Whether you’re a seasoned Smart Terms fan or just starting out, this blog post is your way to master the art of glossary building. We’re here to guide you through creating a term from scratch, showing how easy it is to enhance your workspace with a well-designed AI glossary for Confluence. Ready to change how you handle glossaries in Confluence? Let’s get started!

Start an AI glossary for Confluence

Begin with a precise and informative title, ensuring it’s easily searchable within Confluence. Then, with just one click, let Smart Terms’ AI feature provide you with a well-crafted definition. It’s quick, accurate, and designed to save you time and maintain a powerful AI glossary for Confluence within your workspace.

What’s cooler is that it can generate alternative definitions unlimitedly until you find the perfect one.

The video below explains how to start your AI glossary for Confluence easily.

Related vocabulary

Expand the reach of your term by adding related vocabulary, including acronyms, synonyms, slang, and more. This feature doesn’t just enrich your term; it ensures that all variations are highlighted across Confluence pages, enhancing visibility and understanding. 

Add labels

Organize your terms efficiently by adding Confluence labels. This not only aids in categorizing but also simplifies searching within the glossary.

Enrich your AI glossary for Confluence with media

Attach images, videos, pdf, and HTML to give context and color to your terms, whether an attachment or a link. In Smart Terms, the richer your glossary is, the more interactive the experience gets.

Enhance communication with related terms

One of Smart Terms’ standout features is its ability to connect terms using predefined relations that you can manage from Smart Terms’ general configuration. 

A relation can be created depending on the use case you need to create an interconnected glossary, making it easier for teams to navigate and understand complex terminologies.

Note that multiple relations can be applied to a single term.

To create a related term from scratch, you first choose the predefined relation and then search for the relevant term(s) to connect it with. 

Once you create these relations in a term, they are reflected across all related terms. Additionally, the primary term displays a nested view of these connections.

And That’s a Wrap!

Transform your Confluence glossary from static to dynamic with Smart Terms. Bring your AI glossary for Confluence to life with all the options provided by Smart Terms and elevate the experience with AI features.

We are thrilled to announce the release of a new version of Smart Terms for Confluence. We have been working hard on a complete revamp of the app and, precisely, the user interface. That unlocked several possibilities for new feature implementation and brought more stability to the app; perhaps one of the most requested features is multi-language support.

Want to find out what is new?

User Interface enhancements

Glossary

We designed new layouts for the Glossary display. You now have different modes: list, compact list, or grid. You can choose what suits you best.

We also enhanced the user interface of the instant search and filtering along with the letter navigation (as shown below).

Term editor

We introduce a modern term editor. You can add media easily, edit, and reorder through drag, and drop. We also combined the global highlight options in a configuration modal on the top right side.

Term History

Have you ever wondered if it is possible to get back and edit a previous version? No worries! We got this covered for you. 

Tracking your terms’ history is made simple. You can easily track a term definition each time it’s modified. You’ll also be able to roll back and restore a previous version if you want to. You can find the term history icon in the term editor, as shown below.

Multi-language support

Since most of our customers are international companies, we developed multi-language support to facilitate communication between teams internally while co-creating content within Confluence.

This feature will help you get the most out of your enterprise terminology by using different languages suiting your organization.

Now, you can enable the multi-language feature through the “languages” option in Smart Terms global configuration. We have more than 20 languages available that you can use in your glossary.

You may wonder if this will lead to a cluttered glossary with different translations. Well, not really!

You’ll be able to create and edit multi-language definitions and switch between them at your convenience as follows.

Once you have translated your definitions, you can select your preferred language from:

• Glossary: from the list at the top right side, select your language
• Term: from the term card, select the flag of the language

You have enabled multi-language support, but some users might not be interested in translating their glossaries? We developed an option to disable translation per space. 

