowledge base, technical documentation, developer documentation, etc but NOT the older versions of the manuals.

[Stephen Deutsch]

Hi Keith,

One option would be to archive the spaces containing older versions of the manual.  Then they wouldn't show up in a standard search unless you searched archived spaces or that individual space.  It's not ideal, but there are going to be trade-offs in any approach you decide to use.

[Davin Studer]

Another option would be to look into the Scroll Versions addon.