I just got off the phone with Daniel Green, an Australian living in Tel Aviv, Israel. Daniel works for Wikistrat, a collaboration consultancy for Israel's national security sector. The Comalatech team met Daniel at Atlas Camp - Atlassian's annual developer conference – where he proceeded to lament how, for all Confluence's fine content production and collaboration features, Confluence was unsuitable for a number of their projects. Exploring the matter over a few glasses of fine Rioja at San Francisco's B44, Roberto and I made things clear. Six months later, we're elated to report Daniel's successes.
Chief Technology Officer of Wikistrat, Daniel Green, has been using wikis for about 5 years. After experimenting with Docuwiki and Mediawiki, Daniel selected Confluence because it is an enterprise class technology backed by Java, and it's robust programming environment.
Approvals workflow
Published page
Workflow report |
National Security: Permissions can't implement Need to Know requirements
- Services - Wikistrat provides consultancy to organisations, primarily in the national security, political risk and global strategy space.
- Product - Wikistrat offers subscriptions to their own wiki containing interactive strategic insight and scenario planning for worldwide political events
Dan stressed to me that in this context with stringent "need-to-know" requirements - far stricter than most industries, Wikistrat must diligently manage every flow of their information. Not only must the right collaborators be picked, vetted, and authorized, but information then contributed needs to analysed, with a decision of who should be informed of what, and using what timing. Wikistrat provides deep political insight into many regions including the troubled Middle East: passing incomplete information has consequences. Daniel's concerns were that Confluence's permissions system is too blunt and simplistic, entailing unacceptable risks.
Today, Wikistrat use Ad hoc Workflows for both their consulting services and product offerings. In services, Ad hoc Workflows has featured as the mechanism to trigger dissemination; by leveraging Ad hoc Workflows' tight integration with Comalatech's Remote Publishing Plugin, the plugin intelligently pushes copies of vetted content to remote sites. Here true separation is important - unpublished information simply isn't present on other sites, nullifying all concerns of space permissions or restrictions. Wikistrat's clients enjoy Workflow parameters too - its flexibility allows impromptu groups of staff to be assigned to a project, without necessitating a slew of Confluence groups.
Both Editorial and Peer based
In Wikistrat's subscription based wiki - workflow is deployed in several ways. The Comalatech-supplied Editor-approval publishing cycle was adapted for their editorial content-driven space. Wikistrat also have a peer-editing space, in which contributors can create and edit pages, but where new pages and edits are workflowed to allow for contributions to be moderated. This staging adds advantage that authors can work on a concept undisturbed by other users until such a time they are ready, avoiding intermediate updates and unnecessary page merges.
Organizational Learning
The Ad hoc feature - where each page can have its own, adaptive, workflow instead of a structured workflow applied to all pages in a space - is set to become a key, long-term feature for Wikistrat, enabling their knowledge workers to work freely with each other, culminating in a set of organizational processes by retrospectively summarizing interactions. Daniel says Wikistrat especially values this because many of his clients have projects that are long-running, with up to 3 years until a project team gets the opportunity to retrospective analyze to improve processes.
"Neat and Effective"
Comalatech's Workflow plugin is so far the only commercial plugin that Wikistrat depends on. Daniel is really pleased that “Ad-Hoc Workflows provided a neat and effective solution to a critical problem” especially with the extent of control that's possible in Ad hoc Workflows without resorting to programming. In short, Ad hoc Workflows ushers in a whole new paradigm for inter-governmental and inter-organisational collaboration.
Martin Cleaver M.Sc. MBA
connectBlue, a Swedish Electronics Manufacturer based in Malmo, deploy two instances of Confluence. They've built a mechanism to drive approved changes out to the customer extranet. I interviewed Mats Andersson, who explained the business problem, articulated the benefits and contrasted their prior approach, which used PDFs and a webmaster, to a new system that uses Comalatech Ad hoc Workflows alongside the Remote Publishing Plugin extension.
