Confluence - how to improve data quality?

Hi @Sebastian Krzewiński , I have set up Confluence Automation rules in several spaces I own to periodically run and check if pages are owned by deactivated accounts, which then prompts me to go and update the page owner to someone who has taken over the job/task/content. Another rule sends a message to page owners if the page hasn't been updated in a certain amount of time.

The Content Manager interface with the space admin area is also really helpful to understand how many views pages are getting, who is the owner, when was the last time the page was viewed. Using the filters available at the top, you can filter for page owner by deactivated. This is a good place to start to begin re-assigning page ownership (and then if you have Automation rules that remind owners to update pages, a current employee is actually receiving them). 

I would recommend starting with the content manager to identify and start cleaning up pages owners, seeing how many pages haven't been updated in over X months. etc. Then once you have a better understanding of what common problems are, create Confluence Automation rules to notify you or page owners about something.

Hi @Sebastian Krzewiński ,

We also explored what Laura suggested, but for some reason, we didn't actually go through with it... Probably because everything looks at docs as a necessary evil that comes with delivering projects 😅

Now, I do manage one bigger space with 5000+ content elements and I did try to ask Rovo to basically do what similar automations would/could do. It did give me a pretty good overview of what can be updated, archived, or deleted. Although I do have this in my backlog to actually implement some kind of agent based on our docs, which would periodically do the cleaning 🧹 or do it once you prompt it.

It would be cool to hear if people who use(d) automations for general governance potentially switched to Rovo, which would do similar actions. 🤔

Cheers,
Tobi

@Sebastian Krzewiński that's an open question, so forgive me for giving a general (somewhat long) answer.

To manage/organize/cleanup in Confluence, you need to identify things at the instance level and be able to make bulk changes. If not, it's painful and doesn't get done regularly and as trust lowers of content so does usage. I know a lot about this topic as we built Space Content Manager initially based on my own frustration.

Works across spaces

The Content Manager that comes with a premium is only space by space. An example of why it matters on a practical level, each of our apps has a separate space for documentation (we use Scroll Sites), yet changes tend to be across docs not app by app.

As a research tool

A power tip is to use the content tree (overview tab) to simply investigate, based on that can judge where or if need to go deeper. We all have to choose our battles and Confluence perfection doesn't exist nor does it need to.

Automation

It is useful, but similar to AI it hits limits fairly quickly — for content of often need to verify it before making changes. A great example is find and replace. In theory, we can identify the 18 places where somethings exists and then update all of them at the same time, but in reality there are exceptions. This is why we kept improving our preview for all features. Bulk changes are great until they are not.

Labels

You mentioned labels. We have a merge labels feature, hidden gem. 'how-to' and 'howto', a simple merge, yet without it, search by label is not dependable. Users inevitably create new labels, fortunately it is something that with an app can be managed without taking too much time.

Space Content Manager does a few things — find and replace, label manager, status manager, edit title, change owner, title prefix/suffix, link manager.