Snapshot document publishing

Overview

Snapshot publishing lets you create static versioned documents from your dynamic Confluence content, freezing content from Confluence macros that display live content in the snapshot document.

Snapshot Publishing is a feature of the Comala Publishing app that is used to create a snapshot of a document and manage snapshots as a collection. Comala Document Management integration with Comala Publishing lets you automatically create a snapshot document of a Confluence page using a workflow trigger.

Once a snapshot is created, it is organized and managed in one or more themed groupings of snapshot documents, called collections, to create manuals and static records for audit.

graphic_integartionpublishing_documentmanagement_snapshot.png

Each snapshot document is versioned and can be added to one or more collections. Collections can contain snapshot documents from one or more spaces. View permissions for each collection are managed outside space permissions.

A global collections viewer in the Confluence header allows users to view snapshots in PDF or HTML format.

The Comala Publishing (Snapshot Publishing) app v3.0+ must be installed to enable snapshot publishing.

Activating snapshot publishing

There are three steps to setting up snapshot publishing to take place on a Comala workflow event:

Install Comala Publishing in your instance and enable snapshot publishing for a space
Set up Snapshot publishing in your space snapshot publishing dashboard
Update your workflow to add a trigger with the snapshot publishing process and apply the updated workflow to your document (see below)

Publishing a snapshot using a workflow trigger

A snapshot can be published using either:

A snapshot-page macro to create a snapshot that is added to a specified snapshot collection
A pdf-export macro to create a snapshot that is added to the page as an attachment

Both action macros can be used in the same trigger.

Snapshot-page action trigger workflow markup

The publishing is triggered by an action macro, snapshot-page, which must be used in a trigger.

{workflow:name=Snapshot Publishing}
   {state:Editing|submit=Review}
   {state}
   {state:Review|approved=Published|rejected=Editing}
      {approval:Review|assignable=true}
   {state}
   {state:Published|final=true|updated=Editing}
   {state}
   {trigger:statechanged|state=Published}
      {set-metadata:lastapprover}
      @user@
      {set-metadata}
      {snapshot-page:collection=mycollection|editor=@lastapprover@}
   {trigger}
{workflow}

The example markup above is based on an example from same-space publishing, but we've added the trigger at the bottom.

When the state changes to Published, the trigger is activated and the snapshot-page macro instructs the Comala Publishing app to create a snapshot document from the Confluence document.

The collection parameter value is required to add the snapshot to a named collection
The editor parameter value is the user who is set as the creator of the snapshot document

In the example above:

The collection parameter value must be the name of a snapshot collection that has been linked to or created in the space by the space administrator
The editor parameter value is a metadata value set in the workflow trigger prior to the snapshot-page macro action

The user who is added as the value for the editor parameter must have been added as a collection contributor to the collection permissions by the collection owner/creator.

For snapshot publishing, the snapshot-page macro does all the work. The macro can be used to publish documents from any state using an appropriate trigger event.

pdf-export action trigger workflow markup

With Comala Publishing installed, the pdf-export macro can be used in a trigger to export a snapshot of a page or blog post in PDF format and add the file to the page as an attachment.

The PDF is added with a filename in the following format:

<confluence_filename>_<document_version>_<date_pdf_file_created>_<time_pdf_created>.pdf

{trigger:statechanged|state=Published}
      {pdf-export}
{trigger}

There are no macro parameters to configure.

The pdf-export macro can also be used with Scroll PDF Exporter 4.10.11 or higher.

Macros

Page:

pdf-export macro — export content as a pdf
Page:

snapshot-page macro — Create a static versioned snapshot of a document

Related pages

Comala Publishing

Snapshot Publishing

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