2 New Macros to Embed Glossary Terms within your Confluence Pages

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Effective glossary management is all about easy creation, and easy access. As someone tasked with managing glossaries, you would want your users to have quick gateways to the most important terms. And especially if you’re dealing with critical ones. How would you do that?  Simple links, highlights, tooltips or even better…macros (Roll credits!).

In this post, we’ll check out two new macros specifically designed to embed glossaries within Confluence pages.

Embed term lists

Term lists are perfect for giving users a quick overview of important terms right where they need them. You can place the macro wherever you see fit to capture all relevant terms mentioned within a page, or put forward specific ones from a chosen glossary.

Use cases: 

• Documentation: A documentation page might contain a host of technical terms. What you can do here is create a list at the end that will act as your reference section. There, your readers can find all terms present within that Confluence page.

• Onboarding: Another common use case is onboarding. Here, you can include the macro to communicate key terms and acronyms so new hires can quickly get up to speed without searching elsewhere.

To add the macro, type /Glossary - Term List | Vectors. 

Here you’ll have a dialog box with three main tabs: Source, settings, and display. Basically,you specify the source, filter with criteria, and choose how to display the macro.

• Source: Choose whether to display terms from the current page or a specific space.

• Settings: Once you've selected the source, you can further fine tune the list by selecting which metadata to display, adding links to the glossary entry, and giving the option to export.

• Display: The final step  is to specify how the terms appear. List or table, collapsed or expanded, newest or oldest, etc.

Embed a single term card

Now what if you want to put forward just a single term? This is when the term card macro is more convenient. You can insert it to draw attention to just one key term in context. 

Use case: Provide quick context

For example, you might place a term card at the end of a section or a tab to spotlight a critical concept before moving on.

Now, one might argue that a tooltip could do the job for a quick explanation which it does. But unlike tooltips, a single term card connects directly to your glossary, so readers can click through to the full entry if they need more detail. It’s a gateway into the glossary, not just a pop-up.

To add the macro, type /Glossary - Term Definition | Vectors.

Here, you’ll have a much simpler dialog box. Specify the term.

Choose whether to link to the term page. As a best practice, make sure to always link so readers can access the full context when they need it.

And finally, specify the display option be it a list or table.

Both macros are available with our latest release of Glossary for Confluence Cloud. Make sure to check them out and tell us what you think!