Answerpane user guide

Answerpane adds questions and answers to Confluence Cloud. Questions are ordinary Confluence pages and answers are ordinary comments, so Confluence's search, permissions, watching, history and export all keep working.

For admins: turn on Q&A

1. Go to Confluence settings, then Answerpane in the left menu.
2. Under Add a space, pick a space and click Turn on Q&A. Answerpane creates a page called Questions and answers in that space. New questions are stored under it.
3. Repeat for any other spaces. Everyone who can create pages in a Q&A space can ask there.

Remove stops new questions in a space. Existing questions and answers stay as normal pages.

Ask a question

There are three ways to ask:

• The hub: open Apps in Confluence's top bar, then Answerpane, and click Ask a question.
• From a page: on any page, open •••, then Apps, then Ask a question about this page. The question links back to that page.
• Under a page title: click Ask a question (or N questions) under the title of any page.

Give the question a short title, add details if they help, and optionally add tags, separated by commas. Tags are how FAQ and Related questions boxes find questions. Click Save to post.

You automatically watch your question, so Confluence emails you when someone answers.

If a question with the same title already exists in that space, Answerpane links you to it instead.

Answer, vote and accept

Every question page has an Answers box:

• Answer by typing in Your answer and clicking Save. Answers typed in Confluence's normal comment box at the bottom of the page count too.
• Vote with ▲ on answers that help. Click again to take your vote back. You can't vote for your own answers.
• Accept the answer that solved your question. Only the person who asked can accept, or a space admin: admins click Moderate first to show the accept buttons. The accepted answer is pinned at the top, highlighted in green.

Answers posted through the Answers box show as "Answerpane with your name" in Confluence's comments, because Confluence shows which app posted on someone's behalf.

Find answers

The hub lists every question you can see. Search looks through questions and answers; results found only in an answer are marked Matched in an answer. Filters show Unanswered questions, questions with No accepted answer, and My questions.

New questions show in search results after a few minutes, once Confluence has indexed them.

Put questions on other pages

Edit any page, type /answerpane, and pick a macro:

• Answerpane related questions: shows questions about the current page, or questions with a tag. Set this in the macro's settings.
• Answerpane FAQ: shows questions with a tag, each with its accepted answer. Questions appear once an answer is accepted, so the FAQ keeps itself current.

Export

In Confluence settings → Answerpane, click Export next to a space. Answerpane saves two files as attachments on that space's Questions and answers page:

• a CSV with one row per question: title, link, asker, date, tags, status, accepted answer, answer count and total votes
• a JSON file with the same data plus every answer's text, author, date and votes

The export only includes questions the admin can see, and the files follow the page's permissions.

Permissions and privacy

• Answerpane never shows a question to someone who couldn't open its page.
• Answerpane runs entirely on Atlassian Forge and sends no data outside Atlassian. See the privacy policy.

Support

Email support@brainstaticthreads.com. We reply within 2 business days.