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In mid-Sept 2010, I - Martin Cleaver (MC) - spoke with Mats Andersson (MA), Product Manager at connectAB. MC: Mats - can you explain to me the nature of your company, who your customers are and how you use Confluence? MA: Sure - well, our customers are device manufacturers. They embed our components - Modules for Wireless Communication - into their solutions. connectBlue needs to communicate extensive amounts of information with these customers so we set up a on the web a way to share with them. Documented items are reference designs, how-tos, and key interface elements of a PCB. We are always learning, so our recommendations are always evolving; getting information out quickly really matters. |
Before we switched to Confluence we built documentation in Word, and published as PDF. When I say publishing I actually mean "send to our webmaster." He was constantly inundated with changes, and could only do so much in a given day. Backlog and delays were accepted as normal and we curtailed our ambitions for customer communication to match reality.
Once we adopted Confluence our internal production refinement of knowledge only sped up! Whereas we might have published at the end of the week now our Product Team were internally capable of putting content out daily - well - hourly really. Of course, with great power comes responsibility, and we knew we could not share partially finished work with Customers. We still need to publish. Doing so through our webmaster would be completely untenable, so we looked how we could use a customer-facing copy of Confluence.
MC: What thinking-process did you go through to put a Confluence extranet up for Customers?
MA: Well, this is a controlled environment with a select audience. It's not just publish: we use the extranet to gather comments for feedback.
MC: What controls do you need, and how have you evolved putting them in place?
MA: We quickly gravitated to Workflows internally, through defined steps of Engineer, Editor and Product Manager before final approval and Publish. This gives Product Managers the means to see an Engineer's newly submitted documents and to ensure they are not only correct, but complete too, coherent with respect to other documentation.
MC: I can imagine how gratifying an automated solution must be.
MA: Yes, it's so much less frustrating, and many changes are now out within minutes.
MC: Sounds like it has really made a difference.
MA: Yes, and this is beyond Workflows. It's adding Remote Publishing that made it possible. Everyone benefits: customers, internal support and management.
MC: And what's on the horizon. Do you use 3.0? And the Ad hoc features?
MA: We haven't really played with 3.0 but are excited about the possibilities. Allowing Product Managers to make their own workflows means they can fill their own niche process needs. This will be a relief for IT!
MC: And what's in your future for Ad hoc Workflows?
MA: We are now thinking through how to do internal release management for new products and follow the workflow in our development projects. This will add more intricate steps for this more complicated processes.
MC: Excellent, well, we look forward to hearing more about that another day. Thanks for your time!
MA: You are welcome.
MCW Consultants Ltd is the division of MCW Group of Companies that focuses on Institutional, Educational, Industrial, Commercial and Residential clients. Based in Toronto, Canada, they work internationally on new construction to state-of-the-art retrofits. MCW Consultants Ltd. are the people to call for energy-efficient, mechanical and electrical systems.
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In a project envisioned and led by Alex Rodas, MCW selected Confluence in early 2007. Alex was focused on MCW's Design Guidebook, a key resource they've refined in the 40 years they've been in business. Inspired by business possibilities of driving efficiency and innovation into the process, Alex set out to convert this centrally updated, 300 page, 4-inch binder. And from yearly updates to an ongoing collaborative initiative. MCW picked Confluence because Comalatech's Workflows, which adds just enough control to ensure coherency over the pure-wiki paradigm. "It really stood out", says Alex, "it's functionality was simple and clear". |
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Switching the Design Guidebook to Workflow-driven Confluence has had a big impact. First, that's 90,000 pages that don't need to be printed, shipped, and filed to the engineers desks. Second, the content became searchable, increasing the likelihood of use. And third they can collaborate, from minor typos all the way to writing new areas or cross-cutting concerns. Using a wiki on the Design Guidebook (it's known internally as their National Quality Initiative) opened up the content so all engineers can participate in the production process, engaging staff in a way never possible with the paper binder. And adding Workflows ensures that MCW engineers rely only on ideas about best practices and architectural standards that have been vetted - knowing critical is not half-baked is vital when client's are spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year. |
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Adoption
As with many wikis, adoption is key. But without controls there is no way Confluence would have been suitable as a change to one page often demands changes to other pages, and only a subject matter expert acting as authority on the content can make that call. For MCW it's clear - with Comalatech's Workflow Plugin, company know-how is being captured, filtered and made available in a radically better way. An Engineer's insight disseminated to colleagues can spark a rethink across the firm, improving compliance, costs and competitiveness.
