Table filter and charts
Hey Community,
When we first starting using the table filter and charts app for Confluence we could not find many resources within the community that help provide some examples on the app, so for those thinking about the app, here is our use cases.
Before I get started on the use cases, table filter and charts app is a marketplace app designed to bring your further functionality to those ever growing number of confluence tables. While tables themselves are great at helping group and display information, if you have a large table it can very easily become to complicated and cumbersome to manage. Table filter and charts allows for quick and easy filtering or sorting on those tables to help you find the information you need faster. It can also be used in line with other macros within Confluence to then produce charts to also help further visualise your table data.
We at intelliflo started needing this back on our server days for some basic user asset inventory. We needed something really light weight to help our corp it team start tracking some basic user assets and numbers. This was the simplest of tables looking like something below, but once we started adding in all the rows of data, the filtering enabled quick use of finding information to allow the team to continue with their actual jobs. This table also then helped us understand that we quickly needed to build an asset standard machine for each assignee group
Name | Serial Number | Make | Model | Current Status | Location | Assignee group |
L-42154892 | 42154892 | Dell | lattitude | In stock | London | Developer |
L-98612375 | 98612375 | HP | Inspiron | In Service | London | End user |
After seeing this macro in use and its power we started to look at other areas where we were storing a large quantity of data and how this app could potentially make our lives easier. In what always seemed inevitable we turned to security vulnerabilities.
Security vulnerabilities are a pain for every company. In order to make sure we were always covered, everything got documented. But as I am sure you will all be aware, it did not take long for these vulnerability documents to start piling up. Using the table filter and charts, we can quickly understand which ones were fully mitigated against, If any have open jira tickets, what documents could then be archived due to their closing date etc.
Vulnerability Name | Affected Systems | Date announced | Severity | Status | Corresponding Jira Ticket |
Questions For Confluence Security Advisory 2022-07-20 | Confluence Server | 20-07-2022 | Critical | Mitigated | VULN-487 |
Confluence Security Advisory 2022-06-02 | Confluence Server | 02-06-2022 | Critical | Mitigated – Already on a fixed version | Not required |
Away from something so serious, table filter and charts however has made life a lot easier for us to be able to simply find information sooner, making both our lives as authors and those as consumers of information just that little bit easier. From the simplest of large tables to in depth and important information we are using the macros wherever we can to help end users find their information quicker. We have even found it to be extremely useful when searching for emoji values that are in columns.
When working with the macro when viewing a page, you have some simple but powerful options when trying to think about the data being displayed.
- Hide columns – Sometimes when searching you just need to hide certain columns and data to make like that little bit easier.
- Save changes – have the macro save the changes you have made so this is the new order and way of viewing information.
- Export options – PDF,CSV,Word
- Documentation – Everybody, even those most experienced with any app always need a quick link to documentation to give those refreshers on how to do something exactly.
Of course no app is however perfect (sorry, bit of a spoiler). There are always things in the future I would love to see the app do better. So here are two of my thoughts as well as some of those around the community I have managed to find.
- Better support for hyperlinks in their csv exports – They don’t always quite seem to work and you often have to fix the cell formula.
- All Exports to provide a link to original page and state what was being filtered for so some context can be applied when sharing the export.
I hoped these helped you and your company if you are using/thinking of using the marketplace app.
Dan