Managing Writers: Interview with Richard Hamilton (podcast)

I recently had a chance to listen to Tom Johnson's podcast entitled Managing Writers: Interview with Richard Hamilton and I found it to be very insightful. I totally agree that documentation metrics are difficult to nail down and pageviews aren't always the best metric (though a decent one).  I personally haven't found a good metric of productivity for tech writers. (If you have one, I'd love to hear about it.)

Documentation managers (writers or otherwise) are best served by simply staying aware of what their tech writers are doing and how heavily loaded they are on a regular basis. Having regular check-ins and one-on-ones is the best way to tell if a writer is overloaded or not.

Migrating Content From One Confluence Instance to Another

Introduction

From time to time, as a Confluence administrator, you'll be called upon to migrate a space to a new Confluence instance. This guide provides some tried and true steps to generate a list of spaces in Confluence, figure out how active a space is (so you can decide if it should be archived, migrated, or simply removed), how to find a space owner, add a warning message to a space, set a space to "read-only" mode, and delete a space.

Required skills

You should be comfortable and/or knowledgable with the following:

• HTML
• Managing Confluence space themes
• Basic Confluence administration
• Exporting and importing Confluence spaces

Migrating Confluence content

1. Generate a list of all the spaces in your old Confluence (instance). This list will be used as a checklist for tracking all the spaces that have been migrated to the new instance.
   1. To get a list of spaces, go to Spaces > Space Directory. This page will show you a list of all the spaces in your instance.
2. Start reviewing the spaces for level of activity. I believe it is safe to say that if a space hasn't had any visitors in 6+ months, then it should be marked as archived and prioritized for either removal or migration.
   1. To see the level of activity, go into the space and then Space Tools > Activity. In the Activity page, set the Period for months and review the previous six months of activity by clicking on the previous button for the month section.
   2. To archive a space, go to the space in Confluence and then Space Tools > Overview. In the Overview page, click on Edit space details button. From there, change the Status to Archived and click on the Save button.
3. Identify and speak with space owner(s) and get their permission to archive and/or migrate a space. Also ask them if the space should have a higher or lower priority for migration.
   1. To see who the space owner is, open the space and go to Space Tools > Permissions. Under Individual Users, you should typically see someone who has all permissions to the space. Another way to see who created the space is to go to the space's home page. This home page will have information about who created this page (which should be the person who created the space (i.e. the owner of the space) unless of course the Confluence administrator is responsible with the task of creating spaces.
4. Work with space owner(s) on active spaces so you don't interrupt their work and set a date for migration.
5. Add a migration warning to the space that it will be migrated on a designated date.
   1. To add a warning label to a space and the target space is using the Documentation Theme, follow these steps:
      1. Navigate to the space's Themes page (space > Space Admin > Themes).
      2. In the Messages section under Header, add the following code:
         {html}
<div style="background-color: red; color: white; padding: 5px;">This space will be migrated on <span style="color: yellow"><designated_migration_date></span></div>
{html}
      3. This will add a message on top of every page in the space and the unstylish colors will definitely grab the attention of everyone viewing the page.
      4. Note: it's a good idea to give everyone at least a two weeks notice about the migration.
6. For unvisited spaces or spaces about to be migrated, put the space into "read-only" mode.
   1. To make a space "read-only", go to Space Tools > Permissions.
   2. In the Permissions page, you should see a list of space admins and groups. It would be best to leave the permission scheme alone for the space admins but if you have a group where all users fall under, change it so it is only set to All View to checked and everything else is unchecked.
7. Export spaces on designated dates. Start with higher priority spaces and work your way down to the low priority spaces. See Export and Import a Confluence Space for instructions on how to export a space.
8. Import the exported space into the new instance. See Export and Import a Confluence Space for details on how to import a space.
9. Go into the newly imported space and confirm that everything is in proper order (content and attachments are fine, macros are working as expected, permissions are good, and so on). Note: this step may take a bit of time. I recommend that you get help from the original space owner(s) to confirm that the migration went well.
10. Change migration notice to migrated and marked for removal. Update warning of the exported space in the old instance that it has been migrated (with a link to the new space) and add a removal date.
    1. To add a removal warning, repeat the sub-steps listed in step 5.
       1. Navigate to the space's Themes page (space > Space Admin > Themes).
       2. In the Messages section under Header, add the following code:
          {html}
<div style="background-color: red; color: white; padding: 5px;">This space has been migrated to <a style="color: white; text-decoration: underline;" href="url_of_new_confluence_instance/display/<spacekey>">url_of_new_confluence_instance/display/<spacekey></a> and will be removed from this wiki on <designated_removal_date></div>
{html}
          
       3. This will add a message on top of every page in the space and the unstylish colors will definitely grab the attention of everyone viewing the page.
       4. Note: it's a good idea to give everyone at least a two weeks notice about the removal.
11. On the designated removal date, delete the space old space in the old instance of Confluence. While this is a very dangerous step, keep in mind that you have the exported zip file and the newly created space in the new instance. If anything goes wrong, you can always re-import the space back into the original Confluence instance.
• To delete a space, go to Space Tools > Overview. Click the Delete Space button. You may be prompted to enter your credentials so be ready to enter that information. Click the Ok button to start the deletion process. Depending on how big the space is, this could take a few seconds or several minutes. Check with the Time Remaining counter (I find it's mostly accurate 90% of the time but that will vary from server to server based on your server's configuration).

Tip: You may want to include a message at the top of the newly imported space in the new instance where one can find the old space in the old instance. Just use the sub-steps mentioned in either step 5 or 10 and add the necessary info to point back to the old space.