Terms list macro

Along with the highlight option on your Confluence page, you may want to have the list of your highlighted terms inserted below the page content just in case you need them close to your sight. Some users would prefer to access content offline; they would use the terms list macro then export the page on Word or PDF.

Highlight Configuration

Some of our Smart Terms users have brought up questions about the highlight engine configuration that used to be puzzling with somewhat ambiguous options.

We split the highlight engine options into 3 sub-categories:

• Highlight
• Sensitivity
• Content and Titles

Headings and titles are no longer highlighted by default as shown below.

You can click on the term to view the definition on the pop-up screen. With the new release, you can also view the definition pop-up just by hovering on the term. Just enable the “Highlight on mouse hover” option from the global configuration, and you’re good to go.

We know this occurred. That’s why we thought of showcasing the below use case to you, thinking it might help you find your way in your documentation.

This use case is a fusion between Smart Images for Confluence and Smart Terms for Confluence.

Documentation of your apps is a crucial section, and it may suffer some ambiguity if you’re not putting it the right way.

As a lot of you use Confluence to share their documentation, these recommendations are for you.

Smart Images for Confluence integration

Documentation certainly needs screenshots to display the different app sections and layouts. You can enhance your documentation experience with Smart Images for Confluence.

You don’t have to struggle to put all images and screenshots in one place. Smart Images saves you time and, most importantly, space on your Confluence page.

Find out how to create sliders and galleries in your documentation.

Smart Images for Confluence is a user-friendly editing toolkit and is certainly not only about sliders and galleries. It’s so much more, as we call it, the all-in-one image toolkit.

Discover more about Smart Images use cases, and if you’re more of a visual person, you can check these infographics.

Smart Terms for Confluence integration

In the middle of introducing your apps, you surely encounter terms that you think should be defined for your customers as they may sound a bit unclear. Smart terms for Confluence allows you to highlight these terms and deliver transparent information and definitions.

For better customer communication, you can reinforce the highlighted terms with related vocabulary or media.

The above Confluence page explains it all. 

It is equally important, to make those definitions available for users across the enterprise knowledge base and documents so that they do not need to switch back and forth between the glossary and the content.

Smart terms for Confluence provides a powerful highlight engine and makes it easy to retrieve definition across Confluence pages.

In this article, we will explore the different highlight options for the cloud version of Smart Terms:

• Modal Highlighter
• Smart Terms Extension
• Terms Highlighter Macro

We will walk through the different options so that you can select the appropriate one depending on your content and your use case.

Modal Highlighter:

When we launched the cloud service of Smart Terms, the only way to mark definitions across Confluence content was through the Smart Terms browser extension.

The extension provides an easy way to highlight the terms when the page is loaded (live-highlight) just like the Server version of Smart Terms.

For users who are not comfortable with the idea of installing a browser extension, we recently released the modal highlighter which provides a simple alternative to the Smart Terms extensions.

However, you need to perform an additional step to get definitions. Click on the modal highlighter and a modal page will be loaded that displays the page content and from there you can get the definitions.

Terms Highlighter macro:

This is another alternative to the Smart Terms extension and provides a live highlight of the definitions across a fragment or the entire page.

You can add this macro by browsing the Confluence macros from the add button in the toolbar.

By adding content, the existing terms in the macro will be automatically highlighted when you load the page.

Contreras et al. 2020 state that “Leadership has several definitions; however, generally leadership can be defined as an influence process to achieve organizational goals.” However, with the adaptation to the crisis, we’re now talking about e-leadership, which is leading virtual teams in virtual environments with virtual work.

You may be wondering how E-leadership can be effective? And how can it adapt to the post COVID era?

This blog serves as some tips on how to adapt E-leadership in post COVID era.

Act with urgency:

Usually, making decisions in a hurry is not a good idea, and no one will advise you to do it. However, during and post COVID-19, things took another turn. Acting with urgency became the best solution and decision, as wasting time is no good for the business. The leader should avoid hesitation and quickly generate solutions and take action. Surrendering to pressure will not lead the leader to the right path.

