Can you use page properties report for multiple data entries or is there a better way of doing this

Question

What we are currently doing

Currently in my team we are trying to document some characteristics of people we do research with. 
We have been using the page properties report macro on our session pages to document data (See image below) This is the information on the source page. However I discovered if you added additional rows to the page properties report macro it would only pull through on to our over view page the 1st line of data. Thus we have been using hard returns within the same cell.

Whist not a great solution if using symbols like the table above then on the pull though display page where there is an overview of all the session pages with this macro in the data does not go out of line. (see below)

Drawbacks and problems we are experiencing

However it is more difficult to use this method when information we wish to put in the page properties macro is text as just by using hard returns does not always keep the alignment across the data sets due to the amount of text written. With the display page looking like this (See example below)

This data was pulled from the page properties macro in the source session page that looks like this.(see below)

This method whilst it works for most of our data has a couple of drawbacks. One as I mentioned needing to keep text brief to ensure the alignment is not lost. Also there is no way of the being able to use the data further on the display page to get it to automatically show/display and calculate the data further. Say for instance show the total number of people who have X condition across all of the research. Instead what we have to do is manually go through the display page and add up the numbers from the conditions to calculate how many people we have spoken to with x condition or y condition.

Community Help Request on a fix or better solution/way of doing this within the constraints we have.
So does the community know of a better way of doing this? Is there a way of having multiple rows in a page properties report which would solve the alignment issues? Or is there another way of pulling data of a source page and showing all the source pages on one display page that would allow either a better display or even better automatic calculation of the data.

As the reason we currently use the page properties report is that you only have to put in the information once and then it is pulled to multiple display pages. This way round if the source data changes everything automatically updates. Researchers also do not have time to go putting the same data on additional pages or fill in information about the research that is not on the source page. As we need one source of truth to reduce error and the amount of time used for data entry.

Max Foerster - K15t · Answer

Hey @Rachel Male

Out of the box, I don't see a better solution than what you already do with your Page properties macro setup as you reached what's possible with it by default. :/

I was thinking about how I would try to solve your use case, and for you to go beyond the page property feature and its limitations, I want to suggest having a look at our new app, Orderly Databases. This is the type of content and structure we developed the app for, and I think it would be a great fit. (Here's the Atlassian community article about it)

Let me guide you through it, step-by-step:

First, you can replace your current page properties report macro with a dynamic Orderly database. The result could look something like this after a very quick setup:

The approach is different from page properties as the database is the source of truth for the research rounds in the space. And it doesn't exist on a specific page but in the space and can then be used anywhere using a macro. However, you can modify the information inline in the table/database, the linked page, or anywhere you display it.

Thinking about your use case, one important question popped up in my mind:

How do you want to maintain the research participant data?

If the data is, for example, static and "Example person A" and his documented condition does not change over multiple research rounds, I would create an additional database for them:

So the way I set it up enables you to maintain your research participants in a central location and in the way you want. And then, you bring the information together in the research repository, where you might store additional data (fields) about the research round.

The smart thing is that while entering your research round, you can select the participants we set up in the other database. I configured the other fields to then display the specific data (Physical condition etc.) of the selected participant.

The data will be displayed in a new line for each selected participant. I hope that could be a solution for your use case that scales well. For example, let me know if you maintain your participants' data differently. I'd love to give it another shot. 😄 I am sorry that I am not able to help you with the calculations at the moment. But we have this on our roadmap and I will definitely discuss your interesting use case again internally. 😄

If you have further questions, let me know, and I'm happy to help.

Best, Max

Katerina Kovriga {Stiltsoft} · Answer

Hi @Rachel Male ,

We can suggest using our Table Filter and Charts for Confluence app and its Table Excerpt/Table Excerpt Include macro: you'll be able to collect multiple-row tables along with the source page meta data.