Workflow
Blended Perspectives, a Toronto strategic partner of Comalatech, worked with MCW to architect and complete some of the more complex requirements of the workflow.
Any engineer can make a modification to the documentation, but the changes are not visible to others before they have been reviewed by the subject matter expert. A final approval is required by the Partner in charge of each area. The Subject Matter Expert is usually the original author of the document, whereas the Partner is determined based of the type of the document.
Whenever a document is modified, the review process is restarted, with some refinements to allow some steps to be skipped if the approver was also the author of the change (e.g. modifications made by the partner or subject matter expert don't restart the entire review).
Potential
"It's all been great value for money for us", says Alex. And while workflow is presently used in only one space, these successes give Alex faith that Workflow would add value to MCW's Centers of Excellence. More broadly, it promises to bring heightened productivity and effectiveness for collaboration in the parent organization, MCW Group of Companies.
UZ Leuven is a University Hospital in Leuven, Belgium. Since early 2009 they have used the Ad hoc Workflows for Confluence to manage some 4,500 documents across 9 spaces. The documents they deal with are a critical part of hospital's effectiveness, covering protocols to manage health issues.
Where Wikis Would Expose to Risk
Normally a wiki would not be suitable for protocol information, as these documents must be relied on and wikis normally permit anyone to make unchecked changes. From palliative care to gastrointestinal diseases, UZ Leuven's documents cover which procedures to follow for symptoms, diagnosis, contraindications, possible causes, treatment plans and more. A freeform wiki that didn't impose checks on content before that content was used by general staff would expose patients to undue risks.
UZ Leuven had considered many Document Management platforms before settling on Confluence with Ad hoc Workflows. The hospital has a deployment of SharePoint but Confluence was favoured for this task because of its low cost, ease of use and extensive linking capabilities.
Approvals
Published Protocol
Approvals Report |
Processes and Integration with External Applications
UZ Leuven's medical practitioners use a 4 step process of checks and approvals. Only after each change has been vetted by a peer and a supervisor can the change be seen by others. UZ Leuven have built custom functionality that injects external database data into per-page metadata: this allows control of workflow access levels to be governed by an external application.
UZ Leuven enjoy the functionality provided to date and were impressed that it helped them to gain JCI accreditation (ISO-like for Hospitals) in a short time frame.
In the course of running Comalatech our team has to juggle all sorts of data relating to clients. As you might hope, we "eat our own dog food" using Ad hoc Workflows to track customer relationships and to manage clients and prospects. A key workflow for us is one that tracks the different states of clients (from prospect to active customer to renewal), and that automates the creation of relevant tasks in each state. We've become remarkably proficient at using the plugin for getting things done.
While the Ad hoc Workflows plugin provides a Tasks Dashboard as well as a Space Tasks Report I always wanted to be able to incorporate some of these tasks into OmniFocus, my favourite personal task manager. By pulling them into OmniFocus I can prioritize work items against, e.g. family and community priorities of my life.
OmniFocus became even more useful when I got my iPad 
so I set out to create a bridge between personal tasks and Ad hoc Workflows.
Below I detail how I accomplished integration in Ad hoc Workflows using macro-based scripting. In short I added a link in a task recipient's email, which when clicked, the tasks is sent to OmniFocus. It's a handy trick.
How it works
Here's part of the default behaviour of the workflow: when a task is created an email is sent to the assignee:
Creating ad hoc task
I update the email body (details below) to include a link to Add to OmniFocus:
Inbox - Add to OmniFocus link
When I click the link, the task is created in OmniFocus:
Creating OmniFocus task
The task is now in OmniFocus and it includes a link to the page:
Managing OmniFocus tasks
Putting it together
First, make sure you have version 3.0.3 (or later) of Ad hoc Workflows.
Then you need to create a user macro which is going to generate the link to create the page, and then update your workflow's trigger to include the OmniFocus macro.
