🏋️‍♂️How to Boost Your Productivity with a Personal Dashboard in Confluence 🎯

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Atlassian Confluence is a highly dynamic and flexible content platform, making it challenging to apply best practices or find one-size-fits-all solutions. Still, it requires a certain level of structuring. This issue extends to the number of spaces you work in, the depth of the content you work with, and your permissions (i.e., your permissions are managed on the space level while occasionally you need to read across). This problem shouts for a custom structuring solution.

This blog reviews the most annoying Confluence homepage limitations and introduces a potential solution and best practices to overcome these challenges.

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Limitations of the Default Confluence Homepage

Less intuitive

As a Confluence user, you likely work in spaces with multiple, structured content. However, you may find that page structures can become disorganized and non-transparent over time. To find specific information, you must search and navigate a lot, which can be time-consuming. A certain level of disorganization makes work in multiple spaces frustrating. Not to mention that lacking an overview seriously impacts your daily productivity and motivation. As the default Confluence homepage is rather like a Facebook feed, it can not provide an intuitive and user-friendly overview for many users.

Limited customization options

Have you ever felt frustrated by the lack of customization options on the default Confluence homepage? You’re not alone. Many users find customization options limited. While admins can change the appearance of Confluence by customizing the dashboard and adding a site logo, these options might not be sufficient for all users. Admins can even determine the default behavior by setting various options or defining the default content that appears on the homepage. Still, these options might not meet the specific needs of individual users. 

Complex configuration

Changing or configuring the default homepage in Confluence can sometimes be a complex process, especially for non-technical users. Some users have reported difficulties when changing the default homepage due to a lack of clear instructions or technical issues, which could potentially lead to confusion and inefficiency.

Need for Personal Dashboards

As seen above, it would be worth creating a personal Confluence dashboard (home page), but having its own dashboard can also benefit a team or a project. Responsibility for these dashboards varies: you’re responsible for your own, while a team leader could typically manage the team’s dashboard. Custom team/project dashboards can even support the onboarding process, as well: for example, you can assemble a home page for the new testers, the new developers, or the marketing team.

Advanced Content Navigator for Confluence (ACNC) is an easy-to-use macro that you can add to your Confluence homepage. You can even add multiple macros and create your customized dashboard in just a few clicks. In doing so, you can replace Confluence’s less intuitive native homepage. This is particularly helpful when you need to work in multiple spaces simultaneously.

Reduce the clutter by choosing the starting point of your inserted page tree - even if it is in another space.

Customized Confluence homepage

With ACNC, you can gain a tailored overview of your Confluence space in just one click. You can flexibly customize your starting page (homepage) by inserting macros important to you, such as the most frequently used pages or projects you are involved in. From this personal dashboard, you can: 

• filter and preview the pages of your interest, 

• check and update page statuses and related tasks, 

• save views,

• track changes and 

• create child pages. 

This way, your pages become organized at the space level without editing or navigating within the space.

Preview pages

You can preview pages quickly with reduced content, which is often sufficient when you’re searching for something specific.

Access preview pages, manage page statuses, track content changes, and more from the page of your choice by inserting third-party macros in just one click

Filter pages

You can search for pages in the context of the page tree in real-time. Filter criteria include page name, last updated date, page status, and many more!

Find recently updated pages with a specific title or status while keeping the page tree in context

Recommended macros to maximize user experience

Beyond the ACNC page macros, you can also use other macros to insert diagrams, reports, tables, and other features on your home page. Adding further macros can create a truly personalized dashboard in just a few clicks. 

1. Roadmap Planner Macro

   Adding the Roadmap Planner macro to your Confluence homepage lets you create a simple visual timeline useful for planning projects, software releases, and much more. Roadmaps are made up of bars to indicate phases of work, lanes to differentiate between teams, products, or streams, markers to highlight important dates and milestones, and a timeline showing months or weeks.

2. Jira Issues Macro

   Add the Jira Issues macro to a page to display information from Jira. You can display a single issue, a list of issues, or a count based on a JIRA Query Language (JQL) search, filter, or URL. This is great for team meetings and retrospectives, project status updates, release notes, and customer communications
   sharing updates with people in your organization who don't use Jira regularly.

3. Table Filter and Charts for Confluence
   This macro is often used in business environments to make data look neat and organized. It’s particularly useful for managing large amounts of data and creating dynamic, interactive charts and tables. For example, it can be used to filter large tables, aggregate values in pivot tables, and build various charts and graphs. It can also be used to reuse Jira issues in Confluence and process them further.

4. Team Calendars for Confluence (Premium feature)
   This macro is used to integrate team calendars into Confluence, making it easier to plan, organize, and track team activities. For example, it can be used to display team events, project timelines, and milestones in project and team spaces. It can also be used to share Jira issue due dates and sprint dates on sprint planning or retrospective pages.

5. Excerpt, Excerpt Include, and Page Include
   These macros allow for content reuse across Confluence. They’re essential for maintaining consistency and reducing duplication. For instance, when writing technical documentation, you often need to describe the same function more than once. These macros let you update the documentation on every page where it is shown from one place.

6. Aura Content Formatting Macros
   Adding this easy-to-use and intuitive macro lets you create engaging and visually appealing Confluence pages in seconds. You can highlight the content that matters, provide intuitive navigation, and enhance readability.

7. Page Properties and Page Properties Report
   These macros transform static Confluence pages into dynamic overview pages. They’re excellent for creating summary pages with details from many other pages. For example, they can be used to post a backlog of meeting recordings, sort the list by event date, and enable that.

Each of these macros can significantly enhance the user experience on the Confluence homepage by providing additional functionality and customization options. However, the usefulness of each macro can vary depending on your specific needs and frequent use cases.

Conclusion

Confluence is a powerful content management tool, but it has its limitations, especially when it comes to organizing and customizing your workspace. Advanced Content Navigator for Confluence (ACNC) is an easy-to-use macro to add to your Confluence homepage. Adding multiple macros lets you create your personal dashboard in just a few clicks. In doing so, you can replace Confluence’s less intuitive native homepage and gain a tailored, intuitive overview of your Confluence workspace.

ACNC can be particularly helpful in gathering scattered information in one place, along with status management and change tracking. This makes it an invaluable tool for managing and navigating the dynamic and flexible environment of Confluence.

Try ACNC for free and start your daily work with your personal Confluence dashboard!

[aiza khan]

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[aiza khan]

informative