Askloop support and user guide

Contact: support@studiowebworks.com. We answer within two working days (Central European Time).

Getting started

1. A Confluence administrator opens Askloop settings (Confluence administration, under the apps settings) and creates a topic, for example "IT service desk", with its experts. Topics are optional, but experts, the review queue and publishing all hang on them.
2. Edit any page and insert the Askloop questions macro (type /Askloop). People can now ask about that page, right there.
3. Every space also has a Questions page under its space apps, with every question of the space, and the site has an Askloop page under Apps with My queue and All questions.

Asking and answering

• Ask a question: a title (up to 200 characters), optional details and a topic. Text is plain, with paragraphs.
• Open a question to answer it, edit it, or vote: I have this question too on questions, Helpful on answers. You cannot vote on your own posts.
• The person who asked, the topic's experts and moderators can accept an answer. Show history lists every change to the question and its answers: who, what and when.
• You can edit and delete your own posts. A question with an accepted answer can only be deleted by a moderator. Deleting removes the text; the history keeps only that it was deleted.

Topics, experts and roles

• Experts (up to 20 per topic) see the topic's unanswered questions and answers due for review in their queue, and can accept, verify and publish.
• Who may ask and Who may answer: optional Confluence groups. Empty means everyone who can see the space. The ask limit applies to administrators too; experts can always answer.
• Moderators: an optional group that can edit and delete any question or answer in the topic. Confluence administrators always can.
• Space key: empty offers the topic in every space; with a key, only in that space.
• Topics can be archived and restored. Questions without a topic are open to everyone who can see the space.

Answers that stay true

When an expert or moderator accepts an answer, it is verified for the topic's period (180 days unless you change it, from 1 to 1095). The first time the person who asked accepts an answer, that verifies it too, with them recorded as the verifier.

Once a day Askloop looks for accepted answers whose date has passed and flags them Needs review: they show in the experts' Answers due for review queue until one of them presses Still correct, which verifies the answer again for the topic's period.

An answer waits for an expert, labelled "Not verified", when it changed after it was verified (edited by someone who is not an expert or moderator, or its published question was edited by such a person), or when the person who asked accepted it in place of an earlier one.

FAQ pages: answers that Confluence search finds

Experts and moderators can press Publish to FAQ page on a question with an accepted answer. Turn on Publish accepted answers to the space's FAQ page automatically on a topic to publish on every acceptance.

• Askloop writes one page per topic and space, called "FAQ: <topic>" ("FAQ: General" for questions without a topic). It is a normal Confluence page, so Confluence search and Rovo find it, and everyone who can view the space can read it.
• The page is written by the app: edit questions and answers in Askloop. Changes made on the page itself are replaced on the next update.
• Each answer shows who answered it and its "Verified until" date. Answers that wait for an expert are shown labelled "Not verified"; answers past their date show "Due for review since".
• Answers to questions asked on a page with view restrictions (on the page or a parent page) are never published. Each time the FAQ page is rewritten, and in the daily check, Askloop checks every question's page again and takes an answer off if its page has since been restricted, moved to another space or trashed.
• Remove from FAQ page takes an answer off by hand.
• Page history: Confluence keeps every earlier version of the FAQ page, so an answer taken off the page (removed, deleted, or its page restricted) can still be read in the page history by people who can view the FAQ page. Askloop cannot delete page versions. If that text must go, a space administrator can delete the old versions from the page history (page menu, Page history).
• If another page already uses the title and the app cannot write to it, Askloop uses "FAQ: <topic> (Askloop)". If that is taken too, Askloop settings shows the page under FAQ pages Askloop cannot write, with a Try again button.
• A FAQ page shows up to 300 answers; beyond Confluence's page size limit, a note says how many more are in Askloop.

Notifications

Askloop sends no email of its own (it has no servers). Experts find new questions and answers due for review in My queue on the Askloop page. Turn on Notify by page comment on a topic and, for questions asked on a page, Askloop adds a page comment that @mentions the experts (new question, or answer due for review) or the person who asked (new answer); Confluence then notifies them as for any mention.

Searching

The space Questions page and All questions search the title, details and answers (up to six words, all must match), and filter by status (Unanswered; Answered, none accepted; Accepted; Needs review), topic and "Only mine". Unpublished questions live in Askloop, not as Confluence pages, so Confluence's own search finds only the FAQ pages.

Who sees what

Confluence decides. On every request Askloop checks, as you, that you can view the page a question was asked on (page restrictions included) or, for a question asked in a space, the space. Questions you cannot see in Confluence do not appear anywhere in Askloop, including search, the queue and exports.

Import and export (Confluence administrators)

• Export CSV exports every question you can see with its accepted answer (people as account ids). Large sites export in parts: press Next part for the rest.
• Import takes pasted CSV with a header row. Columns: space, topic, question, details, answer, accepted, page id. "space" (a space key) and "question" are required; new topic names are created. An answer is accepted unless "accepted" says no. Up to 500 rows at a time; you are recorded as the author.
• Every row is checked first; if one is wrong, nothing is imported. If an import is cut off, press Import again with the same text: rows already in are skipped, nothing is duplicated.
• There is no direct import from Atlassian's Questions for Confluence yet; CSV covers a manual move.

Known limits

• Plain text with paragraphs only: no images, tables or formatting in questions and answers yet.
• No email from the app (see Notifications).

Your data

Askloop runs on Atlassian. Questions, answers and topics are stored in the app's Forge SQL database, hosted by Atlassian for your site, and only account ids are kept for people. Nothing is sent to us. See the privacy policy.