1. Creating the user macro
You need to create a User Macro containing the following code:
The user macro must be defined without body and generating HTML:
Creating User Macro
The Macro takes two parameters: The first one is the task name, and the second one is a text to be included as a note in the OmniFocus task.
2. Updating trigger
Now, you have to update your workflow trigger to include the {omnifocus} macro:
{workflow}
...
{trigger:taskassigned}
{send-email:user=@assignee@|subject=@task@ has been assigned to you}
Task _@task@_ on @page@ has been assigned to you by [~@user@].\\
{quote}@comment@{quote}
{pageactivity}
{omnifocus:@taskname@|@comment@}
{send-email}
{trigger}
...
{workflow}
Updating Workflow Trigger
That's it! Every time a task is assigned, the email sent will include a link for the recipient to add to OmniFocus.
Don't have an iPad?
If you are using a commercial license of Ad hoc Workflows for Confluence make sure you get on our mailing list! Once a year we run a survey that offers a significant discount off renewal plus a a much coveted chance to win an awesome prize. Yup, you guessed it, this year's prize was a 32gb Apple Wifi iPad.
You missed it? Okay. Get on our mailing list.
The following article first appeared as a guest post in Atlassian's Confluence Blog.
A frequent use case for Ad hoc Workflows for Confluence is that of Publishing Articles to a Knowledge Base.
The FAQ Creation Workflow is one such workflow. Designed for promoting Frequently Asked Questions into a Knowledge Base it was designed by one of the largest online music stores.
Push notifications to the right people
Notifications for document responsibilities are key to this workflow, so the workflow handles notification to admins, subject matter experts, authors, and admins.
Users can suggest a potential FAQ article worthy of consideration for publishing by submitting it for review, escalating attention to management. After a couple of checks from peers and management, and any necessary edits, it can be published for all to see.
With Comalatech's workflow exchange you can take and install it in seconds. Then, with our workflow editor you can drag and drop modifications. Finally, and if that's not enough control, you can dig into the workflow and customize to your heart's content.
Take a quick tour! From Confluence Admin > Workflows > Import import the FAQ Creation Workflow. Then apply it to a space in a snap.
On August 3rd one of our internal servers ran out of space, causing a cascade of issues with our mail server.
A large number of already delivered emails became re-queued for our inboxes. Some of these could not delivered and so the mail server kept trying over the following 7 days. On August 10 it started bouncing messages.
We shut down the server as soon as we became aware of this, within 2 hours, and since have purged our mail queue.
We're very sorry the for inconvenience: please ignore any bounced emails. Rest assured we've taken measures to eliminate the problem.
Over the past three years, Comalatech's Workflow plugin has helped organizations large and small automate key processes on Confluence. At the June Atlassian Summit we announced the Workflows Exchange to provide organizations with ready-to-use workflows for different processes and a place they can discuss best practices and share ideas. Here's what you might have missed!
This ScreenFlow video requires a more recent version of the Adobe Flash Player to display. Please update your version of the Adobe Flash Player.
It's Easy!
Workflows became a lot easier to build since we released Ad hoc Workflows back in March. While pro users like to model a workflow and use our extensive markup language, our aim with the Ad hoc edition is to equip everyday casual users. So, we introduced simple tools with anyone can extract, save and reuse workflows built up through user-interactions. Our mission is to democratize Workflow in the same way Wikis democratize the generation and sharing of content.
More than we can Bundle
Our customers entrust us with a good deal of their context, unmet needs and actual workflows. From Document Approvals and Best Practices, to Standard Operating Procedures and Compliance: we learn what more is needed and progressively target support. When it comes to workflows we've always had the dilemma of what examples to include with the plugin. We've always bundled the few, most-widely applicable, well documented and solid examples along with the plugin. But most people love learning from examples, and tell us that they can't get enough of them.
Workflows for the People
Workflow examples have always been available as markup on the Comalatech Tutorials site. Great for technical users, but a little daunting for our new end users who seldom see workflow markup. What's the point of Workflows people can't use? Nope, Workflows for the people have to be accessible to people.