Clear communication:

COVID-19 crisis has prevented the world from face-to-face communication for a fine period of time. Teams separated, and team leaders’ missions became difficult more than ever. E-leadership is different from traditional leadership as the former is virtual and requires strong communication to keep the team bonded. However, strong communication is not enough. Teams need transparent and clear communication as well about the constant updates of the situation to make the teams aware of what might happen. However, communication should include a sparkle of hope and positivity to soothe the team and ensure they’re keeping a normal working pace and preventing them from panicking or going under pressure. Since it’s virtual communication, you can use Slack, Google Meets, or Zoom.

Solution-oriented & Team involvement:

Regardless of the leaders’ performance with the team, problems and mistakes will still happen. That’s normal! What’s not normal is being defensive and being a blamer. Mistakes happen, and a good leader is a solution-oriented one. E-leadership requires strong attention to keep the mind focused on the goal to know how to respond to unforeseen situations. Good leaders will take responsibility for the missteps, learn from them, solve the problem and try to foresee the upcoming issues to be ready for them.

In addition to that, teams also should be involved in decisions. In other words, when it’s a decision that concerns the team, you should maybe take their opinion. This leadership style is called “Democratic” or “Participative”. During COVID-19, many companies switched to remote working, but in post COVID era, these companies decided to stay on a hybrid work style that combined onsite and offsite working. As a leader, you may want to ask your team what type of work style they prefer, especially after the long remote working period. If you’re a Confluence user, you can ease the task for you and prepare a quizz course with “Smart Courses for Confluence” and assign it to all your team. You’ll have a full report of their answers with the metrics feature afterwards.

Adapt & Update:

During a crisis, everyone should be prepared to hear constant news and changes every day. With an e-leadership style, technology is your best friend to keep yourself and your team updated. Some team leaders prefer weekly meetings in such cases, and some others daily short meetings to keep everyone on track. Sticking to the company strategy and the already shaped goals is what makes a good leader in the traditional leadership style. However, given the severity of this pandemic, effective leaders should constantly adapt to the situation and update their strategies.

Show empathy:

During the crisis, everyone is going through a hard time, and it is at that time when they need reassurance and someone to empathize with them. As a leader, you should not turn your team members down when they come for support. Effective leaders are those who value their teams. With a high scale pandemic, all we need is a set of humanity. Since it’s an e-leadership style, Joanna Barsha, senior partner emeritus based in McKinsey’s New York Office, suggests starting your Zoom call with ‘How are you really, really doing today?’ and listen to what they’re going to say and how they really feel. Try to relate and understand. Make them feel that they matter and that you really care.

To better understand this system, Kremer, Kolbe, and Brenner, 2003 point out that “Terminology Management is the sum of organizational units, processes, and instruments that support the creation and management of terms and classifications in a specific subject area.” When this is achieved, consistent terminology will be implemented.

Terminology management is essential and should be used in all companies, not just the big ones. Felber & Budin,1989 point out that two very important tools for Terminology Management are document thesaurus (glossaries) and classification schemes (taxonomies).

Glossary:

If you’re a Confluence user, the first thing that comes to your mind when we say glossaries is Smart Terms for Confluence. As stated before in our blog “Make glossaries not war”, glossaries are important to every organization as they enhance internal and external communication within a team and between company stakeholders. Each department has its vocabulary and lexical field. It’s mandatory that every team gets accurate information and have a clear meaning for each term. As (Champe 1996) points out, “when people need to discuss the description of some word, it is very important that everyone understands the description in the same way.”

Smart Terms for Confluence AKA glossary saves you a lot of time and gives a better vision of the company terminology. It comes with several features that contribute to enriched terms’ definitions, related vocabulary (synonyms, acronyms, slang, idioms, and others), and globalized glossaries across spaces, and much more.

