Confluence Clean-Up and Optimization Checklists for a Smarter Confluence

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Hi Atlassian Community!

Is your Confluence workspace starting to feel cluttered or overwhelming? You’re not alone! Over time, even the most organized spaces can accumulate outdated pages, scattered information, and hard-to-find content. That’s why I’ve put together this Confluence Clean-Up & Optimization Checklist—your step-by-step guide to streamlining your workspace, boosting productivity, and making it easier for everyone to find what they need.

Below are checklists for both admins and all Confluence users to promote healthy Confluence workspaces and work towards a smarter Confluence. 

Note: Some of these features are limited to Premium or Enterprise Confluence plans.

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Checklist for Admins

Delete & Archive Spaces or Pages

Archive pages that are no longer active but may be needed for reference (note: archived pages will not show up in page search). Bulk archive as needed.

Delete pages that contain inaccurate information or have been obsolete for a long period (note: deleted pages are moved to trash and can be restored until the trash is purged).

Use the admin key to view any potential outdated content that you haven’t been given permission to view.

Automate Manual Tasks

Review the rule audit log for any automation rules that aren’t running correctly. Ensure frequently used automations are running as intended.

Identify any manual tasks that could be automated.

Need some inspiration? Here are some popular Automations among customers!

• Every month, archive any page that hasn’t been updated for 6 months

• When a page is deleted or archived, then notify me

• When a page moves location, then change page restrictions to match the new location

• When a page is published, send an email to specific users

• Publish the same set of pages when a new space is created

Tip: Use Rovo to help create automations without the technical set-up. See more examples here!

Review user access

Utilize the user access to get a high-level view of what a user or group can access in Confluence. Manage global permissions as needed.

Review your guest users and revoke any who no longer need access. 

  Audit Public Links

Ensure that any content shared via public links is permitted. Control which spaces can allow public links and audit pages that are externally available.

Beta Features

Check which Confluence beta features are enabled on your site. Opt-in to new or inactive beta features that could benefit your team.

Announcements

Create or update site-wide announcement banners for:

• Time-sensitive alerts

• Software updates

• Planned maintenance

Identify popular content & trends

Review popular and trending search terms to identify what content your team needs most using Mission Control. 

Communicate team content needs to company stakeholders. Cross-collaborate with department, team, or space admin owners to address spikes in search topics or content usage.

Check out Atlassian Learning

If you haven’t already, use this course to help grow your admin skills: Administer Confluence to improve the user experience.

Looking to strengthen those skills further? Take either our Associate Confluence Essentials or Professional Confluence Administration for Cloud certifications. 

Update Confluence Templates

Promote and standardize templates for recurring content (e.g., weekly meeting notes).

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Checklist for All Users

Star Important Pages & Spaces

To quickly access important pages, you can Star the page. This will allow you to view within the Starred section of your sidebar.

Star your most used or favorite pages and un-star those that you’d like to de-prioritize.

Organize Your Pages

Inside a space, you can nest content and create as many levels of hierarchy as you need. Create either parent pages or folders to keep your content organized.

Ensure that your pages are grouped into logical folders or parent pages. Identify if there are any new categories you should add or areas to consolidate. 

Optimize Your Sidebar

Show, reorder, and hide navigation items by going to More (), then Customize sidebar.

Try switching the sidebar view to “My visits” or “Last updated” to stay focused on active work by clicking the three dots by Content.

Review Unused Pages

Flag any pages that you have not viewed this quarter. Determine if any of these pages can be archived or deleted.

Consolidate Information

Utilize other content types such as databases or whiteboards to organize, consolidate, or optimize your content. 

For example, determine if a Confluence database could help create a table of various pages within a campaign or if a Confluence whiteboard could be a better home for brainstorming and retrospectives. 

Evaluate Your Spaces

Evaluate your current starred spaces and those that you have worked in recently. Star any others that you frequent.

Identify if there are any inactive spaces that you see that you could flag to your Confluence admin for removal or archival.

If you have an overly cluttered space, assess if you need a new space to further organize the content. 

Customize Your Personal Space

Add a profile photo to help personalize your account. Create an introductory blog or user manual to help others learn more about you and how you work. 

Add Labels

Labels are key words that you can add to pages, live docs, and attachments to make them easier to group and find. Add labels to your content to allow you to easily see, display, and search for related pages.

