Migration from Confluence to Teamly. Step by step instructions
Confluence in Russia is in a state that can be described by the phraseology “neither alive nor dead.” While many cloud accounts of Russian companies have already been completely blocked, Confluence is quite alive on its own servers. However, there are reasons to switch to import-substituted solutions. For example, on TEAMLY, the Russian analogue of Confluence.
Hi all. In touch TEAMLY — platform for collaboration and knowledge management. We’ll talk about why you need to leave Confluence and how to do it in real conditions in this article.
Confluence everything
With a cloud service, everything is clear – there is no return, registering new accounts for some foreign companies and working through a VPN is not our method. Confluence is valuable with knowledge gained from old accounts. Nobody needs a clean database. If someone’s account has not yet been blocked, congratulations, but we also immediately warn you that this state of affairs is unlikely to last long. If not today, tomorrow your account will be disabled without the ability to get data.
With “boxed” versions, as our experts call installations on our own servers, everything is much better. The only thing that box users have lost is the ability to update software versions. Interesting fact: many people haven’t updated Confluence for years without losing this right. The oldest version that our specialists had to deal with was 12 (in words, just in case: Twelve) years.
It would seem that everything is working, why bother? That’s all true, but anyone who stops developing now will fall behind those moving forward. But moving forward with a knowledge base that does not meet modern requirements is difficult. Over the past two or three years, technologies in knowledge management have received a new impetus in development through the use of artificial intelligence. All (or almost all) knowledge base services have acquired AI assistants and implemented data search and analysis using neural networks. But this won’t happen in Confluence boxes. They’ll come up with new features for grouping and visualization, but they won’t be in the boxes. And in general, systems without qualified support from the vendor tend to degrade: knowledgeable administrators leave (and documenting their knowledge is usually beneath them), new ones do not know the systems sufficiently for support and development. This is especially true for the methodology of working with knowledge.
In general, you need to migrate to a solution that:
● is at the forefront of knowledge management technologies,
● is being developed in Russia,
● is developing,
● provided with technical and methodological support from the developer.
Migration Framework Plan
In a large square, the plan looks like this:
1. Checked the necessary access to Confluence and TEAMLY.
2. Determined the procedure for transferring spaces.
3. He sat down and carried it over.
When drawing up a plan, you should consider where the transfer is coming from and where:
● from the box to the cloud,
● from box to box,
● from cloud to box.
In fact, the automatic migrator doesn’t care about these subtleties; difficulties may arise on the first two points if the boxed version has not been updated for years. In our practice, there were cases with “aging” of 5, 8 and 12 years. Difficulties arose only with the last one – Confluence itself has gone too far since then. At the same time, the main thing (articles) was transferred without problems.
Transferring a knowledge base from Confluence to TEAMLY: step-by-step instructions
Before a framework migration, the admin or admins must verify admin access to both the source and destination. And then we go step by step:
We create a token API on Confluence
In TEAMLY we add an account for transfer, copy the token received at the previous stage
We take the previously planned order of transferring workspaces and indicate the next space for transfer
Repeat step 3 until you run out of space to transfer to Confluence
This iterative algorithm has one advantage: you can get rid of unused, abandoned, and test workspaces. And one drawback: since only one space is transferred, links to articles in other spaces are lost. Or rather, they are transferred as is; after the transfer they will need to be resolved again.
You don't need to be a programmer to do porting. TEAMLY admin rights and a general understanding of how the knowledge base is organized in your company will be sufficient. The only caveat: during cloud migrations, you will need to forward ports, but this is usually done by system administrators.
All the nuances are disclosed in the public domain Instructionspublished in TEAMLY Academy.
Migration verification
When an admin comes to the department and says: “I have transferred everything, check” – this is not our method. The process of transferring data from Confluence is logged. The migration log can be viewed in TEAMLY.
The main conclusions from the log: all articles have been moved. There is information about what has not been transferred and how to deal with it. Academy article. In addition, TEAMLY's support team is always ready to help.
Completing the migration and getting started
After the workspaces have been transferred from Confluence, you need to create user accounts on TEAMLY and register access. The matter is made easier by the presence of a role-based access model – we set up a role for a typical employee of a certain department and extended it to all his other colleagues. Nuances – in TEAMLY Academy article.
Plans for the development of the platform include the transfer of users with rights, but only if Active Directory is used for their authentication.
Question: ok, I want to migrate to TEAMLY. Will everything carry over from Confluence?
During migration, everything for which there are analogues in TEAMLY will be transferred. That is, articles with tables, files, images and other attachments embedded in them will be transferred unambiguously. Default macros are transferred without problems.
But there may be issues with custom and paid macros. Deals with them TEAMLY support servicewhich you can and should contact. In simple cases, the guys will simply help, with complex ones they will deal with them and offer options. Last resort: modification of the migration program for specific client macros on a paid basis.
For example, tasks will not be transferred to Jira, because there is no Jira in TEAMLY, only links will remain.
Resume
The devil is not as scary as he is painted. Our experience of transferring data from Confluence to TEAMLY suggests that data is transferred completely from the cloud or a relatively new (no older than 5 years) box without additional dances with a tambourine. With older boxes and/or many custom macros in the knowledge base, the probability of stumbling upon an incomplete transfer is approximately 1/2.
It is important that companies that migrated from Confluence continue to work for Timly – this is evidenced by the regular renewal of subscriptions that we monitor.
For those who want to do a test migration or just try the Russian analogue of Confluence, TEAMLY has a free, fully functional period for one editor for 14 days with full support. Try and choose TEAMLY!