Taxonomy:

“A taxonomy is a classification schema to organize information in a hierarchical manner.” (Gaus & Leiner 2000, Bailey 1994). “Complexity reduction and navigation facilitation are the main reasons for using taxonomies.” (Logan 2001). In other words, taxonomies are used to organize the terms within the glossary to avoid any misleading search results.

Taxonomies not only improve the appearance of keywords but also improve search results because they allow you to categorize information properly. If taxonomy is not implemented, you can get the same term showing up repeatedly in several classifications. That, for example, leads to misconceptions. In Smart Terms for Confluence, you have the option labels that allow you to classify the term in which category you’d like so that it shows up only in it. By using Smart Terms, users have a common denominator for the meaning of the terms they are searching for, further improving search results. Another feature that’s related to taxonomy in Smart Courses is the alphabetical index. The first letter of the added term is automatically added to the index list, and all terms that start with the same letters are by default classified in that alphabetical index.

Implementation of both of them in Smart Terms for Confluence:

As previously mentioned, Smart Terms includes features for both creating a business glossary and having the taxonomy to categorize it for better search results. Kremer et al. “show that ideally both tools should be used together since they complement each other. One can imagine that a taxonomy would not work if there was no common understanding of included terms and dimensions and if they were interpreted differently, leading to ambiguous classifications.” By experience and research, glossaries and taxonomies work best if they are implemented together in the same place or tool. Many terminological deficits are solved if both instruments are there.

This approach was advised by researchers since the 19s as previously mentioned in several references, and this was put in this blog on purpose to highlight the fact that it’s not a matter of technology innovation or so. It’s more of a policy that was, still and will always be successful and beneficial for businesses in general.

For better terminology management, use Smart Courses for Confluence and navigate, search, and store easily and accurately through your glossary.

In a competitive environment, defining and understanding terms correctly may be your first step to success.

Misinterpreting words and misunderstanding terms can distort the meaning of information and increase the risk of inadequate decisions.

These bad decisions, in most cases, lead to high-cost mistakes that impact the departments yet company’s performance.

Why implement a company glossary? 

We all have our own assumptions about what certain words mean, based on our past experience, professional or personal. But is this a real problem? Usually, the answer is yes. So, what is the reason behind it? Simply because when you think you know what a “KB” is, you are never sure it really is. Does it stand for kiloByte or Knowledge base? And here, comes the magic of the company glossary; it provides a common understanding of the meaning and proper use of words and terms and even its related vocabulary.

A glossary allows coherent communication between all teams’ members. And in some other cases, it enhances a fluent understanding, even between an organization and its third-party stakeholders.

Let’s take this acronym as an example:
SLA means for an IT geek, Service Level Agreement, whereas it means Second Language Acquisition for an HR specialist.
Imagine being using a joint company repository where all team members from different departments have access to it; this will mix-up the real meaning of information. 
By using a terminology glossary, it becomes possible to define the scope of use of a specific term clearly.

 

Why is it essential to create a glossary for your Confluence pages?

 

Confluence helps teams collaborate and share knowledge effectively through spaces, pages, and content.

Confluence users can easily collaborate: create, edit, comment, share, and even co-create content together via the same interface. Simply, Confluence is your corporate Wiki (What I Know Is).

Confluence has a wide range of features that can be extended by using add-ons or integrating other apps. Integrate it with a glossary app can take your team’s communication and collaboration to the next level: less misinterpreting, prevent communication gaps, strengthen the transfer of information.

What app to use as a company glossary for Confluence? 

Connect the dots across your terms! This is how we describe Smart Terms glossary for Confluence.
Smart Terms allows creating enriched definitions: related vocabulary (synonym, acronym,…) and media ( images, videos, and even audio). You can set your company terminology across pages, space, or all spaces of your Wiki using the highlight option.
Smart Terms is available on Cloud, Server, and Data Center.

In our next blog post, we will present all the incredible features of Smart Terms and how to use them.