Wiki help

A wiki is a cross between a website and email, with a bit of Dropbox thrown in.

We can use a wiki to make pages containing text, images and attached documents; organize them into a 'space' (all the pages relating to one particular topic, such as the space for a specific task force or project); and edit or comment on things.

Unlike a traditional website, a wiki is collaborative. This collaborative environment makes wikis the ideal platform to work collectively on drafting a document, planning a seminar, or simply sharing documents within a team. By using a wiki you can avoid the problems of long email threads, indecipherable tracked changes, and confusion about multiple versions of a document being sent between contributors. You can also access the work from anywhere with an Internet connection, so you are not dependent on having access to the office network drives.

At the top right of your screen you will see the Tools menu. Click on Page History to see a list of previous versions. You can roll back to a previous version if you did something that you've changed your mind about. You can also use this functionality to see who has changed things and what they have changed.

Make sure you are on the page that you want to be the parent page. Start by clicking Create in the blue banner at the top of your screen:

Then choose blank page to create an empty page as your starting point:

When you click on 'create' you will get a page called 'New Page'. You should give it a new title. You can then start typing text into the empty white space, just as you would with a Word document. Press save at the bottom right of the screen when you are finished.

You will see the word Edit near the top right of your screen:

You can click this, or press the 'e' key on your keyboard, to enter editing mode.

You can now type in new text, or change the existing text, just as you would in a word processing programme.

A toolbar across the top of the page allows you to change the properties of the text, e.g. to select bold, italics or underline: change the colour of the text; choose ^superscript, _subscript or strikethrough; add bullet points or a numbered list; alter the alignment; increase or decrease the indentation; etc.

You can also select different styles of text in order to structure your page with headings, by selecting an option from the dropdown menu on the far left where it says 'paragraph'. For example

This is paragraph text

This is heading 5

This is heading 4, etc.

Note that many of the same keyboard shortcuts that you are used to from ordinary word processing will also work in Confluence: e.g. Ctrl+c for copy, Ctrl+v for paste, Ctrl+i for italics, etc.

To import a document as a wiki page, in the top right corner click Tools, then select "Import Word Document".

A page will open asking to select the document you want to upload. After selecting the document, click "Next"

A new page will open asking you to configure the import. Some important options to check Next to the "Root page title" enter the name of your document. It will be automatically populated with the name of the file, but you can change it if you wish. Make sure that the following options are selected (see picture): Import as a new page in current space Rename imported pages if page name already exists If the document is less than 5-10 pages, select "Don't split" for the Split by Heading option. If it is a really large document (like the GSIM Specification), you may want to consider splitting by heading. Essentially, this will create a new wiki page for each heading in the document. Note: this will only work if the Word document has formatted headings!

After saving a page that you have been editing so that you exit edit mode, click Attachments in the tools menu at the top right of your screen:

You can browse through your computer to choose a file or simply drag it and drop it to attach it to the page.  In fact, you don't even have to go to Attachments first: you can just drop a file from your computer onto a page to attach it: but going to Attachments may be useful as you can then see all attached items in a list, e.g.:

Simply attaching a document to a page doesn't make it actually appear anywhere on your page: if you want it to be obvious to readers then you will need to make a link to it (you can also link to other pages, whether within the UNECE wikis or elsewhere on the Internet).

Start by writing the text where you want to link to the attachment or web page.  For example:

Highlight the part that you want to be a clickable link:

Choose Link on the editing toolbar and a popup box will appear.  You can choose attachments to see a list of the attached files, or you can choose Web link to make a link any Internet page.  Choose search or recently viewed to help you locate a different page within the UNECE wikis. 

Once you have chosen what you want to link to, click insert to close the popup box.  Now press save to save your page.  You have now created a hyperlink to your chosen attachment of page, which will appear in blue underlined text:

Pictures

Adding a picture is just like adding an attachment.  You can either attach it first and then insert it where you want it to appear, or you can simply drag and drop it from wherever it is saved on your computer.  You can also insert an image that is already attached to another page elsewhere on the wikis.  To do this, go to Insert in the editing toolbar and choose imgae from the dropdown list.  A popup box will appear allowing you to browse or search for the image.

Once inserted or dropped into place, you can click on your image to bring up a menu that will enable you to change its size, add a border, make it into a clickable link, etc.  The properties button allows you to add special effects such as a shadow or picture-frame effect, or to include a caption.

Slides

Adding a slideshow is very similar to adding an image.   If you simply drag and drop it then it will appear as a slideshow that can be navigated on the page.  You can also attach it and just make a link to it.  The following illustrates these two alternatives:

1)  A slideshow on the page:

2) a link to an attached .ppt or .pptx file:

Tables

To add a table, choose Table from the editing toolbar and select the number of rows and columns that you think you will need:

When you create a table, a new toolbar appears enabling you to add or delete rows and columns, merge cells, change cell colours, etc.  Hover over any of these options to see what it does:

There are 2 options that can be used when exporting document - either PDF or Word.

PDF: The PDF option will create a PDF of the page straight away. In the top right hand corner, click Tools. From the menu that appears select "Export to PDF".

Word: This will create an editable version of the wiki page. In the top right hand corner, click Tools. From the menu that appears select "Export to Word". A dialogue box will open (see picture). To get the best results, we recommend that you select the "Confluence Default Template (only this page)" and then click "Customise settings". Another dialogue box will open. Select the "Default" template (as opposed to the "Confluence default"), then click the "Start Export" button.

**You need to be in edit mode**

Start to type "{ui-expand}". After a few letters, the macro suggestions will propose the correct macro. Click on UI Expand A pop up box will appear. In the title field, type in an appropriate title. Then click Insert
The page will now have a new UI Expand box. You can type / copy and paste your meeting minutes into it.

Alternatively, you can select a UI Expand box that is already existing on the page, and copy and paste it to create a second UI Expand box. Then you just need to overwrite the text with your new meeting minutes.

To change the title of the box, click on the box. Two buttons will appear (Edit and Remove). Select Edit A pop up box will appear that will give you the option to change the heading.

 If you open the DDI 4 Documents page in edit mode, all you will see is this:

So how do you get new documents to appear on the page??

After importing the document into the wiki (following instructions above), check that the document is appearing in the correct place in the page tree.

To move the pages to the right location... On top left of any page, select Browse and then Pages. This will open the page tree view of all the wiki pages. Select the document and drag it to DDI 4 Documents. The children pages will automatically move as well

Once the page is in the correct location, open the page and scroll to the bottom. You will see:

Whether a link to document appears on the DDI 4 Documents page depend on whether the page has a "Docs" label attached to it. You can see above that this page has no label. To attach the label and make a link, you click on the pencil picture (see above) that appears next to the words "No labels".

A pop up box will appear. Type "docs" into the box and select Add (see below). Once added, "docs" will appear in a grey box below the text field. Click Close. Back on the document page, you will "docs" in place of where it used to say "no label". Your document will now appear as a link/box on the DDI 4 Documents page.

Slides

Adding a slideshow is very similar to adding an image.   If you simply drag and drop it then it will appear as a slideshow that can be navigated on the page.  Note, the presentation displays best, if you use a PDF version of the slides (but you should also add the powerpoint version so other can use and edit the slides for their needs)

1)  A slideshow on the page: