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Short DescriptionProvides information about features potential users should consider for their evaluation process on using the projectdoc . DoctypetopichideToolbox for Confluence.
NameEvaluation Topics 
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This is the first major release of the projectdoc Toolbox for Confluence.
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titleDescription

Confluence is a great team collaboration tool. The projectdoc Toolbox is an add-on for Confluence. The toolbox supplements the standard tooling with enhanced features like transclusion and automatic dynamic linking. These features make it much easier to create modular, single-sourced documentation and create a rich navigation within your wiki.

The main target audience of the projectdoc Toolbox are agile development teams. It supports any team that requires to create and maintain documentation collaboratively.

This page is dedicated to list limitations lists topics to consider to help interested parties to evaluate and get started with the projectdoc Toolbox.

If you have any questions regarding the projectdoc Toolbox, please do not hesitate to get in touch!


Section
titlePrerequisites


Section
titleAbstract


Transclusion
documentprojectdoc Toolbox
idsmarketplace



Transclusion
documentprojectdoc Toolbox
idsvideo




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titleContents

Table of Contents
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excludeprojectdoc Toolbox|Online Manual
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idEvaluation Topics


Info Box

While this list shows only limitations topics that may be relevant for your use cases, switch to features, show cases, and especially the introduction video, to learn about the projectdoc Toolbox!

In Compare with built-in Features you'll finad find an overview over the differences between macros provided by Confluence natively and the macros that are part of tje projectdoc Toolbox.Here are links to projects on this site that use the projectdoc Toolbox: Projects using the projectdoc Toolbox.


Section
titleImportant


The main target group of the projectdoc Toolbox are agile teams.
Section
titleTested for small Teams
Navigation through Lucene Queries

According to the macros you use on a page, projectdoc launches some automatic Lucene queries on each view access of that page. These queries locate matching documents to render links for navigation.

In case you plan to install the add-on on a server with a large user base or heavy load, please make sure to check your performance requirements thoroughly in advance.

Section
titleFor trusted Environments ONLY!

The projectdoc Toolbox makes heavy use of transclusion. That is it transcludes content from on page to be displayed in another.

This may make it vulnerable for XSS attackers as is the case for the Confluence HTML macro.

Quote External
source-urihttps://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/HTML+Macro
render-anonymousfalse
sourceHTML macro

Enabling these macros can make your Confluence site vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks. You should only turn on these macros if you trust all your users not to attempt to exploit them. We strongly recommend leaving this macro disabled if you allow self-signed up or anonymous users to create content.

Therefore you must not install the add-on, if you cannot trust your users (with write access) completely! Alternatively you may choose to selectively deactivate those macros that you do not want to be used.


Section
titleNot tested for ClusteringData Center

The projectdoc Toolbox is not tested for clustered data center environments!.


Section
titleUse of additional Database Tables

The projectdoc Toolbox caches document properties for quick access in the database. We use Active Objects, a recommended feature provided by Confluence, for this.

Please check if this is allowed by your installation guidelines in advance!


Section
titleOne Site, one Locale

Generation of documents requires a locale so that the projectdoc Toolbox knows the language to use to generate property names and section titles. The selection of the locale is defined by the site locale.

To change this there must be the notion of a locale per space or even page. A macro can at any time render text dependent on the locale of the current user. But on page creation the generated text need to follow the locale of the site. If the locale of the user would determine the language of the generated page, a space would have documents for different languages.

Currently it is not supported to have the locale be determined by a space or page configuration (see Controlling Locale/Language for Space and Page Blueprints in Confluence).

A possible workaround: The templates a blueprint is based on may be translated at space level. This way the template of a blueprint for the site locale "English" could be translated in a space to e.g. "German" (see Blueprints Cannot Be Configured to Use Non-English Languages).

Please refer to Localization for more information on this topic.


Section
titleDocumentation work is challengingNot in every Aspect easy-to-use

The main target group of the projectdoc Toolbox are software developers that seek for tools to make documentation tasks more easy and fun.

Despite our constant work on making the projectdoc Toolbox easy to use, there are some features that may be too complicated for non-programming audiences. It may be advisable that your documentation architects have a thorough look at the add-on's features to check, if these will work with their usersauthors.

Some of the features that might cause problems with your users are listed as need-to-know below.


Section
titleMigration

Currently we do not provide any migration tools, in case you need to move from one version to another.

This issue is based on the fact, that pages that have been created with a blueprint do not get adjusted to changes to that blueprint. So this problem is not specific to the projectdoc Toolbox.

If any incompatible changes have to be applied in the future, it is likely that you have to rely on your set of tools to update your pages accordingly. That is not that we do not take compatibility issues into account and try to provide a solution for our customers. But currently we cannot guarantee easy migration paths.

Tip Box
titleWeb API

You may use the Web API Extension to apply changes to documents via REST calls.



