How Confluence Templates Change the Way You Think

[#1]

Do you know there are more than 120 page templates in Confluence?

From simple to-do lists to more complex project reports and content strategies, Confluence got you covered, providing a carefully crafted library of building blocks.

When I started using Confluence as my go-to content hub, I built each page from scratch. Because I’m too smart to use templates, you know. I used it for project tracking, content writing, team management, task reports, status reports, and even sharing recipes and photos from recent vacations.

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn? Get out of here! Pour everything in Confluence like autumn rain.

As you may suggest, that didn’t turn out quite nicely. I was buried in pages with questionable efficacy, and my team was not pleased about it.

We encountered the beginning of a time-consuming issue: many poorly organized spaces, information got harder to find instead of the opposite, and people were asking more questions in Slack than searching in Confluence.

Not. Good.

Luckily, we are the kind of team that never lose time arguing and discussing what went wrong. If there are bad results and visible problems, we jump straight into fixing them.

One of the primary issues was time. Calculating the time lost by each team member while searching for content or figuring out the beginning of a new page showed us red light. That quickly points us to the question:

Why are we not using the templates already built and approved by professionals in multiple areas?

Answer hides in the question.

Sprint Planning Meeting

The first template we adopted almost immediately. Built by Jira but used by many to keep track of their Sprint planning and don’t waste time figuring out the meeting agenda.

Template features we love most:

• Sprint Planning Checklist: what needs to be prepared before the meeting and what we should revisit after.

• Sprint Team Members: who participated in the meeting and who are doomed to watch a Zoom recording

• Agenda: Meeting without agenda is a curse.

• Action items and capacity planning: each team member is responsible for calculating their capacity and figuring out the amount of work they can handle in the upcoming Sprint.

Quarterly Check In

Something new to our team that already has a healthy and positive impact. Using the Confluence template and following the best practices for reflection and alignment on goals, our teams better understood their core priorities and work balance.

The purpose of our Q-Meetings is to continually realign our activities with our priorities and make sure we are happy doing it.

Template features we love most:

• Reflections

• Update goals and priorities

• Align on feedback

Having this Confluence template helped us go straight to the discussion instead of spending time building it up. As always, we spiced it up with a few additional reports to visualize progress and/or count tasks assigned to a single team member.

Content Strategy

9 months into 2022, and I still can’t say it better. Goal setting is a love and hate relationship, but sometimes you switch the word from “goal” to “desire,” and it works out!

And yes, it’s the real issue count. We just love getting sh#t done.

You saw only three examples of how implementing Confluence templates might reduce your time and effort in getting a project started. With the constantly expanding library of handy templates, you will achieve zero downtime when clicking the Create button.

As the saying goes: There’s a Confluence template for that.

[Andy Gladstone]

@Teodora V _Fun Inc_ thank you for this article and for the reminder that so many of us need - work smarter, not harder. So many times I click the create the button in Confluence and start editing a blank canvas without first looking at the gallery of templates that already give color and texture to Confluence - working harder and not smarter. Thanks for highlighting some really applicable use cases for all of us.

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_]

Always welcome @Andy Gladstone!

It's in people's nature to try and develop the perfect solution from scratch, even failing a thousand times. I hope someone will change their perspective after failing only a few :) 

[Lukas Gotter _ Meetical]

Nice article, thanks for that. And if you don't find the template of your dreams? Create your own custom templates! Read our Ultimate Guide on How to Create Confluence Templates! 😎

[William Vik]

Hello to all of you.

The way our team arranges and retrieves information has been totally revolutionized by Confluence templates. I first believed that starting from scratch would give us more control, but in the end, it resulted in a jumbled mess with infinite pages that wasted time and annoyed everyone. We significantly increased productivity by streamlining our workflow and utilizing Confluence's organized templates. Don't waste time like we did if you're having trouble managing your content—start using Confluence templates right away. For an even better experience, if you're a sports fan, I strongly suggest trying out all Sportzfy Old Version earlier iterations.

Warm regards!