Mediawiki to Confluence migration

Switching to Confluence with 500+ Wiki users

Migrating Bigpoint from Mediawiki to Confluence

AUGHH user group meeting, 6.6.2012,Nils Hofmeister

Agenda

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• Before Confluence

• The mission

• Status quo

• Learnings

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Before Confluence

Before Confluence

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• Time: October 2010

• Bigpoint has >500 employees

• There is a bunch of MediaWiki instances (>50)

• Some customization

Before Confluence

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Before Confluence

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We had the wrong tool for the wrong people and it hurt. But barely anybody was aware…

Fortunately there were a couple of people interested in replacing our Wiki by Confluence.

Before Confluence

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To justify the costs, we used the following arguments:

• Global search

• Spaces

• Role-based permissions

• Connection to Jira

• Versioning + concurrency handling

• All the plugins

• Migration via UWC

In late 2010, we got approval.

The fight for resources started…

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The mission

The mission

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Open questions

• How to integrate with Bigpoint IT platform?

The mission

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Open questions

• How to integrate with Bigpoint IT platform?• Have everything in SVN• Wrap Tomcat daemon so it works with monitoring, Ops automation etc• Use configuration templates for modified files• Setup a staging system

The mission

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Open questions

• How to integrate with Bigpoint IT platform?• Have everything in SVN• Wrap Tomcat daemon so it works with monitoring, Ops automation etc• Use configuration templates for modified files• Setup a staging system

• Who maintains it?

The mission

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Open questions

• How to integrate with Bigpoint IT platform?• Have everything in SVN• Wrap Tomcat daemon so it works with monitoring, Ops automation etc• Use configuration templates for modified files• Setup a staging system

• Who maintains it?• My team (Release Engineering)• Right combination of skills and focus, but still…

The mission

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Open questions

• How to integrate with Bigpoint IT platform?• Have everything in SVN• Wrap Tomcat daemon so it works with monitoring, Ops automation etc• Use configuration templates for modified files• Setup a staging system

• Who maintains it?• My team (Release Engineering)• Right combination of skills and focus, but still…

• How exactly will migration happen?

The mission

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Open questions

• How to integrate with Bigpoint IT platform?• Have everything in SVN• Wrap Tomcat daemon so it works with monitoring, Ops automation etc• Use configuration templates for modified files• Setup a staging system

• Who maintains it?• My team (Release Engineering)• Right combination of skills and focus, but still…

• How exactly will migration happen?• First sample spaces as example• New “units” go directly to Confluence• Migrate Teams step by step using UWC• => Soft migration

The mission

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Open questions

• How to integrate with Bigpoint IT platform?• Have everything in SVN• Wrap Tomcat daemon so it works with monitoring, Ops automation etc• Use configuration templates for modified files• Setup a staging system

• Who maintains it?• My team (Release Engineering)• Right combination of skills and focus, but still…

• How exactly will migration happen?• First sample spaces as example• New “units” go directly to Confluence• Migrate Teams step by step using UWC• => Soft migration

• What about Kerberos SSO and AD?

The mission

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Kerberos

• Not easy to grasp

• Hard to deal with when you are not admin

• Gave us a lot of trouble in Java context

So we used an already existing in-house service:

Behold… LoginProxy!

The mission

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The mission

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Integration

• We had a first RC ready in April 2011

• It used LoginProxy for authentication

• It used a cronjob + SOAP for AD sync / authorization

• We had two blades in place for staging + production:• 2x Quad core, 12 GB RAM, 2x 320 GB HDD, SATA, JBOD• Backup etc via Bigpoint standard mechanisms

• Took about 5 man weeks to get everything ready and test it

• Central technology teams started using it

• Administration was cooperation of Release Engineering + IT Engineering

The mission

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Migration

• No interruption of ongoing projects

• Long migration timeframe (>6 months)

• Lack of acceptance with some users

• UWC results very mixed

• => More users started noticing Confluence…

• Thank god we had a tech writer who could assist with content, support and training

The mission

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Migration

• Tracking of wiki migration using Jira

• Conversion respecting stakeholder schedules

• Mediawikis still exist, but read-only

• A lot of training• Brown bag meetings• Coaching per group• Update meetings• Confluence space• Examples• …

The mission

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Result: Success

Specs, 06/2012 (14 month later):

• 971 users

• 152 groups

• 152 spaces (without personal)

• 19.493 pages created

• 34.091 attachments uploaded

“You can find our current documentation in Confluence”-Random Bigpoint employee

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Status quo

Status quo

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• In use worldwide• E.g. Hamburg, Berlin, Malta, San Francisco

• Confluence 3.5.13• Balsamiq• Gliffy

• So far 2 custom plugins in development• Custom Jira issue creator• Custom AD synchronizer

• Integration with• Jira

• Issues macros, shortcut links• Application link

• Jenkins• Internal middleware (e.g. mailtool)

