Today's Date in Confluence Template

[Nici Kalmes]

I am creating a Confluence template and I would like the date the template is added to the page to be auto populated either in the title or somewhere on the page. 

How can I accomplish this for Confluence cloud without an add-on? 

[Barbara Szczesniak]

@Nici Kalmes I will refer you to this post: https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Confluence-questions/Insert-date-of-creation-in-template-title/qaq-p/2713571 

If you use the Create from Template macro (https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/insert-the-create-from-template-macro/), you can specify what to put in the title of the page when you invoke the macro.

[Chris Rainey]

Hi there,

As far as I know, templates are limited when it comes to dynamic content. There is a Date macro that you can add to a template, but each time the template is loaded on a page that you're creating, it'll pull the date configured on the macro in the template - not today's date.

That said, it would be possible to add the date the template is added (assuming that takes place on the same date the page is published) to the body of the page. There is an action step in automation for "Edit page" that can add content to the end of a page. It would end up looking something like this: 

^The "Date Template Added: text and the date was added via the automation.

The inherent problem you may run into is that "template" isn't a condition you can look at in automation rules, so you'd need some other way to exclude this from happening on every page in the space.

Last thing, it is possible to edit the name of a page, but for that, you'd need to explore a REST API solution in automation.

[Laura Campbell]

The create from template macro is probably the most straightforward solution, but I will link to this article I wrote about using Confluence Automation to create pages on schedule with a template an with a specific date format in the title as extra information/inspiration: https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Confluence-articles/How-to-use-Confluence-Automation-to-create-a-page-amp-send-a/ba-p/3015372

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @Nici Kalmes 

A template is a template, a new page is based on that template, the template is not added to the page.

But if you apply the template on an existing page, then there is no info when this template is added. On this there is the option for automation based on page update, as described by @Chris Rainey 

The other option is to have a macro on the parent where pages based on this template need to be created.

Macro "Create from Template", on this button on the page, you can define prefix options for the summary of a new page.