Announcing Table Extensibility to better visualize data in Confluence

[#1]

Hello!

My name is Laura Mehrkens, and I’m a product manager for the Confluence Ecosystem team. Last month, we announced the release of Table Extensibility in Confluence through an Early Access Program (EAP). Today, I’m excited to announce the general release of Table Extensibility to all Confluence Cloud users, allowing for the visualization and manipulation of data in table format from multiple data sources!

Confluence Cloud users coming from on-premises versions of Confluence will be excited to know that Table Extensibility debuts requested functionality (transforming and visualizing table-based data) that users experienced using Confluence on-prem.

How does it work?

Table Extensibility allows elements, such as a data macro, to act as the source of another element. Confluence Cloud users can then create transformer macros – such as pivot tables – or build visual charts that reference the data in a source table. Additionally, users can chain multiple macros together to create a more complex relationship between multiple sets of data. This allows real-time viewing of the visualization as the data changes.

Using the Connect Data toolbar item available in supported Connect macros, users can open the Connected Data Panel. In the panel, users will be able to view and configure connections and create macro data chains on a page.

Currently, we support three types of data chains:

1. Native Table to Connect Macro

2. Connect Macro to Native Chart

3. Connect Macro to Connect Macro

How can I use it in my day-to-day?

We imagine a lot of different ways.

Tables will become more complex and will be able to combine many data sources into a single visual presentation. These complex tables will become the source data for sophisticated charts and visualizations that will update in real-time as you edit the source data.

We will also support the reverse of that workflow with apps that let users start at the end or the middle of the macro chain. Users can start with an empty visualization macro, such as a bar chart, and then link it to its data source and data target.

While our native apps provide Confluence Cloud users with table visualizations such as pie charts and bar charts, the true power of table extensibility will come as more app developers create new extensible apps or update their existing apps. As the community explores the new possibilities in Table Extensibility, the apps they make will offer even more flexibility and power to Confluence users.

David Simpson, a developer from DS Apps, says Table Extensibility will allow him and his team to take advantage of the existing data in the apps they use:

What benefits do you expect to gain by using Table Extensibility?

“The main thing here is that using table extensibility means we can extend the functionality and usefulness of our existing apps by broadcasting their data back to the Confluence product for use by other apps or by the chart feature.”

How do you plan to use Table Extensibility going forward?

“We will use table extensibility in the ‘Table from CSV’ app, which allows us to take an attached or remote CSV and build a table within Confluence. Table extensibility allows us to the send this data to a chart (or other apps) and sort or filter the data to produce new insights for the end user.”

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Want to try it for yourself? Table Extensibility will gradually roll out to all Confluence Cloud licensed users, including those on Free plans. Members of the Confluence Cloud Ecosystem Beta Group will be among the first to get it.

May 19 update: We've completed the rollout to all Confluence Cloud users. 

[Andy Gladstone]

Amazing release. Looking forward to using this so our historical reporting data can be charted and made more visibly friendly for our employees.

[Hana Kučerová]

It looks great! I can’t wait to try it!

[Juliette Lallement _Elements Apps_]

@Laura Mehrkens !

Fantastic news!

Can you provide more details around when the progressive roll out will take place?

[Rick W]

I am surprised that this new feature was prioritized over fixed-width tables in Cloud. Over three years waiting for https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67748 to become reality...

[Francis Kinsler]

How does this compare with power query and power pivot in Excel/PowerBI?

[Mathias N.]

Don't get me wrong on this. I like to have fancy features introduced, but it feels like you focus too much on fancy things instead of fixing the product base which is much more needed for the day-to-day work, like the mentioned fixed-width tables.

And its not just limited to this, but I came across so many other example in the past 14 months since I introduced Confluence Cloud in my organisation.

I would like to ask you to make one step back and use a few sprints to sort out some main pain points for the basic use first. 

[Laura Mehrkens]

@Juliette Lallement _Elements Apps_ We've now completed the rollout and Table Extensibility is available to all Confluence Cloud users. 

[Laura Mehrkens]

@Rick W @Mathias N. Thank you for your feedback. While I don't have an exact delivery timeline, please be assured that our team is currently looking into solutions to enable custom table widths. Please stay tuned and follow https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67748 for updates. 

[Laura Mehrkens]

@Francis Kinsler Table extensibility enables data sharing and visualization between different macros. Once developers adopt table extensibility in their apps, table-based data such as BI reports or Excel tables can be connected to other table-based macros (e.g. pivot table) and visualized via charts.