How to get Scroll Documents and Viewport to work with Comala workflows on Cloud

Your workflow may require that you keep a number of pages in the draft mode and prevent the content from being published. This typically occurs in continuous delivery scenarios where your writing team is working with multiple development teams’ swimlanes.

Scroll Versions on Confluence Server allowed you to implement a page-based workflow (Draft, Review, Complete). When publishing, you would typically only publish the Complete pages. Scroll Documents on Confluence Cloud behaves differently and using the Close instead the Publish buttons is not practical.

There are multiple workflow apps available on Atlassian Marketplace but as far as I know, the page status from those apps is ignored by Viewport. Also, Scroll Variants and other workflow apps do not talk to each other.

The following method, or workaround, does the following:

• replicates Workflow of Scroll Versions 
• enables delivering docs for Continuous Delivery
• allows better versioning control (snapshots and subsequent updates)
• allows for non-disruptive quick fixes (typos, images, etc.)

System and Method

For this workaround, you need Comala’s Document Control and Publishing apps, and, of course Scroll Viewport and Scroll Documents.

Scenario

I have a space called Flower Source in which I’m using Scroll Documents with Variants to document two versions of my product:

• Flower Cloud (labels: all, cloud)
• Flower Server (labels: all, server)

I’m only working with the Working Version of the Scroll Document.

My product doesn’t have semantic versioning. I’m working on multiple features simultaneously and whenever one is ready to be released, I need to update the relevant section of the doc while making sure the pages for the unfinished features are not made public.

Steps:

1. Install Comala’s Document Control and activate it for Flower Source.
2. In Space settings > Manage Pages > Document Control, enable Basic Approval Workflow.
   This ensures the following:
   - when you edit the page and hit Publish, it falls automatically to Review
   - when you create a new page, it becomes ‘New’ and will have the Review status
3. Create an empty space called Flower Target.
4. In Flower Target, create a Scroll Document with Variant rules identical to those used in the Flower Source document.
5. Install Comala Publishing.
6. In Space Settings > Manage Pages > Publishing, toggle the switch to Enable Publishing features
   
7. As a Target Space, set Flowers Target.

A page under Review is ignored by Comala Publishing. Now you can work on any number of pages, keep them under the Review status in Flower Source, and only sync the Approved pages. In fact, the moment you approve the page in Source, it syncs automatically to Target.

Comala publishing syncs Approved pages including the labels. And because the Variant rules in Target and Source are identical, the content synced into the Target slots right in exactly where it needs to.

In other words, my Scroll Document and Variants behave in the exact same way as in the Source.

Make Docs available via Viewport

In this setup, you are going to use Viewport with Flowers Target that now features your approved, ready-for-customers, content.

Create Versions

If you need to create a snapshot of your Working Version, do so in the Target space and use Viewport to distribute the content as you’d normally do. Publishing from Source to Target only affects the Working version of your Scroll Document.

Quick edits and Corrections

If you need to correct a typo in your public doc, do so in the Target space and use Viewport to publish. Then ensure that you make corrections in the Source space too. The point here is to avoid disrupting workflows in Source just for the typo.

Solution Diagram