Feature Differences In-depth

The following chapters will help Scroll Versions users understand which features can be used in Scroll Documents to achieve the same goals and how their setup will need to be adjusted if it's migrated to Confluence Cloud.

Versioning

Scroll Versions and Scroll Documents use different versioning concepts that come with different strengths and weaknesses. Let's look at a couple aspects:

Versioning scope: In Scroll Versions, versions are referred to as Space Versions because they always affect the entire space. In Scroll Documents, any page tree can be a defined as a document, meaning multiple documents each with their own versioning scheme can exist in one space.
Versioning approach: In a nutshell, Scroll Versions creates functional child pages – so-called change pages – to store different content for a versioned page. Change pages are only created if actual changes have been made. In Scroll Documents, every version is a separate page tree created during version creation.
Content inheritance: In Scroll Versions, pages that haven't been edited in a given version inherits its content from the version they are based on, meaning changes to that base version will be inherited up the version tree. In Scroll Documents, page content is copied during version creation and exists independently from this point on.
Page hierarchy: Change pages in Scroll Versions, are stored as child pages of the so-called master page, which displays different content depending on the currently selected version. For this reason, the position of the master pages in a page tree determines the hierarchy for all versions. In Scroll Documents, the page hierarchy is copied when a version is created, allowing for every version to have a different page hierarchy.
Macro compatibility: Many frequently used Confluence macros – for example Children Display – display information based on page tree structure. As the actual page tree in a Scroll Versions managed space is much more complex than is apparent to the user, many base assumptions for macros may not hold true. While we re-implemented many common Confluence macros, any custom or third-party macros might not work as expected. As every version of a Scroll Document is a separate page tree, the app works much closer to what is expected from unaltered Confluence.

Content Reuse

Both Scroll Versions and Scroll Document support content reuse functionality. While Scroll versions takes a more sophisticated approach, Scroll Documents provides a simplified alternative.

Scroll Versions enables you to create Reuse Libraries and associate them with specific versioned spaces. You are then able to include the content in your documentation using the Include+ macro.
Scroll Documents enables you to add existing pages to your documents using the Document Composer. You can either choose to copy content into your document or include them to always reflect the latest content of the included page. Scroll Documents also supports versioning of documents that contain included content.

Scroll Viewport Integration

Scroll Viewport is K15t's dedicated app for web-publishing content authored in Confluence.

Scroll Versions integrates with Scroll Viewport Server and Data Center. An enabled integration in a versioned space allows to select which versions or variants are available to the reader in the version/variant pickers.
Scroll Documents integrates with Scroll Viewport Cloud. An enabled integration in a versioned document allows to select which versions or variants are available to the reader in the version/variant pickers.

Still unclear? Please reach out to us

If it's still unclear to you whether or not Scroll Versions or Scroll Documents is right for you, please reach out to us via help@k15t.com and describe your needs and use case, and we'll further explain which is the right app for you.