How To Create IT Documentation in Confluence Without Going Crazy

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If Colonel Sanders hadn’t written down his secret recipe, the world would be less some finger lickin’ good fried chicken and we’d have to settle for Popeye’s or worse, Wingstop! 

That should tell you how important it is to document your processes, especially so in the IT field, which is full of complex and arcane knowledge.

Let’s say you have a world-class software developer who came up with a system that allows you to cut development time in half. What if he moves to a different company? Wouldn’t it suck if he took the system and knowledge with him? 

That’s where Confluence comes in, an enterprise wiki for your knowledge sharing needs. However, having a place to document your processes is not enough. Users need an effective system to create easily accessible documentation for ease of use. This is where metadata can really help you out.

Find out how you can harness the power of metadata to create IT documentation in Confluence without going crazy!

Create (and Assign) Content Categories

Content Categories are a collection of metadata fields that is linked to a Confluence page template. 

For example: If you're creating a Content Category named "IT Documentation", you could add a quick description of the Content Category (IT documentation) and associate relevant metadata fields to it. 

This is super convenient because users can easily fill out the pre-set metadata fields in the Content Category while creating a new page, which help maintains the integrity and organization of your Confluence instance.

Once Content Categories are assigned to a page, you can easily filter your pages by their Content Category (and their associated metadata values) via the built-in Report Macro.

Choose The Right Metadata Fields For Your Content Category

What are the specific metadata fields you can associate with your "IT Documentation" Content Category?

Here are some of the suggested metadata fields (and field types) that you can get started with, which will allow you to find IT documentation pages by language (if you’re working in a multinational company), by role, or by name. 

Field Name	Field Type	Example Values
Person in Charge	Single User	John Smith, Jane Smith etc.
Role	Single/Multi-select	Marketing, HR, Sales, IT
Related Documentation	Page Link	Other Confluence pages with the "IT Documentation" Content Category assigned
Language	Single-select	English, German, Mandarin etc.

Keep Your Sanity With Metadata

Good IT documentation is the lifeblood of any company. Without it, there would be no SOPs. Time is wasted training new employees, errors are more likely to occur, and efficiency is compromised. However, labeling and locating IT documentation can be tricky with Confluence’s native labeling system.

To overcome this problem, you can leverage metadata using an app like Metadata for Confluence (Cloud), which allows you to easily carry out the steps mentioned above.

Check out all the other cool things you can do with Metadata For Confluence here!