How do you manage your giant library of Confluence pages?

[Tracy B]

We have lots and lots of old pages, but I don't see any way to find which ones are the least used in Confluence. I only want to archive things people are not actively referring to. How do I find those and archive them?

[Darryl Lee · Accepted solution]

For on-prem (Server) we've been using Better Content Archiving, which allows you to set "owners" for pages, designate policies for when pages are considered "expired" (default: 365 days w/o views/edits) or "not viewed" (by default 200 days). Owners get weekly reports of these pages.

Users can choose to "tag" pages to be archived, and automatic archiving can be enabled for pages based on "expired" or "not viewed" tags.

So @Lena Chervin 's absolutely right, this needs to be a shared project, and if you can "crowdsource" this to users, that's the way to go.

We spent some time trying to figure out who should be space owners so that they would get the aforementioned reports about "expired/not viewed" pages (with quick links to archive/exclude pages), but ALSO if pages got archived (based on user recommendations).

One thing I hope Midori figures out for Cloud is how to archive pages while preserving hierarchy.

The built-in Atlassian page archiving functionality unfortunately archives pages in a "flat" file structure. So you are archiving an entire pagetree with a lot of nested pages, it'll be all be in one "folder", which may make it hard to find old pages.

On Server, Midori addresses this issue by creating a "mirror space" (with the Archived bit set) of the original space where you are archiving page. It's a bit clunky, but it does work.

Anyways.

So I know the vendor (Midori) has been working on a Cloud version, which has the functionality of tracking "expired/not viewed" pages and sending out notifications, but it can't yet ARCHIVE pages. :-/

Here's a links where you can read about it:

• Better Content Archiving for Confluence Cloud 

Oh, and reading Atlassian's announcement about bulk archiving (Premium only), this looks promising:

additional features coming soon, like archive recommendations and basic workflows (including auto-archiving), are available to customers on the Confluence Cloud Premium plan.

Which unfortunately for Midori, sounds similar to what they do...

The other thing I imagine Atlassian doing would be eventually adding archiving as an action in Automation for Confluence. But I'm wary of any automatic archiving.

Like Automation for Jira, it appears that on Confluence you can schedule automations, but without a Lookup by CQL (analogous to the Lookup by JQL action in Jira), I don't think it'd you can yet create a "report" similar to the Better Content Archiving tool.

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

Thanks for mentioning our app, @Darryl Lee!

Better Content Archiving has already been released for the Cloud a few months ago. It comes with everything @Tracy B looked for. I really don't want to list all the features, but those related to his original question are:

1. You can track the status of each page and blog post, and automatically set them to a custom "Not used" status if they are not edited or not viewed.
2. You can auto-archive the pages in the "Not used" status periodically by defining an automation and applying that to your spaces.

Plus you can view a report of "Not used" pages (and others), search for them using flexible CQL queries, list them using macros, send custom notifications to their owner, and so on.

Like on Data Center, the app is a full-blown Content Lifecycle Management solution. To be honest, it is even better on Cloud, because we considered everything we learnt in the past and reviewed all prior feature requests when designing the Cloud version.

🔥 Make sure you give it a free trial!

[Lena Chervin · Accepted solution]

I am currently working on cleaning up our Confluence instance. We are still in early stages of the task, but IMO so far its been mostly about figuring out how to coordinate people and spread out the work. The job is far too large for one individual person. We don't have the Premium version, but we might end up going that route if the cost determined to be worthwhile.

[Levente Szabo _Midori_]

Hi @Lena Chervin I recently wrote about suggestions on how to get started with a Confluence content lifecycle management strategy and why sometimes it's more economical to stay on Standard and use apps. While it's up to a case-by-case analysis, I hope there is some food for thought there.

[Amanda Barber]

I think it depends on the plan you are on. Analytics + Bulk Archive would probably be useful for this type of cleanup though!

Page Insights would help, too, but not on this large of a scale IMO. 

I hope to hear from someone who has accomplished this cleanup task though!

[Getjan_lammers]

We started April '23  with a Data & Document classification project/ objective for remainder of the year to reduce  'unused' pages and to classify data. Each team of the 16 has a chosen 'data steward' to support the team. We can spend limited time/wk to do this. Besides cleaning it als involves a security classification.

So what i read above is very helpful. we are unfortunately not in Cloud but in DataCenter.

[Darryl Lee]

To be clear:

For Data Center, Better Content Archiving is a full-featured solution that could definitely help with your effort, as it would give your 'data stewards' useful tools to do the work, giving them the aforementioned reports of expired/not viewed pages, and giving them access to quick actions to archive pages as needed.

(Heh, I feel like I should be getting a kickback from Midori. I don't work for them, I swear!)

[Getjan_lammers]

Thank Darrryl, i will look for that 'Better Content Archiving' on Thursday and let you know before the weekend starts.....

[Levente Szabo _Midori_]

@Getjan_lammers Let us know if you have any questions about Better Content Archiving! We are here to help if you need a hand.

I can confirm that @Darryl Lee doesn't work for Midori, but we may try to poach you! :) Anyway, your expert comments are always appreciated! (I hope you will be able to use the Cloud version of the app soon as well!)

[Getjan_lammers]

We have a mix of server / data center and i trust to know friday whether we have the right space tools for awesome archiving

[Tom Carrott]

Hi there,

I'm a Product Manager @ Kolekti (Part of The Adaptavist Group) and we're currently exploring the content creation and management space. I'm looking to speak with users who are creating and managing content at scale and it seems this could be a good place to reach out. We've got some high level concept ideas related to this particular discussion point and would value your feedback in shaping the next stages of our research. 

If you'd be willing to have an informal chat please let me know and we can connect 🙏 🙂

[Adrian Hülsmann - B1NARY]

Hello @Tracy B

We developed Breeze for identifying and archiving outdated pages, available via the Atlassian Marketplace.

It is a full content lifecycle management solution for Confluence Cloud and implements review and archiving workflows for keeping your pages up-to-date.

The feature set includes

• automated content analyses,
• page review and archiving workflows,
• page and space ownership,
• reports and notifications,
• bulk archiving and deletion,
• analytics,
• data export for all your content, ownership, and status information
• and more to update outdated pages quickly and enhance collaboration.

👉 To anyone interested: feel free to give it a try, or schedule an appointment with me for a personal demo.

Cheers and all the best, Adrian from B1NARY (we are the developers of Breeze)