Using Labels in Confluence – Order Is Half the Battle

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Page labels are a simple but powerful feature to categorize your content in Confluence. At K15t we love working with labels. Here are some reasons why:

• We group pages that belong together, but exist in different spaces or hierarchies.
• Labels are easy to add and remove without changing any content on the page.
• There's no limit to labels, you can add them to pages, attachments or spaces.
• Labels are user-defined and can be aligned to a use case, user group or other category.

In this 7 min video below, we showcase some of the powerful things that can be done with labels in Confluence, provide naming convention tips, and share some advice you can pass to your teams to ensure labels continue to provide value over time.

🎥 Check it out:

The video covers these topics below 👇 

Start With a Label System 

Labels can be added to pages, attachments and even spaces to structure your content. Develop a label system with a clear set of rules before you start using labels. This helps everyone in your team to comply. Here are our recommendations:

Use naming conventions

Naming conventions help keep your labels clean and consistent. 

• Use abbreviations and prefixes: Define if and how you will use abbreviations and prefixes, such as 'kb' for knowledge base articles or 'how-to' for step-by-step guides. 
• Stick with singular: We recommend naming labels in singular form only. Otherwise you end up with 'project' and 'projects' and you won't know which is the correct one.
• Keep it simple: Don't pack too much information into a label. Stick to single or short multi-word phrases, such as 'admin' or 'knowledge-base'.
• Separate your words: Make it clear how to separate words. A hyphen or underscore are the most common separators.

For your naming system, it's helpful to use commonly used search terms. Take a look at your Confluence analytics – if you work with Confluence Cloud Premium or Cloud Enterprise – to find out what other users are searching for. You'll find a list of search terms and can decide whether your existing label names suit what your users search for.

Appoint a label manager

Appoint a person to regularly monitor your labelling system to ensure that all defined rules are being followed. Have you already designated a Wiki Gardener for your Confluence spaces? Then perhaps this person can take on this task too.

Here are some tips that help a label manager to keep track of how labels are being used.

• Create an alphabetical list of your labels with the label list macro to receive a list of all your labels in an alphabetical order to spot typos and other irregularities easier.
• Create a heatmap to see which labels are most frequently used within a particular Confluence space

Use Cases for Labels

If you use Confluence page labels, you have access to different macros that improve the usability of your documentation.

Better search results

The Livesearch macro allows you to add a search field to your Confluence page. You can narrow down the search results that are output via this macro to specific labels beforehand, so that your users only get the information they really need.

Group a specific set of content

In some cases, pages cannot be clearly assigned to one label and fit into multiple topics. In this case you can use the Content by Label macro. Enter one or more labels and the macro will automatically create a list of pages where these labels are used.

We use this macro to show pages that relate to certain projects that aren't part of the sub page tree, but that still provide useful information for the reader about the project.

Filter for attachments 

Using Confluence pages is more than just writing plain text content. You can also add attachments such as images, proposals, contracts or other documents as pdf, image file, Word file or other document file formats. Therefore it makes sense to label relevant attachments as well.

The quick search bar in the top right corner of a Confluence page allows you to quickly find specific attachments using a combination of content type attachment and the corresponding label.

If you manage lots of attachments and need a better overview of them, you can create a list using the Content by Label macro.

Tell Us Your Use Case

There are so many great ways to label your documentation in Confluence. What's your favorite? Let us know how your team works with labels in the comments.

If you liked this article, you can read the complete version on Rock the Docs, our guide for technical documentation in Confluence. We also have plenty more Confluence best practices to share in the guide. Check it out 👉 

[David.Meyers]

Is there a way to assign values to labels, so they act more like search fields with predefined values.  I find it much easier to search for pages by using search fields with defined values.  Example of search method, you have appliance product pages then to search there is an appliance label that shows refrigerators, TVs, stoves, mocrowaves, etc as options, then there is a brands laebel that shows the various brands, a size label that shows refrigerator size values, etc

[Rupert Hawkes]

BIG GOTCHA.   The labels list is NOT alphabetical!

[Stavros_Rougas_EasyApps]

“Appoint a label manager” agree.

The next step of us is having a better way for that person to manage labels. We wanted to have a way for some label editing features not be available to all users, like merging, so we built the app Label Manger by Easy Apps.

[kris cortvriendt]

Is there a way to label text within a page in stead of attachments or entire page?

[Stavros_Rougas_EasyApps]

@kris cortvriendt could you explain a bit more what you mean by "label text within a page".

[kris cortvriendt]

Sure!

Say this is a paragraph in a confluence page

Lorem ipsum

Dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna.
Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus.
Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci.

Then I should be able to label this entire paragraph as 'Definition' in order to retrieve in another confluence page all definitions  as a kind of glossary.

Like one can do with 'action items'.

[Joshua Bertrand]

Hi @Steffen Burzlaff _K15t_ Is it better to use a single label or multiple labels for each article in terms of optimizing search results for users? The worry is that too many labels would lead to less clarity and results for users. Or on the other hand if there are not enough labels does that make it harder for users to find content. Just not sure what is more optimal in terms of the algorithm that is used when a user searches the knowledge base. 

[Monika Griffin]

Is there a way to use lables with action items so as to filter those belonging to certain topics afterwards?