Include Cloud Confluence Page in Confluence Server

[Matthias Gaiser _K15t_]

Dear community,

we're currently in the process of slowly migrating our internal Confluence server instance to Confluence Cloud. We're actually migrating on a space by space basis over a longer time frame.

We have some overview pages on our Server instance which references content from across all the spaces with a content by label macro. I'm now looking for a way how I can keep the overview page on the server instance, but reference it content from my Cloud instance.
Please note that we do have an application link between the instances in place.

The solutions I thought about:

• Ideally, I'd love to have an option for the content by label macro to select the instance I want to report on - or it automatically reports across all instances connected via an application link.
  This doesn't seem possible 😢
• I'd be also fine to create an overview page on the Cloud side and reference that e.g. via an Include Macro on server but also haven't found some way to do so 😢

Can one of you think of a feasible solution for this problem?

Cheers,
Matthias.

[Darryl Lee · Accepted solution]

Huh, coincidentally I was just reading this question:

Importing & Syncing Confluence Documents into another application

After reading @Kishan Sharma's answer that linked to How do I embed Confluence pages on another site?, I wonder if you could do an embed using Embedder.

[Darryl Lee]

I guess it would be a good question for @Anand Inamdar_Amoeboids - can Embedder be used to embed content from Confluence Cloud into a Confluence Server page? 

Looking at the docs, it seems like Embedder uses Javascript to display content. My worry would be that might be problematic in an HTML Macro.

[Matthias Gaiser _K15t_]

@Darryl Lee - thank you for the pointer. I'd say that goes into an interesting direction. However, if I'm right this is more about embedding a whole space into a software, e.g. as built-in help.

I'm rather looking into a way to reference single pages - basically as you do with all the various macros like page properties report, content by label, include or similar.

[Darryl Lee]

Hey @Matthias Gaiser _K15t_, I was thinking of this particular idea:

• I'd be also fine to create an overview page on the Cloud side and reference that e.g. via an Include Macro on server but also haven't found some way to do so 😢

It looks like Embedder could scope its widget to only display a single page by specifying the URL:

• Visibility rules - Defines which pages should display or should not display the widget based on url patterns.

https://amoeboids.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/EFC/pages/61963943/Customisation+Display+rules

But it does seem like overkill to have to buy an add-on just to include a single page from a connected Confluence instance.

Alas, looks like this is one of those OLDE feature requests:

• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-57782
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-66844

Now it's intriguing that CONFSERVER-24425 - include page macro should be able to include pages from a remote Confluence links to a ticket in the Advanced (?) Macros project, https://studio.plugins.atlassian.com/browse/ADVMACROS-230

But yeah, that probably got closed too:

BillA added a comment - 16/Jun/2014 6:45 AM

Thank you for raising this issue. While we can see how this feature would be useful, we have no plans to implement it in the foreseeable future. In order to set expectations, we're closing this request now.

Thanks again for your idea.

Bill Arconati,
Confluence Group Product Manager

[Anand Inamdar_Amoeboids]

@Darryl Lee thanks for bringing me in.

Now, as @Matthias Gaiser _K15t_ pointed out - embedder is built more from an 'in-app help widget' point of view. I am not sure whether it would work directly inside of the HTML macro on a Confluence server page - that'll need to be checked.

But I don't think @Matthias Gaiser _K15t_ will be able to see the list of pages with a specific label or some other filter. Embedder comes with the concept of a landing page, which is to say you can configure a Confluence page to be displayed by default when the embedder loads. If there is a possibility to create such a landing page beforehand, then it would work alright.

Also, do note that Embedder does not support dynamic macros such as Children or Label filter etc. So that is another challenge.

But if you do manage to get past all these challenges @Matthias Gaiser _K15t_ and still achieve the desired outcome, do enlighten us :)

Best,
Anand

[Matthias Gaiser _K15t_]

I actually managed to get something to work using Embedder which is quite close to what I wanted to achieve to. What did I do?

1. Installed Embedder in my Confluence instance and configured it to show no search bar and show a single page (as @Darryl Lee pointed out).
2. In my server instance, I've added a user macro which takes the "Inline Embed" JavaScript from Embedder - and made the widgetID configurable as a macro parameter.
3. On my server page, I've added my user macro and specified the widgetID of the widget I configured in the first step.

Basically, it worked. However, it has some overhead of creating additional pages in our case. That's why we're ending up creating pages still on server until we merge the referencing spaces as well.

Thank you all for your help!