You can also use labels to categorize spaces and keep Confluence neat and organized.

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Remember, Confluence organization isn't a one-time task. Set recurring reminders to review your spaces, encourage your team to share their own tips, and stay updated on new features and best practices. Small, consistent efforts will keep your Confluence clutter-free and valuable for everyone. 

What are your favorite clean-up strategies or automation hacks? Comment below to share your tips and help others get the most out of Confluence. 

[J_R_ Rasberry]

As we focus on cleaning up our instance I want to set up automations to build in reminders for review on pages that haven't received updates in a specified period before moving to archive. Adding labels to better organize and provide clarity of page status would be added as well.

[Nick Wade -Opus Guard-]

Totally agree with this checklist @Eliza Beyers and especially with the reminder that “Confluence organization isn’t a one-time task.” The manual steps here (reviewing unused pages, archiving, auditing access, managing public links, and keeping templates current) are essential, but they’re hard to sustain without automation.

That’s exactly why we built Content Retention Manager for Confluence: to automate retention and classification policies across spaces and content, apply defensible deletion for truly obsolete content, and keep immutable audit logs for compliance programs (think GDPR, ISO/SOC 2, FINRA/DORA). Retention management can be delegated to teams that don't need Confluence admin permissions. Teams can set granular rules, apply exceptions when needed, place discovery holds, and prove what changed – when, by whom, and why – without living in spreadsheets or one-off automations and scripts.

The result is simple: less clutter and greate compliance, higher findability of current content, stronger AI context with less LLM brain rot effects in Rovo, and far smoother audits and eDiscovery. Week after week, not just during cleanup drives. 

[__ Jimi Wikman]

I find that most organizations have teams that don't understand information architecture, which is understandable since most people never learn such skill. I do card sorting exercises with my clients to construct the core architecture and while most teams are exhausted after such events, their information architecture always makes them more efficient afterward.

I also teach people to not create pages unless you have actual content for it. This might seem strange, but before we had folders this was the way to create structure and a lot of people still do that today.

Your main nodes should also be at 7+-2 nodes because once you go beyond that the human mind have problem with it and content will start to be spread out naturally. If you can't reduce the number of root nodes to maximum 9, then you are not working with your information architecture and you do not have proper focus.

The biggest problem I experience is not the amount of content or even if it is still valid, but that many teams don't understand the difference between information and instruction. I see a lot of teams write how something works and why, but not what to do to actually work get something done.

Great list, and I agree that you should challenge all content on a regular basis. Also, you should remember why you use Confluence in the first place instead of PDF files: It is live documentation that you should work with every day.

Having great structure and good content is no easy task and most organizations fail this as miserably, or worse, as they fail with master data (and data in general). This is probably why we see LLM's like Rovo popping up because we are struggling to find relevant information globally :)

[Veronika Chachkova I Stiltsoft]

These are excellent points in keeping your Confluence space tidy!

I would also suggest using Handy Page Status + Page Status Report if you have the Handy Macros app.

The Page Status Report in Handy Macros for Confluence gives you a clear overview of how your content is progressing across spaces. It automatically collects and displays all pages that use Handy Page Status, allowing you to identify outdated, duplicate, or inactive content in just a few clicks.

You can easily view and filter pages by:

• Status set: see which pages are in “New, “In Progress”, or “Archived” stages.

• Status value: spot pages that are still in “Draft” or “Outdated” stages. 

• Last updated: filter pages by when they were last modified to find old or rarely maintained content.

This report makes it simple to maintain clean, relevant Confluence spaces where your team can quickly find the most accurate and current information without clutter or confusion.

Here is the example of one of my reports (you can create any status sets that meet your needs):

Cheers,

Veronika from Stiltsoft

[Stavros_Rougas_EasyApps]

An overall goal of Confluence is to be part of a single source of truth along with other tools.

You need to do things as mentioned in the post and in comments to keep spaces usable, findable, compliant and be able to flag potential problems so can focus on those pages (focusing on all pages is not a focus).

As we focus on bulk content management, needless to say I think it is a piece of the puzzle, it's why we built Space Content Manager. On a practical level a large number of pages are not well maintained due to time as well as skill (and yes internal politics which our app cannot help with).