Snapshot document publishing

Overview

Snapshot publishing allows you to 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 to create a snapshot of a document. Comala Document Management integration with Comala Publishing allows the creation of 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, static records for audit.

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.

Requires Comala Document Management v6.17.6+

Activating snapshot publishing

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

Install Comala Publishing to your instance and enable snapshot publishing for a space
Set up snapshot publishing in your space tools snapshot publishing dashboard
Update your workflow to trigger the snapshot publishing process and apply to your documents (see below)

Publishing a snapshot using a workflow trigger

A snapshot can be published using

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

pdf-export action trigger workflow markup

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

Macros

Page:

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

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