How do you create interactive user guides in Confluence?

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Are your Confluence users struggling to find the right pages?

If you’re using Confluence for documentation, onboarding, or as a knowledge base, you can make navigation easier for users by turning your pages into handy guides.

Here’s how to create your own interactive user guides in Confluence Cloud - your users will thank you!

What is an interactive user guide?

An interactive user guide is a more engaging version of the traditional user manual. It features branching, multi-choice steps to help users find the right answer quicker and is often more visually appealing. Interactive user guides make it easier to learn, troubleshoot, or follow steps. They're perfect for product demos, customer support guides, onboarding, and more.

Why create interactive guides in Confluence?

• Boost user understanding: Break down complex instructions into bite-size steps to help users read at their own pace.

• Increase self-service: Help users find the answers they need by themselves, rather than putting pressure on customer support.

• A tailored experience: Create guides with branching outcomes so users can find the right answer the first time around.

How to create an interactive user guide in Confluence Cloud

1: Plan your guide structure

We recommend planning your interactive guide before you create it. This will save you time and help you understand how to connect each page.

You can write your guide structure on a piece of paper or plan it digitally. Here’s a basic plan we created using a Confluence whiteboard:

Here, users can choose from three different problems. If none of the solutions on the problem pages work, the user can click through to a page with contact information for customer support.

2: Create your Confluence pages (one for every step)

Now, navigate to your chosen space (or create a new one) and start building your pages. If you already have pages set up and ready to go, move on to the next step!

You can fill your pages with information, or you can add placeholder text for now and edit them later. The main thing is you have your pages ready to link together. Don’t forget to make your pages public!

3: Organise your pages into an interactive guide

Confluence doesn’t come with an interactive guides tool built-in, so for this step, you’ll need the help of an app. We’ll be using Guided Pathways for Confluence to quickly pull together pages into a multi-step guide.

1. Install Guided Pathways

2. Once you've got Guided Pathways, go to Apps > Guided Pathways in Confluence.

3. This will take you to the Guides home. Click the blue + Create a guide button.

4. Give your guide a title, category, and description, then click Create.

5. Time to add your first step! Give it a name (e.g. “Welcome” or “Troubleshooting Home”) and choose a published Confluence page to link to this step.

6. Select the + (plus) icon in the sidebar to create a new child page. This links the pages together.

7. Give your new page a name and add your linked Confluence page. Then choose the text that will show on the parent page’s button. 

8. Repeat step 6 as many times as you need pages in your guide. Child pages are branching choices from the parent page.

Here’s how our simple guide structure looks:

9. Once you’re finished, click Publish in the top-right corner so other users can see it.

Ta-da! You've just built your first interactive user guide. This guide, and any others you create, can be found in the Guided Pathways homepage (Apps > Guided Pathways).

Share your interactive user guides

Once you’ve created a guide, you’ll want to make it as accessible as possible! Sharing your interactive guide is easy —all you have to do is grab the URL.

1. Go to Apps > Guided Pathways and click on your guide.

2. Copy your guide’s URL.

3. Embed the URL on a Confluence page (as a CTA, card, or button) or share it elsewhere with anyone in your Confluence instance.

How do you make navigation easier for your Confluence users? Share your tips in the comments below!