Cairn Q&A for Confluence

Ask questions, share answers and find what your team already knows — inside Confluence Cloud.

• Getting started
• Asking, answering and voting
• Search
• Q&A in spaces and on pages
• Permissions
• Moderation and settings
• Export and import
• Limits
• Data and privacy
• Licensing
• Support

Getting started

1. A Confluence administrator installs Cairn Q&A for Confluence from the Atlassian Marketplace (Settings → Apps → Find new apps). It is free for up to 10 users and has a 30-day free trial.
2. Open Apps → Q&A in the Confluence top bar to see the Q&A hub for the whole site.
3. Every space now has a Q&A page in its sidebar showing that space's questions.
4. Optional: in Settings → Apps → Cairn Q&A, set moderator groups and a tag list (see Moderation and settings).

Asking, answering and voting

• Ask: click Ask a question, choose the space it belongs to (on a space page or macro, the space is pre-selected), write a specific title, add details and up to 5 tags. Everyone who can view that space can see and answer it.
• Formatting: blank lines start a paragraph, - item makes a list, 1. item a numbered list, `code` inline code, and three backticks (```) on their own line start and end a code block. Links starting with http:// or https:// become clickable.
• Answer: open a question and use the answer box at the bottom.
• Vote: use the arrows next to a question or answer. Click the same arrow again to remove your vote. You can't vote on your own posts.
• Accept: the person who asked (or a moderator) clicks Accept on the answer that solved it. The accepted answer is pinned to the top and the question is marked Solved. Only one answer can be accepted; accepting another one moves the mark.
• Edit / delete: authors can edit or delete their own posts; moderators can do it for any post. Deleting a question also deletes its answers and votes.
• Share: Copy link gives a permanent link to the question.

Search

The search box looks at question titles, details, tags and answers at the same time. Every word must match the start of a word in the question (so deploy finds "deployment"), in any order. Accents and upper/lower case don't matter.

Combine them: tag:vpn is:unanswered reset. The tabs sort results: Newest, Unanswered (no answers yet), Top (most votes) and Mine (questions you asked, most recently active first).

Search checks the most recent questions first. On very large sites, if no match is found among the first few hundred questions, you'll see Search older questions to continue further back.

Q&A in spaces and on pages

• Space page: Q&A in each space sidebar shows only that space's questions, and new questions are asked in that space.

• Q&A list macro: edit a page, type /Q&A list, and configure:

  • Show questions from: this page's space, all spaces, or a specific space key
  • Only questions with tag: e.g. onboarding
  • Order: Newest, Unanswered or Top voted
  • Number of questions: 3, 5, 10 or 20
  • Show "Ask a question" button: yes/no

  View all opens the hub with the same filters.

Permissions

Cairn Q&A follows Confluence permissions — there is nothing extra to configure:

• A question belongs to a space. Only people who can view that space can see, find or answer it. This is checked by Confluence for every request, including search, the macro, links and export.
• Anyone who can view the space can ask, answer and vote.
• Authors can edit and delete their own questions and answers.
• The person who asked can accept an answer.
• Moderators (members of the groups you configure) and Confluence administrators can edit, delete and accept answers on any question they can see.
• Only Confluence administrators can open the app settings, statistics, export and import.

Moderation and settings

Confluence settings → Apps → Cairn Q&A (Confluence administrators only):

• Moderator groups: one Confluence group name per line, e.g. qa-moderators. Group membership is checked live, so adding someone to the group in Atlassian Administration takes effect immediately.
• Tag list: one tag per line. Tags are suggested in the Ask form and offered as filters. Tick Only allow tags from this list to enforce them. Tags are lower-case; spaces become dashes.
• Statistics: total questions and answers, % answered, % with an accepted answer, median time to first answer, and questions asked in the last 30 days.

Export and import

Export: Settings → Apps → Cairn Q&A → Export CSV creates a UTF-8 CSV with one row per question or answer. It includes every question in spaces you can view (questions in spaces hidden from you are skipped and counted). Export also works while the license is inactive.

Columns:

Import: choose a CSV file in this format (column order doesn't matter; ids may contain letters, digits, - and _, up to 64 characters). The page validates the file first and lists problem rows with their line numbers. Then:

• Questions must come before their answers in the file. Answers can also reference questions that already exist on the site.
• Rows whose id already exists are skipped, so you can safely run the same import again.
• Original dates and scores are kept. Imported posts are owned by the admin who imported them; the original author is shown as attribution ("imported").
• The target space must exist and be visible to you.

To move Q&A to another site: export on the old site, then import the file on the new one. Spreadsheet safety: cells that start with =, +, - or @ are exported with a leading ' so spreadsheet apps don't run them as formulas; the importer removes it again.

Limits

The app is designed for sites with thousands of questions (tested design target: 5,000+ per site). Browsing is fast at any size; very rare search terms on very large sites may need several Search older questions steps.

Data and privacy

• Your data never leaves Atlassian. Cairn Q&A is built on Atlassian Forge and qualifies for Runs on Atlassian: questions, answers, votes and settings are stored in Atlassian-hosted Forge storage, in your data residency region, encrypted by Atlassian. The app has no external servers, no analytics and no third-party services.
• What is stored: question and answer text, tags, the space key and name, dates, votes and the Atlassian account ids of authors and voters. Names and avatars are not stored; Confluence displays them.
• Permissions requested: read the spaces you can view (to enforce space permissions), and read your own group membership and admin status (to recognise moderators and admins). The app cannot read or change your pages.
• Logs contain only technical error information, never content or account ids.
• Uninstalling: export first if you want a copy. After uninstall, Atlassian deletes the app's storage according to its data retention policy.
• Privacy policy: https://cairnware.com/privacy · Terms: https://cairnware.com/terms

Licensing

Free for up to 10 users; paid per user above that, billed by Atlassian. If the license expires or is cancelled, Cairn Q&A becomes read-only: everyone can still read and search existing questions, and admins can export everything, but asking, answering, voting and editing are paused until the license is renewed in Manage apps.

Support

Email [email protected]. Please include your site URL (e.g. yourteam.atlassian.net), what you did, and what you expected. Support is AI-assisted and reviewed by a person; we aim to answer within one business day.