Hi all,
this is mainly for the Atlassian team, but I would also be interested in the answers of community members, if you had the same challenges.
Some info:
- We got migrated yesterday evening/night. (Databases now appear in the page tree). Before that I still had the old Alpha implementation of databases.
- We use Confluence as a wiki. For 98% of the company, Confluence is not a focus in their daily work, so we aim to make it as easy as possible for users to create pages that
- a) inform the reader
- b) have a consistent look and feel across the wiki
Implemenation of Database Entries
A very simple, yet extremly useful usecase for Databases was to implement a "contact" for every page.
Basically we have a 3 field database consisting of: topic [Text], Name [Text], and Teams Link [Link]). This database is used to map a topic to a person and provide a way to contact the person. This is useful for us, because we do not have to go into every page and change the contact person, in case the contact person changes. Instead we just have to adjust 1 database entry. This database also allows us to "search" for a topic and find the contact.
The database is used in every template that is used in our Confluence site, by including a database entry macro.
Here is an example of how it looks / looked:
Feedback
Current Implementation
Pros
Cons
- database entries in templates are now useless
- Every entry has a header (see 1)
- link name does not seem to work (see 2)
- “Add field” is now visible. Adding a field is never needed.
- This could be, because of my rights or because I need to change the configuration. I have yet to check and understand the new rights and permissions
Implementation before yesterday evening
Pros
- cleaner look,
- less vertical space used
- more usable horizontal space (no border)
- I can configure what I want to be able to see and do
- Maybe I can do this with the current implementation too, but I cannot check (see bug above)
Cons
- could be confusing if you use this for the first time
Questions
- How can the usecase of "selecting an entry from a database to embed at a page, without a greater understanding of macros and databases" be implemented in a template?
- Is there an option to hide the title (see screnshot (1)) at least when only showing an entry?
Database Backlinks
These databases were showing Elements (=Add Ons) and if they are included, available or not compatible with the different Versions of certain Products that my company sells.
Since 1 Add-On can be available for multiple Products, we implemented this with Entry Backlinks (Kind of like a Lookup in an Excel sheet). Creating different views allows me to show only the relevant data for each product while storing all information in one database.
This just broke...
--> We could have done this in a plain table, but the backlink features save a lot of time and make sure that information are only stored once.
Screenshots:
General Feedback
It seems like Atlassian is only removing features or changing the UI / Interaction concept of existing features. For me this is quite frustrating. As pages just break I personally participated in an Interview regarding the database topic last year and so far most usecases I showed just broke with this new update.
