Modify: Questions for Confluence [Ask a question]

[pineda_]

[Installed Version: 2.4.11]

Hi,

My company acquired Questions for Confluence and the adoption rate has been low due to employees forgetting to add a topic to their question and general complaints about the search functionality. The directors are reviewing the tool to see if we would like to continue with it or move to Stack Overflow Enterprise. I'm working with a few members who would like to give Questions for Confluence a fighting chance.

One of the suggestions was to mimic what Atlassian did for their Questions for Confluence to increase the amount of questions that have topics assigned to it. Is there a way to modify the "Ask A Question" page of "Questions for Confluence"?

Atlassian's Version:

QfC-Atlassian.png

Our Version:

QfC-ourversion.png

[TomC · Accepted solution]

Josue, we are going through similar challenges, but I have some ideas you may or may not have considered:

1.) Did you know you can create featured topics? If you have the rights (may need admin) you can go into a Topic, click edit and check the 'Create as a featured topic' box.

2.) Did you know you can add images to topics? If you do and it's a featured topic, those topics will 'pop' on the Ask a Question page. Here is a mod'd screenshot to show you two featured topics we are displaying now, with their associated images:

2016-10-25_QuestionsLandingPage.png

3.) For some topic-naming consistency, we pre-added a few dozen topics so 'as they type' (and they are forced to enter at least one topic which helps) they will potentially see something that matches the topic of their question.

Finally, we have assigned our tech support staff as 'partners' in this venture as this is a way in our words to have 'one person asks, many benefit' vs the typical one-to-one communication at a help desk. They agreed to help us manage topic sprawl and also help us watch for questions that go unanswered so we can tap folks on the shoulder to stay involved on that end.

Hope this helps. We would like for Atlassian to provide some field on the landing page to provide some rudimentary information for infrequent users - such as some links to 'How to Ask a Question', 'How to Answer a Question' etc. which could go a long way to getting better adoption.

Let's get more discussion here, but for down the road feel free to continue the discussion via email - I'm tomcrespi at gmail dot com.

[pineda_]

Thank you @Tom Crespi. I was just granted Admin access. I'll try this out today.

[TomC]

You're welcome, @Josue Pineda. Please advise how things turn out!

[Kris Justice]

These are fantastic.

Has anyone else encountered the issue that someone who did not ask the question cannot update that question's tags? I am a space admin (not global admin) and I'm responsible for "gardening" our questions. But I am unable to add tags to questions other than my own, which really inhibits my ability to ensure relevance and searchability.

Anyone else seen this limitation?

[TomC]

Hey Kris,

It is possible for others to edit a question's tags.  Confluence global admins can do it, and other  users CAN do it once they earn enough reputation points (assuming that option is turned on).

Here is the list of the points required for each allowable action:

• Vote down an answer - 15 points
• Change question topic - 100 points
• Delete a comment - 500 points
• Edit a topic - 500 points
• Edit another user's question, answer or comment - 500 points
• Accept an answer on another user's question - 1500 points
• Convert an answer to comment or a comment to answer - 1500 points

Editing a question's tags fall under "Edit another user's question, answer or comment".

See more about all of this on the Questions for Confluence>Permissions page at https://confluence.atlassian.com/questions/permissions-407724476.html#Permissions-RepBasedPermissions 

[Kris Justice]

Wow, thank you!

[TomC]

Hey you're welcome, Kris. 

Pssst, Atlassian - perhaps could make these things more easily discoverable and understood in a future release of Questions?