Atlassian Databases: Attachments Links Display Text (or Embedded Attachments)

[Sherman_ Christopher R]

Hello Atlassian Community,

Here seeking some assistance with the Databases utility.  Our use case is that we use Confluence as a source of truth for certain business activities and templates to be used (largely .doc, .xls, .pdf) in the completion of these activities.  These templates live in multiple Confluence pages within attachments macros.

We've been exploring the use of Atlassian Databases to better manage our attachments and attributes pertaining to them.  We want to use the "Link field" Database field type to link back to the attachment, and allow people to download it from the database.  However, the link field is displaying the attachments full URL, instead of the desired link Display Text.  And these lengthy URLs are taking up valuable visual real estate and lose context we can provide with a display name.

Has anyone found a workaround to this problem?  I see the Link field does support display text when you link a Confluence page, not the case though for attachments.

An alternative approach could be embedding the attachment in the database but there is no current field type to support this, and I'm unclear what's on the roadmap for this new utility (Databases).

Thanks in advance to anyone who can provide help!

[Kristian Klima · Accepted solution]

Hi @Sherman_ Christopher R and welcome to the Community 

It's possible ;)

You just need to put the attachment in an excerpt macro.

Then, in Database, use page link as you main column, then page details - excerpt.

I wrote an article on DB tips and tricks, you may find it useful.

[Sherman_ Christopher R]

Kristian, thank you very much for your quick response!  We've been working with this solution and see that it works very well.  Within the Excerpt we are able to add the link and change the link display text to what we desire.  We can hide the page links and rename the page details column to something more easily understood for people using the database.  We also experimented with putting the attachment in the excerpt and even an attachments macro - the results were not as desired as the attachment icon needed too much space and the attachments macro delivered a lot of contextual attachments detail in the field where we only wanted the attachment name and link.

We are continuing to face a problem though.  Our use case involves having a master database where we perform all of our maintenance, and then linked databases in various confluence pages used for display and delivery purposes where we apply filters to show only the master database content that's applicable.  The linked database field for the page details never displays the attachment link.  It's a perpetual gray oval, as if the database is trying to make the link and display the correct content but cannot do so.  This is likely a bug and we will report it.

Any other suggestions from the community to get attachment display text in linked databases?