Level up sales tracking in Confluence with Smart Tables

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Hey community fellows!

My name is Salma, and I am a content coordinator at Creativas.

This article's topic is definitely Confluence and how we can enhance our experience within this vast platform.

Confluence is a powerful tool for organizing and managing data and content, supporting hundreds of use cases in all industries. One of these use cases is sales tracking which will be discussed in the following article.

Confluence role in Sales tracking:

Confluence provides the necessities when it comes to data management. Here’s what it offers:

• Data organization: set up sales data logically in a structured manner with automatic row numbering, merging cells, reordering rows, adding & deleting cells, rows, and columns.

• Table formatting: highlight information by coloring cells or using images.

• Resizing tables: adjust table width to match your needs.

• Chart customization: connect data from tables to create charts for better data analysis.

• Collaboration: work on the same table with team members simultaneously.

The basics above can be more than enough if you’re dealing with a basic sales tracking use case and need simple reporting.

Challenges can be faced if you’re dealing with complex sales use cases or need enhancements in your data management work like:

- Limited data analysis capabilities

-Table formatting constraints

If you’re looking for solutions for one of those challenges, here’s what we offer:

Challenge: Limited data analysis capabilities

Solutions:

1. Switch from native Confluence tables to Smart Tables

By switching to a Smart Table, you’ll be able to enjoy advanced functionalities like sorting, filtering, and editing tables in the view mode to interact with data quickly, and many more, and the ideal part is to be able to revert to native Confluence tables at any time without losing any data or changes.

2. Excel functions grid

Integrating Excel-like functions (e.g., VLOOKUPs, SUMIFs, AVERAGEs, and complex nested IF statements) directly into Confluence tables to perform sophisticated data analyses without leaving Confluence. This helps with immediate data-driven decisions.

Challenge: Table formatting constraints

3. Effortless editing for Sales data and Filter views

What favors Smart Tables is making inline edits to the tables without entering the Confluence page edit mode. During sales reviews or meetings, this can be a great help to apply quick edits and calculations.

Large tables are no longer considered long if you have combined filters on the tables. Text and selection filters are available and even persistent if you don’t remove them for better viewing of data.

If you share Confluence pages with internal or external parties, the persistent filters can help convey the message and avoid repetitive setups.

4. Improving collaboration

For an optimal data experience in Confluence, we provide an extra free macro with Smart Tables called “Live Spreadsheets.” This macro allows you to integrate a sheet into the Confluence page, which supports real-time collaboration with your team and offers all the features that software spreadsheets provide.

That was it for this article; give Smart Tables a try for free from the Atlassian marketplace, and let us know what you think of it in the comments. 

You can also read more about it from this article or this infographic.