Users of the Adhoc Workflows Plugin from 3.0.3 have new menus that access an all-new Workflows Repository, modelled after the Plugins Repository. Administrators can determine who can import from the Comalatech Workflows Repository, and importing copies the workflows from the repository to be available to their users of Confluence.
See it in action!
Once you've installed the plugin just navigate to Space Admin > Import Workflows. Here you'll see the list of Workflows available for download, complete with controls that make installation a snap.
Be part of Our Future
In the forthcoming months we'll continue to develop this concept - we welcome your feedback! And, we're looking for Process Consultants, partners and end-customers to establish what you most want and what it would take to get you involved.
So, drop us a line!.
You've seen the Ad hoc Workflows movie, now see how we use the same scenario to test the plugin every time we come up with a new release:
This ScreenFlow video requires a more recent version of the Adobe Flash Player to display. Please update your version of the Adobe Flash Player.
It's all scripted! Sure beats doing it manually, doesn't it? 
We use Selenium to automate our UI testing, in addition to the 145+ Unit and Integration tests which are part of our continuous integration.
The Creating an ad hoc workflow while collaborating scenario allows us to cover most of the UI features of Ad hoc Workflows and it has proven to be very helpful to identify issues between confluence versions and browsers.
Our testing
Ad hoc Workflows 3.0 is supported in Confluence versions 2.10, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 and (coming soon) 3.3. To make sure everything works nicely we runs tests on each version.
| Unit test | Integration Tests | Selenium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope | Workflow Engine | Integration with Confluence, event handling, versions support | UI, Browser Support |
| Frequency | Automated on every commit | Automated on every commit | End of the release cycle |
The UI Tests are on on Safari, Firefox and IE7.
In Comalatech we embrace the best development and testing practices. This ensures we consistently provide you with a quality product while responding to changes in an agile manner.
The following article first appeared in Edition 1 of the Adaptavist newspaper.
Wikis are designed to break down barriers to adoption and contribution. The whole purpose of a wiki is to simplify the process of adding and editing content. So a discussion of processes and workflows in the context of wikis may sound unusual and even counter-intuitive - surely it’s adding more process?
However, even in the most agile of organizations, people follow steps: help text is reviewed before it is shown to the public, features need peer-approval, and proposals go through multiple review iterations before being presented to a sponsor.
In larger organizations, networks of processes are everywhere: Primarily to delineate work between workers and departments with different specializations, but also to satisfy a multitude of internal controls, to monitor outcomes and ensure compliance.
All organizations need processes. Processes deliver on promises such as contracts, confidentiality and to reduce re-occurrences of prior mistakes. We assert that wikis are more useful and deliver greater value when strengthened with workflows.
The Wiki Way: Ward’s Principles and Wikinomics in action
Wikis have earned their corner in the enterprise as an effective mechanism for online knowledge sharing and for maintaining the coherence in sets of knowledge. And, despite industry pundit predictions, wikis have proved they can exist without chaos, confidentiality and political problems.
Ward Cunningham defined design principles of wikis key to the advancement of content: readers can write on or rewrite any page, that demand for new pages can be expressed, and that edits of navigation elements should be readily changeable along with edits themselves.
Wikinomics heralded successes of Open Collaboration: scenarios in which flexible, peer-based communication and distributed decision-making transcend the boundaries of the firm. Open collaboration bestows leaders with the resources to tap external expertise, motivation and capacity in response to market opportunities. Firms mastering open collaboration orchestrate the exploration and exploitation of innovations outside the firm and to then build and integrate networks, strategies and technologies that sustain these advantages as ongoing capabilities.
We believe that adding workflow, tightly coupled to Confluence page model and built mindfully using Ward’s design principles, strengthens Confluence as a full-service offering in the collaboration technologies industry.
How do organizations with Confluence deal with processes?
Practically every organization needs processes, but Confluence provides few tools in support. For seldom-run processes, a team can typically just document steps. As complexity or frequency increases, the approach often changes to a combination of labels and reports. Beyond a certain point many firms resort to external applications such JIRA. Organizations anticipating issue often avoid Confluence altogether for it’s lack of process support.