Section
titleImport of projectdoc Spaces

The import of spaces that use macros from the projectdoc Toolbox is even slower than what you experience with your Confluence spaces.

This is because the projectdoc Toolbox has to do some extra calculations for each imported projectdoc pagedocument.


Section
titleComplicated Reindexing

In case you have to reindex your projectdoc space, there is only a developer tool to support this task. The tool is quite crude and not very responsive (that is it starts and comes back when it has finished without any advancement information).


Section
titleCache Size

The projectdoc Toolbox Document Cache is set to 1.000 entries, and has to be adopted to your installation needs (usually at least 10.000 entries 2|3).



Section
titleNeed-to-Know


Section
titleDocument Property Rules

There are some rules to follow, when working with document properties:

  • Do not reference properties in documents with different permissions.
  • Do not add sensitive information as property values (they are written to the Lucene index by default).
  • Do not have a dynamic value for a property.
  • It is recommended to only reference properties of the same document, if they are already defined (i.e. are defined in a row above in the document properties table).

These rules may be too complicated for some audiences that are not used to programming. We try to make this more convenient in the future, but for now you should discuss these rules with your team.


Section
titleProperties cached publicly

The Document Properties Marker Macro puts all document properties into the cache and into the Lucene index. Therefore these properties must not contain sensitive information!

If a page is accessible for a user, all properties of that page will also be accessible for that user - even if the property is set to hide.


Section
titleDocumentation Evolving

We are still adding information to our documentation. The documentation is not  - and probably will never be - complete.


Section
titleAdd-on Extensions

We are currently continuously working on additional blueprints to extend the usability of the projectdoc Toolbox. These doctype add-ons will make it much easier to get started. Without these add-ons you'll have to define all your templates by yourself. While this is an approach many teams may chose to take anyway, it may slow down the project start of others.

Please refer to Doctypes to see what is already supported and what is in the queue to be released.

Note that all doctype add-ons are provided for free on the Atlassian Marketplace and are hosted on Bitbucket.


Section
titleTransclusions are slow

To write modular content you may either link or transclude content. But keep in mind that transclusion heavily use of transclusions is slow. Check your performance requirements and your server resources and design your documentation strategy accordingly.

From version 1.9 on there is a global cache to store transclusion fragments. Please refer to Fragments Cache for Transclusions for details.


Section
titlePage Content Changes

Due to the nature of automatic dynamic lists (for instance the Display Table Macro), the content of a page displayed to a reader will change without the page having been edited.

This is similar to the behaviour behavior of macros provided by Confluence that show pages with a specific label. If an additional page is tagged with a particular label, the list on the page with the macro changes. This is true for all our automatic dynamic list macros. There are The projectdoc Toolbox provides no tools to permanently freeze the content of these lists.

We recommend to export these pages to PDF or other media, if you require a snapshot for later reference. Alternatively you may use the Tour Macro to specify the elements of a list explicitly.


There are some rules to follow, when working with document properties:

Only reference properties of the same document, if they are already defined (i.e. are defined in a row above in the document properties table).
  • Do not reference properties in documents with different permissions.
  • Do not add sensitive information as property values (they are written to the Lucene index by default).
  • No transitive closure, only direct references are (currently) recalculated on property value change (this is usually no problem as long as you do not reference a value that by itself references a value). This is due to performance considerations.
  • These rules may be too complicated for some audiences that are not used to programming. We try to make this more convenient in the future, but for now you should discuss these rules with your team.

    Section
    titleDocument Property Rules
    Section
    titleTransclusion Rules

    Do not transclude content in a cycle!

    This rule applies to the Transclusion Macro as well as to all display property macros (e.g. Display Document Property Macro).

    Since version 1.9 the projectdoc Toolbox tracks recursions and will render an error message if a transclusion cycle is detected.


    Section
    titleSearch Query Syntax

    The syntax of the search queries is based on the Lucene syntax and therefore is quite complicated. It may be frustrating to formulate complex queries for users that are not used to programming.


    Section
    titleAPI not finalized

    We will change the Java API without notice. It will probably take the next major release, until we finalize the API and add documentation to help macro developers.

    Please do not depend on our API. ! And if you do so, do not complain about regular and incompatible changes in our releases. (sad) (sad)

    We recommend to get in touch with us, so that we can help you on any updates.

    Tip Box

    We recommend to use the Web API to integrate other tools with projectdoc.




    Section
    titleMinor


    Section
    titleNo Paging

    The result lists are designed to be used for hit counts of 50 or less. Therefore we currently do not support paging for the query macros.




    Section
    titleSubordinate Topics
    Display Table
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    Section
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    titleNotes


    Section
    titleReferences


    Section
    titleResources


    Tour
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    Related, interesting information on the Atlassian Developer Website:

    1. How do I cache data in a plugin?
    2. Confluence Cache Schemes
    3. Cache Performance Tuning
    4. Compare with built-in Features