Why start from scratch? Introducing four new templates for Confluence Cloud

[Kesha Thill]

Hi my Community friends! 

For those who don't know me, I'm a product marketer on the Confluence Cloud team - nice to meet you! For those of you who do, you know that I've been all up in your Community face (like here and here) about how you use Confluence and what types of content you create, and all of our conversations have involved the use of templates! 

I think we can all agree that across any team, templates are about more than just saving time. Templates help us maintain consistency across teams and departments by organizing work and information in a uniform way, making things easy to find. Using templates is also a good way to bring new teams into Confluence effectively.

I'm super excited to announce that we recently launched a template gallery and 4 new templates in Confluence Cloud that incorporate the ways that we carry out some processes internally:

• Project plan
• Product launch plan
• Marketing plan
• Persona

To get all the details of each template, check out our blog here.

This is just the beginning and I'd love to use this thread to hear more about the different types of templates you'd love to see in the future! 

[Meg Holbrook]

Love it! Wondered where those magical little nuggets came from!

The Persona one is particularly awesome. 

[Kesha Thill]

Yay! Glad to hear they've been ~magical~ 😉

Let me know if you have any suggestions for future templates! Thanks@Meg Holbrook !

[Prakash Chavali]

How cool would it be if you could create a simple Weekly Status Reporting Template? I can help you with the list of 'must have' fields and the final output gets pulled as a Snapshot Report to the Senior / Executive Management.

You can surely do your ~~magic~~ here :-)

@Kesha ThillI am attaching the column headings for the Confluence Template for Weekly Project Status report. I have tried to rationalize the columns but this is the bare minimum columns required.

COL # DESCRIPTION

1. PROJ_ID
2. PROJ_NAME
3. PROJ_START_DATE
4. PROJ_END_DATE - Format MM/DD/YYYY
5. PM NAME
6. PRIMARY BU
7. RAG COMMENTS
8. R A G STATUS - Pick list - Values are R, A or G
9. SOW STATUS?
10. APPROVED BUDGET
11. SPENT-TO-DATE
12. PENDING INVOICES?
13. VALUE?
14. EXEC SPONSOR
15. T P M
16. STATUS UPDATES / PENDING ACTION ITEMS
17. UPCOMING TASKS
18. MILESTONE NAME
19. % COMPLETE
20. RISKS & ISSUES OUTSTANDING (LIST 3 TOP OPEN ITEMS) + IMPACT

Please let me know if there is a good way to recreate these columns in a Template for reporting weekly status?

Thanks,

Prakash Chavali

[Joe Anand]

@KE :

Can you help me add a weekly report template in Confluence?

The new project that I'm working on doesn't have one.

[Kesha Thill]

@Prakash Chavali - great idea! I'd love to see how you've set yours up as well! 

@Joe Anand - Sounds similar to Prakash's request too. Will look into a weekly reporting template for the both of you! 

[Joe Anand]

Thanks @Kesha Thill

Looking forward to using that template soon.

[Carolyn McDonough]

Can you provide more doc templates/blueprints? For API doc for example?

[Kesha Thill]

Hi @Carolyn McDonough!

Eek sorry I weirdly haven't been getting notifications so apologies for delay. But yes the plan is to provide you all with more in the future, we're working on it 🙃

API doc is a great suggestion! Taking note of this and I'll see what we can do!

[Sara Woodhull]

Hi @Kesha Thill,

Nice to meet you! Are you in Mountain View or AU?

I don't use templates much since I'm pretty much the only direct user of Confluence at my company, but we have lots of people trying to read documents in our knowledge base through Jira Service Desk, and they aren't very happy. 

The problem is that in a knowledge base format, the screenshots are pretty much illegible or cut off, or both (in PDF too!), and users can't click on a screenshot to see a bigger version.

Anything you can do to help me improve the quality of the screenshots that go into Confluence in the first place (preferred format, sizing, browser, or similar tips)? And can you help get a feature in Confluence/JSD that lets users tap on a knowledge base screenshot to see a bigger version?

And no, I don't want my users poking around in the Confluence UI itself, especially anonymously, which is why I'm using a knowledge base for the UI.

Thanks,

Sara

[Kesha Thill]

Hi @Sara Woodhull! 

I'm in SF actually, nice to meet you as well! 

Thanks for the feedback! I'll pass this on to my team and look into some ways that we can address this in the meantime and follow up with you.

[sarah@leadermes.com]

Hi Kesha, 

Thanks for the new templates!

While you are looking into the screenshots issue in JSD, can you add the issue preventing us from embedding multimedia files for our JSD customers? 

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDCLOUD-5919

I normally test my pages in the confluence and JSD views with the same user, so I missed this issue.  

Thanks!

[sarah@leadermes.com]

BTW, regarding https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDCLOUD-5919?_ga=2.99194270.145922868.1538545779-634786960.1521707985&_gac=1.249227955.1536912583.EAIaIQobChMI_8iPvYW63QIVj44YCh2cMgpFEAAYASAAEgK6ofD_BwE

This issue should really be renamed. How about: "Embedded video fails to playback in KB articles in JSD" 

I think it would garner more interest that way 

[Meg Holbrook]

@Sara Woodhull - I'm using stepshot for confluence right now, and it's amazing. 

[Kesha Thill]

Hi sarah@leadermes.com!

You're welcome! And yes will have the team look into it :) 

Also, great suggestion @Meg Holbrook! :highfive:

[sarah@leadermes.com]

Thanks for the suggestion @Meg Holbrook! Will look into it :) 

As a workaround I am using the widget macro to embed videos from Vimeo.  

[Karen Hayden]

Are these templates available to download for Confluence server?

[Kesha Thill]

Hi @Karen Hayden! 

These new ones aren't currently available in Confluence Server, but you can request them here: jira.atlassian.com ! 

[Fred B]

Hi Kesha. I could make good use of this project planning template and weekly status report. Do you know whether AT&T's tSpace application, which I understand is based on Confluence, will be receiving these templates?

[Kesha Thill]

Hi @Fred B! 

I do love the project plan too :) If you're not seeing them in your space, then you're likely on Confluence Server or Data Center. These new templates aren't currently available in Server or Data Center, only in Cloud, but you can request them here: jira.atlassian.com !