Technical writers, especially if they are the sole writer in a team, constantly face nagging doubts: Is the documentation written clearly enough, or are there content gaps? Who reads my content? Sergey Rodin, a Senior Technical Writer, is no exception. The app Viewtracker – Analytics for Confluence helps Sergey see actual numbers to take some guesswork away.
Sergey used to work for a logistics provider in Southeast Asia. Its technical department relies on Confluence Data Center for internal documentation/knowledge base. In his position as Senior Technical Writer, Sergey ensured that developers adhered to the guidelines and processes. For example, he created a coding style guide and various page templates, such as how-to guides. It was Sergey’s idea to install the Viewtracker app because he deeply cares about the content he and his team created on Confluence. “I want to see what’s working and what’s not, and the only way I can access that data is via Viewtracker,” he said. “In technical writing, you usually don’t receive any direct user feedback. Viewtracker helps me get relevant Confluence usage statistics & information even if users don’t share it with me”.
Sergey regularly looked at the analytics of specific important Confluence pages, such as the coding style guides. These pages may be distributed throughout Confluence, so he used Viewtracker’s “page analytics macro” to pull information from various pages onto one dashboard.
Sergey shared relevant numbers from Viewtracker’s Global Report or the Content&Usage Report with the dev team and management. The numbers helped him justify his content decisions.
Using Viewtracker’s Search Report, Sergey could find ideas for new content covering frequently searched terms without search results. By creating content with these specific terms, Sergey ensured his work was relevant to the team. Once it was created, he always notified his team about this new content to attract first readers and their feedback immediately.
Viewtracker can create a detailed report of every Confluence page or blog post. The numbers are aggregated in the Content Report, accessible on every page or blog post. The numbers from the Content Report helped Sergey decide whether to distribute a piece of content more actively because its view count was still low.
“For example, I learned that many developers weren’t even aware of the style guide,” he remembers. “So I promoted the page, linked to it more actively, and it was very satisfying to see the number of views grow from one month to the next.”
Sergey also consulted the information on the “engaged users” of a page. These are users who liked, watched, or commented on a page. “If a page receives various likes and comments, this is a breakthrough within our context, and the whole department will know about this page,” he enthused.
Confluence administrators are often among the most active users in their instances, which can distort the statistics of a page or space. Viewtracker provides a convenient solution: Entire groups can be excluded from tracking. Sergey’s company, therefore, decided to exclude the group “Confluence-admins” from the reports. By excluding one or more groups in the Viewtracker settings, admins like Sergey can ensure that the reports display more relevant metrics for the individual use case. Also, if a space contains sensitive information or is only used for testing purposes, administrators can exclude the space from tracking.
Ultimately, there is only so much information that an analytics tool’s numbers can convey. However, the Viewtracker reports fostered conversations about content quality with Sergey’s team:
The list and the discussions go on, which is an excellent marker that the technical documentation is relevant and actively used.
Optimize your technical documentation with Viewtracker today!
The purpose of the Confluence platform is well-known for collaboration and documentation, assisting technical writers in creating, managing, and sharing content among their teams and stakeholders. Some of the benefits of writing technical documentation in Confluence include:
There are numerous possibilities to explore. As a result, monitoring user activity and generating analytics reports on user engagement becomes essential for enhancing your technical writing and documentation on the Confluence instance or knowledge base. Hopefully, this article helps you make informed content decisions by utilizing the Viewtracker Analytics plugin.
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