Weekly Executive Report Best Practices in Confluence

Question

Hi everyone,

I'm a PM, and one of our clients requested an Executive Weekly Reporting space in Confluence. It was initially built by another team member, and I've since inherited the project. I need help with:

* Best practices for gathering weekly updates from ten different teams in Confluence.
* One page that shows all Highlights, Escalations, and Discussion Topics from all 10 team leads, and 1 page that shows just their Escalations. 
* Automating the creation of weekly pages to avoid manual setup.

Here’s what we have so far:

* A dated parent page titled "Month-Day-2024 Executive Status Report" that consolidates updates from each team lead’s child page via the Include Page macro.
* Each team lead has a dated weekly child page where they provide their updates, which include Highlights, Escalations, and Discussion Topics.
* A separate parent page titled "Month-Day-2024 Escalations" that aggregates Escalations from the child pages using the Excerpt and Include Excerpt macros.

The issue is the manual process of setting up the new week’s pages. Ideally, I would like each previous week's content to be moved under a "Past Updates" parent page, and a new set of dated pages (with Monday’s date) to be generated automatically. For example, for the week of 10/1/24:

* The 09-30-24 Executive Status Report (and its child pages) and the 09-30-24 Escalations page would be archived under "Previous Updates."
* New pages for 10-07-24 Executive Status Report and 10-07-24 Escalations would be created, with Excerpt and Include Page macros pre-set.

I've experimented with automations and labels but have yet to find a clean solution. The dated pages make things a bit too complex, and I'm considering keeping a static parent page instead. However, my goal is to streamline this process so that the 10 teams can input updates and escalations, and everything pulls into one parent page for updates and another for escalations. I’d appreciate any advice on making this less manual.

Zoriana Bogutska_Kolekti · Answer

Hi @Ashley Stephens

Also, you might be interested in discovering tools that will help you organise and structure your confluence pages when you combine reports from 10 teams. One such tool is Content Formatting Macros. Using its tabs, cards, advanced expand or buttons, you can create navigation pages that lead to child pages you create for each team (an example is shown on the screenshot). If you are interested in built-in features only, you can read articles about different alternative options for cards and expand.

Happy to help if you have any questions - as this app was created by my team

Daniel_Domene_Kolekti · Answer

Hi @Ashley Stephens ,

I'm Daniel, PMM at Kolekti. You've got yourself a great goal to streamline those executive reports! It sounds like you're dealing with the classic challenge of keeping Confluence content structured and automated, especially with dated pages.

A few thoughts based on my experience:

* Templates: Definitely try Confluence templates to pre-set the structure and macros for your team leads' weekly updates. This can significantly reduce manual setup each week.
* Automation Possibilities: While dated pages can be tricky, explore Confluence automation rules further like @Aron Gombas _Midori_ mentioned. You might be able to trigger page creation or moves based on page properties or labels?
* Centralised Dashboard/page: Consider a dedicated space or parent page acting as a dashboard. You could use macros or plugins (like Forms for Confluence) to dynamically display the latest updates and escalations from the team pages, regardless of the date.

And more about dashboards, for a more structured approach to organising, presenting and guiding your clients through those reports, you might also want to check out one of our apps, Guided Pathways. We use it internally to create guides and handbooks but also reports. It helps us create interactive flows and centralise content in one place, which could be beneficial for your use case as well.

Hope this helps! Feel free to share any specific automation roadblocks you're facing, and the community might have more tailored suggestions.

Ashley Stephens_510zhb · Answer

Okay, thank you. So the automation would be schedule > create page tree?