Remote-space publishing

Overview

Remote-space publishing allows you to edit content on a local Confluence instance, and then publish it to a remote Confluence Cloud, Server or Data Center instance.

The Comala Remote Publishing app is used to publish content in a source space to a completely separate instance.

Whenever content is updated and approved in the source instance using Comala Document Management the Comala Remote Publishing app can automatically update the published content in the remote instance.

The remote instance can be configured to allow anonymous access to share the content with outside users.

The Comala Remote Publishing app for Comala Document Management must be installed on the source instance to enable remote-space publishing. The Comala Remote Publishing app only functions when used with Comala Document Management.

Activating remote-space publishing

Once the Comala Remote Publishing app is installed there are three steps to setting up different-space publishing:

• set-up the remote Confluence instance

• set-up the local Confluence instance

• update your workflow to trigger the publishing process

The publishing action in the workflow is actioned using one of the following remote publishing macros added to a workflow trigger in your updated workflow

• remotepublish-page to publish a page to the remote instance

• remoteremove-page to unpublish (remove) a published page from the remote instance

Remote instance setup

These steps should be performed on the remote Confluence instance which you plan to publish content to

• create the space where content will be published to

• set up a user account with user permissions to view, add, and delete content in the space for the published content

When content is published into this remote space it will appear to be authored and edited by the user you have set up.

The remote instance can be a Server, Data Center or Cloud instance.

If a Cloud instance is used for the remote instance then you will need to configure an API token in the user account Atlassian administration. Make sure the API token needed for the user password field is requested by the user who will appear to publish the articles.

Local setup

For remote publishing to work, the server hosting the local Confluence instance must be able to access the remote instance. These steps should be performed on the local instance where the content is initially created.

The remote space details are configured in the Document Management dashboard In the space that holds the source content.

• navigate to Space Tools > Document Management > Remote Publishing

• add the remote space details to configure the remote space publishing

Workflow markup

The publishing is triggered by an action macro remotepublish-page. This action macro is added to a Comala Document Management workflow trigger.

{trigger:statechanged|state=Published|queue=true}
        {remotepublish-page:remote}
{trigger}

The value used in the example for the remotepublish-page macro is the Name for the remote publishing profile added in the Remote Space Publishing Configuration dashboard in the source space - here we have used remote.

In our workflow applied to the source space content we can use a state change event to action the remote publishing - the change of state to the Published state.

When the state changes to Published, we can add a trigger to listen for this event.

When the trigger is activated the remotepublish-page macro instructs the Remote Publishing for Comala Document Management app to send the published content to the remote space.

{trigger:statechanged|state=Published|queue=true|newevent=pagepublished}
        {remotepublish-page:remote}
{trigger}

We have also used this trigger to create a custom event newevent=pagepublished that can be used in other triggers.

Here we have used this custom event to check if the remote publishing was successful using the success=true parameter in the trigger.

• if the publishing action was successful - the custom event pagepublished - we added a trigger to generate a message confirming success

{trigger:pagepublished|success=true}
        {set-message:style=info}Page Published to remote instance!{set-message}
{trigger}

• if the publishing action event pagepublished was unsuccessful - success=false - we’ve added a trigger to transition to the content to the Review state and generate a warning message

{trigger:pagepublished|success=false}
        {set-state:For Review}
        {set-message:user=@user@|style=warning}Publishing to the remote instance failed @errormessage@{set-message}
{trigger}

The example markup above is based on the example from same-space publishing, but we've added the trigger at the bottom to include a process to remove page content from the remote instance using the remoteremove-page macro.

{trigger:statechanged|state=Remove}
        {remoteremove-page:remote}
{trigger}

With no configured transition to the Remove state from another state in the workflow, the ability to transition to the Remove state is limited to users with administrator permission who can use the administrator state override option to transition the page to the Remove state from any other state in the workflow.

Here’s the complete workflow markup for this example including a remote publishing process for blog posts using the newsstatechanged event

{workflow:name=Remote Publishing Workflow|key=dm.remotepublishing}
    {description}
        This workflow allows one-way synchronization of a remote confluence instance. Please visit the [workflow's page|https://wiki.comalatech.com/display/CDML/Remote-space+publishing] for instructions on how to set up the _private_ and _remote_ instances.
    {description}
    {state:Draft|submit=For Review}
    {state}
    {state:For Review|approved=Published|rejected=Draft}
        {approval:Publish}
    {state}
    {state:Published|updated=For Review}
    {state}
    {state:Remove|hidefrompath=true|hideselection=true}
    {state}
    {state:Newsarchived|submit=Draft|hidefrompath=true|hideselection=true}
    {state}
    {trigger:statechanged|state=Published}
        {set-message:type=note}Page publishing pending...{set-message}
    {trigger}
    {trigger:statechanged|state=For Review}
        {set-message}{set-message}
    {trigger}
    {trigger:statechanged|state=Published|queue=true|newevent=pagepublished}
        {remotepublish-page:remote}
    {trigger}
    {trigger:newsstatechanged|state=Published}
        {set-message:type=note}Page publishing pending...{set-message}
    {trigger}
    {trigger:newsstatechanged|state=For Review}
        {set-message}{set-message}
    {trigger}
    {trigger:newsstatechanged|state=Published|queue=true|newevent=pagepublished}
        {remotepublish-page:remote}
    {trigger}
    {trigger:newsstatechanged|state=Newsarchived|queue=true|newevent=pagepublished}
        {remotepublish-page:remote2}
    {trigger}
    {trigger:pagepublished|success=true}
        {set-message:style=info}Document Published to remote instance!{set-message}
    {trigger}
    {trigger:pagepublished|success=false}
        {set-state:For Review}
        {set-message:user=@user@|style=warning}Publishing to the remote instance failed @errormessage@{set-message}
    {trigger}
    {trigger:statechanged|state=Remove}
        {remoteremove-page:remote}
    {trigger}
    {trigger:newsstatechanged|state=Newsarchived}
        {remoteremove-page:remote}
    {trigger}
{workflow}

The workflow triggers publishing content to a remote instance are separate triggers for

• pages using the statechanged event

• blog posts using the newsstatechanged event

These triggers also generate a custom event pagepublished that is used to generate message notifications.

Macros

• Page:
  remotepublish-page macro — Publish a page to a remote Confluence instance
• Page:
  remoteremove-page macro — Unpublish (remove) a page from a remote Confluence instance

Examples

• Page:
  Advanced remote-space publishing

Administration

• Comala Remote Publishing Release notes

See also