Status quo

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Status quo

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Next big tasks

Status quo

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Next big tasks

• Confluence 4• Delayed to avoid shocking our users with 2 major changes within 1 year• Mixed feelings: markup power users, APIs, coaching,…

Status quo

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Next big tasks

• Confluence 4• Delayed to avoid shocking our users with 2 major changes within 1 year• Mixed feelings: markup power users, APIs, coaching,…

• Better Kerberos Integration• Avoid trouble with cached passwords vs. tool integration• Reduces maintenance efforts and reliability

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Learnings

Learnings

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Acceptance

• In general, acceptance was given quickly since• Confluence is fancy• Brings a lot of features• Integrates with Jira nicely

Learnings

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Acceptance

• In general, acceptance was given quickly since• Confluence is fancy• Brings a lot of features• Integrates with Jira nicely

• Maybe a hard migration would have been easier…• …but we would have had far more haters

Learnings

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Acceptance

• In general, acceptance was given quickly since• Confluence is fancy• Brings a lot of features• Integrates with Jira nicely

• Maybe a hard migration would have been easier…• …but we would have had far more haters

• Remaining haters could be convinced by• Dedicated trainings + support• New features (e.g. heatmap, role-based security,…) • Fast reactions – when we started: immediate changes

Learnings

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Acceptance

• In general, acceptance was given quickly since• Confluence is fancy• Brings a lot of features• Integrates with Jira nicely

• Maybe a hard migration would have been easier…• …but we would have had far more haters

• Remaining haters could be convinced by• Dedicated trainings + support• New features (e.g. heatmap, role-based security,…) • Fast reactions – when we started immediate changes

Conclusion: when the field isn’t green, only soft migration works

Learnings

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Costs

• When we started about 1,5 persons permanently working on Confluence intro

Learnings

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Costs

• When we started about 1,5 persons permanently working on Confluence intro

• System integration was much more expensive than expected

Learnings

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Costs

• When we started about 1,5 persons permanently working on Confluence intro

• System integration was much more expensive than expected

• Right now, work on demand• Bug fixes• Plugin development• Coaching of new people• Changes and extensions• Standardization

• Basically, 1-2 persons are permanently working on Confluence one way or the other

Learnings

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Costs

• When we started about 1,5 persons permanently working on Confluence intro

• System integration was much more expensive than expected

• Right now, work on demand• Bug fixes• Plugin development• Coaching of new people• Changes and extensions• Standardization

• Basically, 1-2 persons are permanently working on Confluence one way or the other

Conclusion: 2 fulltime persons needed for a Confluence of our size and usage scenario: a DevOps guy and a workflow person

Learnings

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Enterprisy requirements

• Authentication and authorization requires customization

Learnings

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Enterprisy requirements

• Authentication and authorization requires customization

• Certain IT requirements hard to address• Replication• Failover• Automated deployment

Learnings

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Enterprisy requirements

• Authentication and authorization requires customization

• Certain IT requirements hard to address• Replication• Failover• Automated deployment

• Some features are not yet convenient enough• Bulk attachment upload• Easy update of attachments (e.g. excel files)• Default groups for new users• Notification email templates• …

Learnings

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Enterprisy requirements

• Authentication and authorization requires customization

• Certain IT requirements hard to address• Replication• Failover• Automated deployment

• Some features are not yet convenient enough• Bulk attachment upload• Easy update of attachments (e.g. excel files)• Default groups for new users• Notification email templates• …

Conclusion: If you want to customize Confluence significantly, you will need admin and Java dev skills.

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Summary

Summary

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• The good• Soft migration via UWC worked for us• Users were happy quickly• The possibilities are awesome

• The bad• The frontend is fancy, maintenance can be weird

• The ugly• It costs quite some manpower for serious operation• It needs continuous effort for acceptance• You need skilled, hard to find people for this

Summary

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If you want to operate a serious Confluence instance, you need manpower.

But you get the best possible documentation system I know.

Find us on44

Bigpoint GmbH

Alexanderstraße 510178 BerlinGermany

Bigpoint Inc.

500 Howard StreetSuite 300San Francisco, CA 94105

Bigpoint Distribuição de Entretenimento Online Ltda.

Av. Brig. Faria Lima3729 cj. 52804538-905 São PauloBrazil

Bigpoint GmbHNils HofmeisterLead Integration Architect

Drehbahn 47-4820354 Hamburg Germany

Tel +49 40.88 14 13 - 0Fax +49 40.88 14 13 - 11

[email protected]

Contact us

Bigpoint International Services Limited

1 Villa ZimmermannTa’Xbiex TerraceXBX 1035 Ta’XbiexMalta

Find us on

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Bigpoint GmbHFirst name, last name

Title

Drehbahn 47-4820354 Hamburg

Germany

Tel +49 40.88 14 13 - 0Fax +49 40.88 14 13 - 11

[email protected]