Each of these approaches have disadvantages. Documentation is too separate and tedious to maintain. Technical configuration presents too steep a learning- curve, making changes inaccessible the average user, and especially as complexity of the problem increases or the collaboration scenario shifts. External applications create a fragmented experience for the user. Switching between approaches causes cost, delay, data issues and user exasperation. In sum, all such workarounds drag the competitiveness of firms.
Processes the Wiki Way
We believe Ward’s wiki design principles can be, and should be, applied to processes, and that doing so will open up Confluence to broader use-cases and more demanding markets. Every person related to the organization has perspective or insight, and whereas wikis provide flexible input to the content, Workflows the Wiki Way invites participants to provide input, feedback or rework to the intermesh of work-step sequences. Input can be in response to new customer problems or enhanced partner capability yet still maintain interlocking checks and satisfy existing reporting needs.
Comalatech has built a workflow plugin for Confluence founded on the belief that wiki principles can also apply to processes, that any user should be able to define a process to simplify work patterns for themselves or for working with others.
Workflows for Confluence
Since 2007, Comalatech has provided workflow capabilities for Confluence. Our product provides the means to model states, tasks and approvals using page as records and provides easy ways to expire content and to keep it evergreen.
Our March 2010 release is user-interface driven, making workflows quick to create, use and modify. In this way we’ve re- embraced Ward’s design principles: workflow definitions are permeable and co-evolutionable by end-users and universal because now anyone (not just programmers) can create and change workflows. You can allow peers to incrementally define and reuse processes. By shifting processes into the wiki, and by enabling construction, feedback and modification by any end-user, Confluence participants can collaborate not just on documentation but so too on the steps that make up work to be done.
There’s a Workflow for that!
We’ve seen our plugin used for a multitude of purposes including Policy management, Technical Documentation, Loan Approvals, Expenses, ISO 9001 Document Management, Requirements Management and Systems Development Life Cycle.
Ad Hoc Workflows for Confluence contains an extensive workflow engine, able to model and report on tasks, states, triggers and transitions coupled with simple-to-use workflow learning. Our plugin learns when your business rules change so you can template and reapply a new sequence of user interactions. In addition we have a new modelling environment in which you can inspect and graphically model a workflow.
Our May 2010 release introduces a Workflow Repository, a site from which Workflow Templates can be shared. From here you can download our Content Evergreen, Multi-step Approvals and various industry-specific flows. We are presently setting up the means for company managers and process specialists to share their workflows to our community.
Comalatech
Organizations must evolve to survive, and the more nimbly they do so the more they thrive. Organisations with both the leadership vision and ability to mobilize it’s resources swiftly earn the title of Adaptive Organizations. Comalatech brings Workflows the Wiki Way into Atlassian Confluence. We offer flexible process-tools that empower competitive adaptiveness through process agility.
For small organizations adding our lightweight processes will help you achieve stability, speed up work and free your founders from administrative burden. For larger organizations our Wiki Workflows add flexibility to your processes, and by enabling rapid feedback and modifications on the workflow, creates organizational flexibility to not only spot opportunity, but quickly formulate vision, realign capabilities and engage staff in a process-channeled way.
Since 2007, Comalatech has helped enterprise clients adopt and adapt Confluence for atypical applications. Starting with customer needs, we've developed many mechanisms to configure and manage sharing content across time. In the course of working with customers, we have identified four patterns:
We've built plugin functionality to power all of these four. Our Checklist Plugin and Content Publishing Plugin are open source and free to use. Our commercial offering - provides an extensive Workflow Engine, version 1 focused on approval. Version 2 added many more business rules to our Macro language, and logs to aid collaboration and audit.
Needing to keep content fresh by setting up rules is now typical. So, imminent is version 3: Ad hoc Workflows provides task management and simple-to-use workflow learning. We've broken new ground in that our plugin learns how your business rules are changing and can reapply what you did last time, repeating the sequence of user interactions.
To find out how the Workflows Plugin for Confluence can ease publishing, team sharing and, now, organizational adaptiveness, check out Ad hoc Workflows.
