Best way to get HTML Help topics into Confluence? (And repurposing)

[DavidH]

We have an HTML help system that runs inside our industrial software.

I'm transferring the Help topic pages to individual pages in Confluence. The HTML include macro won't work here because no one has set up our Confluence server to have HTTP access to the content management server where the HTML pages are.

Using the HTML macro seems to leave graphics and hyperlinks behind.

Does anyone have any good workflow tips or recommendations. Would copying the HTML topics to the Confluence server allow Confluence to include the HTML pages (without a web server running on the Confluence server also)?

Without some kind of sharing, I'm going to be pasting into Confluence pages, which leaves something to be desired.

[Ellen Feaheny [AppFusions] · Accepted solution]

@docpro

As you also questioned -

I do not think just copying the HTML into Confluence - even using the HTML macro - is going to give you the ultimate solution you need, for a repeatable online help context-sensitive links documentation process.

Maybe if you are in a rush and small help docset - you could do this quickly, manually, with some hacking a bit - and meet your date, assuming the admin fixes the html access issue. It is really easy for your admin to enable this - but they might not want to. Also yes, image links probably need to also be fixed for remote access or move the images into Confluence and reset them. Likely your navigation also breaks with this approach - so, again, not ideal process, for ongoing updates.

Assuming you do have time, to repurpose this longer term, here's some references to help you -

• Blog specific to context-sensitive links topic >> though, really there's more to this than just this piece, or a one-time push as you know - so reviewing the rest of these resources too perhaps.
  
• Webinar >> on the overall doc process of using Confluence for technical documentation.
  
• Confluence, Tech Comm, Chocolate: A wiki as platform extraordinaire for technical communication >> golden book for the purpose, packed with information on the overall topic/process, by Atlassian Sarah Maddox
  
• Scrollwiki products >> add-on tools specifically built for the technical documentation using Confluence
  
• Party package >> roll-up list of links/tips on tech doc processes using Confluence
  
• Reference implementation >> Atlassian's doc set is about as good as it gets in the industry, imho. Especially given both a large and complex doc set, audience set, critics circle, and fast agile development requirements.

Hope these help -

Best,

Ellen

[DavidH]

Thanks Ellen for that great summary of information on this issue.

In this instance, because the online Help was small (35 topics), I pasted from HTML authoring tool (MS Expression Web 4) into Confluence pages. I uploaded image files as attachments to one Confluence page. I relinked the images to the topic pages, helped by the search in the image insertion dialog. I rebuilt the hyperlinks.

I'm going to check out all the references supplied above to figure out a more scalable, automatic method for my next project.

[Elizabeth]

AppFusions' plugin Doxygen for Atlassian Confluence is another way/consideration worth looking into. https://www.appfusions.com/display/DOXYGEN/Home 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uISYPvAoegk

[Marissa McDowell]

@docpro were you ever able to find a more scalable method to do this? I'm currently attempting something similar

[CharlesH]

I'd suggest you consider using the SOAP remote API to programmatically add the HTML topics as pages into Confluence. To be exact you'd add the content of the body tags as the content of the new page. You could also manipulate the image references to pick these up as attachments from the page, otherwise you'd need to amend these manually after the import.

[Radu Dumitriu]

You can place directly the HTML pages in Confluence app. After all, confluence is just an web application.

I answered that once, but I cannot find the answer; the results will be nicely decorated (try to place a html page under confluence and see what's happening).

The downside of this is that you cannot search the pages, nor track the changes.

[Renjith Pillai]

Is this the one Radu?

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/59225/how-to-answer-how-do-i-add-html-content-to-confluence

[Radu Dumitriu]

Yeap, thanks Renjith !