Automation for a Confluence page status check if the status hasn't changed after a time period

[Marije Pierson]

Hello,

I'd like to add automation that pings the author of the page if a Confluence page using certain statuses hasn't changed status after 2 weeks.

For example: a page has the status "rough draft". It shouldn't be in that status for long but people forget to update it. It would be great to be able to trigger automation that can send an email to the page creator if a page has had the "rough draft" status for more than 2 weeks, with a reminder to check on it.

Is that possible? I can only see time triggers in general, ie. check on x every 2 weeks type thing.

[Levente Szabo _Midori_]

Automation for Confluence has a few templates for notifying Confluence users about pages in a certain status or about inactive pages, but this use case can't be implemented with automation rules. That's because Confluence doesn't store the timestamp when the page status changed. What inactive means (no edits or views) also can't be customized. An Automation for Confluence template that comes close to what you request is the "Notify people about inactive pages".

Another important factor to know is that Automation for Confluence can't work with page lists. It means that if a user has multiple pages to tend to, they will receive individual emails (if 50 pages, 50 emails!) instead of an easily readable page list in email. (Not to mention the 150-page branch limit rule, which makes it suboptimal for midsized teams and a no-go for large teams.)

Confluence doesn't have strategic and native content lifecycle management, so a dedicated solution that people use for this is Better Content Archiving for Confluence. For example, it stores and exposes a "statusChangedOn" field to CQL:

You can:

• Define many custom statuses (using very precise CQL queries!), refreshing automatically (Confluence only has 5 statuses).
• Build automation to notify different users (author, last viewer, page owner) about a page being in a certain status for a set period and many more use cases.
• Customize the notification email to your needs and send page lists instead of 1 email/page.

This is an actual custom Confluence notification email setup to notify users about pages that have been in "Expired" status for 2 weeks:

This is a comprehensive article about how to send reminders about outdated pages and here is a video to give you a better idea of the more flexible automation options

(Please note that Better Content Archiving is a free/paid app and I'm part of the team developing it.)

[Marije Pierson]

Thanks! Unfortunately we don't have budget for more apps but I'll pass your feedback on :) 

[Levente Szabo _Midori_]

No worries, @Marije Pierson . Please reach out to us through our support or drop me a line at levente.szabo@midori-global.com to discuss your requirements, and find a solution for your budget constraints as well!

[Adrian Hülsmann - B1NARY]

Hi @Marije Pierson,

As pointed out before, the possibilities of Confluence automation for proper content lifecycle management are a bit limited and more of an "if-then-that" kind of nature for its automation rules.

However, much more is needed to manage content effectively, which is why content managers use third-party plugins like Breeze. 

Breeze is far more advanced than Confluence automation for managing the content lifecycle, including:

• automated content analyses and page status updates,
• page review and archiving workflows,
• page and space ownership,
• reports and notifications,
• bulk archiving and deletion,
• analytics,
• data export for all your content, ownership, and status information
• and more to update outdated pages quickly and enhance collaboration.

👉 Give it a try, or feel free to schedule an appointment with me for a personal demo.

Cheers and all the best, Adrian from B1NARY (we are the developers of Breeze)