Knowledge base

Spaces and the page tree, reading, searching and writing pages, files, labels, drafts and history.

The knowledge base is the documentation module, one of Alba Ticket's five with Projects, Helpdesk, Time and the CRM. It holds pages: how-tos, runbooks, decisions, meeting notes. Pages live in spaces, and Knowledge in the header lists the spaces you can read.

This page covers spaces, the page tree, and reading and writing pages. How pages and tickets refer to each other, comments, restrictions and a space's settings are on Comments, tickets and restrictions, and a space read from a Git repository on Docs from Git.

Spaces

A space is a set of pages with a key, such as HANDBOOK. There are three kinds:

• Workspace spaces belong to nobody in particular. An administrator creates them from the Knowledge page with New space, and decides whether every member reads them or only the people, groups and roles granted to.
• Project spaces belong to a project. Knowledge in the project's left-hand menu opens it, and it is made the first time somebody does. Who reads and writes there follows the roles in the project: a member with the Member role writes, Viewer and Reporter read, and a project administrator manages the space.
• Personal spaces belong to one person, who manages everything in them. They come across from Confluence.

An administrator can fill a space from elsewhere: a Confluence space export, a ZIP of Markdown or HTML from Notion, Obsidian, GitBook, Outline, MkDocs, Docusaurus or any other tool (see Imports), or a folder of a GitHub or GitLab repository that the space then keeps in step with (Docs from Git).

A space opens on its home page when it has one, and otherwise on its pages. The column on the left holds the space's views (Pages, Blog, Drafts, and for those who manage the space Trash and Settings) and its page tree.

Finding a space

The Knowledge page shows every space you may read as a card with its key, its kind, its description and its project or owner, workspace spaces first, then personal ones, then the projects'. The search box (or the f key) narrows the list by key, name or project, My spaces keeps only your own personal space and the spaces of projects you are a member of, and the order can be by name or newest first. Twenty spaces are shown at a time, with Previous and Next under the list, and the filters and page are part of the page address.

The page tree

Pages sit in a tree: a page can have pages under it, and a folder is a place in the tree that holds pages and has no words of its own. The tree opens down to the page you are reading; each level opens and closes with the arrow before it, and with the keyboard (Tab to move, Enter to open).

If you may write in the space, drag a page in the tree to put it before or after another, or onto a page to put it underneath. Move on a page does the same from a list, which works from the keyboard. A page cannot go under itself or under a page below it.

Reading a page

A page shows where it sits (the path above its title), who changed it last and when, its version, its labels, and on wide screens a table of contents from its headings. Below the page are its files, the pages that link to it, the tickets it mentions (only those you may see), and its comments.

Ticket keys in a page, such as WEB-12, become links to the ticket for anyone who may see that ticket, and stay plain text for everyone else. A link to another page (/knowledge/KEY/page-slug) is remembered, so the page it points to lists it under Pages that link here.

A page imported from Confluence keeps Confluence's own format. Until Alba can draw that format, such a page is shown in a simplified form: its words, without the layout, macros and formatting it has in Confluence, all of which are kept. It cannot be edited here yet, and the Edit button says so.

Searching pages

The search box in the header finds pages beside tickets, projects and boards, and the search page lists them above the tickets, with the passage the words were found in. Search this space in a space's column looks in that space alone.

A page is found by its title, headings, labels and words, whatever it was written in, a page brought from Confluence included. Drafts and pages in the trash are not searched, and a page you may not read never appears. Without a search engine configured for the workspace, only a page whose title is exactly what you typed is found.

Writing a page

New page in the space's column starts a page at the top of the tree; Page under this on a page starts one beneath it. Pages are written in Markdown, with a Preview to see how the page will read. Keep as a draft saves a page that only you, and those who manage the space, can see until you publish it by editing it and saving it again without the box ticked.

Edit opens the page in the same editor. What changed is a note for the page's history. If somebody else saves the page while you are writing, the editor tells you and refuses to save over their version, so nothing of theirs is lost: copy what you need, open the page again and edit the new version.

Delete removes a page and the pages under it from the space. They go to the trash, and those who manage the space can put them back.

Labels

Labels group pages across the tree. They are one lowercase word, as on tickets; Add labels or Change under the title opens the picker, which offers the space's labels and takes new ones. Labels imported from Confluence keep their prefix, shown before the name when it is not a shared one (my: for one person's).

Images and files

Attach files under a page, or Add an image or file in the editor, uploads files straight to the workspace's storage. In the editor you can also paste an image or drop a file into the text: it is uploaded and its Markdown is put where the cursor was, so an image appears in the page. Under the page, Markdown beside a file copies its reference to paste anywhere in the text. Files brought from Confluence keep their earlier versions, listed under each file.

Blog posts

A space's Blog lists its blog posts, newest first. A blog post is a page that stands outside the tree, dated when it was posted.

Drafts and trash

Drafts lists pages not yet published to the space: your own, or every draft for those who manage the space. Trash lists, for those who manage the space, the pages deleted here and those Confluence had archived or put in its trash. Restore puts a page back in the tree, with the pages that were deleted with it.

History

History on a page lists every version: who saved it, when, the note they left, and whether an AI agent made the change for them. Pick two versions to compare them. Versions in the same format are compared line by line, with added lines marked + and removed lines marked -. Across a change of format (a Confluence page's first edit, which turns it into Markdown) both versions are shown as they read, with their formats named, and the Confluence original is always kept as the version before.

Restore makes an earlier version the page again. It is saved as a new version, so nothing is lost.

Old Confluence addresses

Pages imported from Confluence keep the addresses they had there, from Confluence Server, Data Center and Cloud alike. A link to one of them, such as /display/DOC/Release+process, /pages/viewpage.action?pageId=12345, /wiki/spaces/DOC/pages/12345 or a tiny link /x/AbCd, opened on this workspace's address, goes to the page, so links in imported tickets keep working.