Best Practice Space structure for launch of new company

[Bill Quinn]

Hello,

Launching a new b2b ecommerce company. For this question, the focus is on the website, ERP and integration systems. I am trying to understand how to create a space structure for the long term. Would anyone have suggestions?

Short Term:

Build the website, ERP and integration systems to hit an arbitrarily selected launch date. :-(

1. Website
   1. Technical requirements - # item records, # users per day
   2. Design - categories, attributes
   3. Item creation - creation of the individual items on the page
   4. selection of ecommerce platform
   5. selection of technology stack - Azure or AWS
   6. eventually epics, stories, etc in Jira
2. ERP
   1. technical requirements - transaction flows between company and vendors, company and customers, etc
   2. on premise or cloud
   3. permission
   4. selection of erp platform
   5. Contract negotiations
   6. eventually epics, stories, etc in Jira
3. Integration
   1. technical requirements - description of each integration, # of transactions per day
   2. select of integration platform

Long Term:

Documentation, Support and maintenance of the above systems. 

What I am struggling with:

1. Do I create 3 spaces for each of the areas above for the launch? When the launch is going on for each area above, do I create separate spaces for "product-website" and a "support-website", etc?
2. Once the first launch is complete, do I create a "product-website v2" to manage the next version? Or is the product-website reused for the follow on projects.
3. Do I create a top level space to as a container for website, erp and integration? (ie: product development)

Thank you for any input!

[Diego · Accepted solution]

Hello there!
Bill, thanks for reaching out to Community.

Instance content organization is highly connected to what your company or team needs. We can surely have different spaces for each part of project. However, if your instance needs to house more than one project, it may be a good idea to create a space that is dedicated to that project.

Let us say that you end up creating Product Development Space. There you can create many parent pages that are house to different projects. Something along these lines:

> Product Development [SPACE]
    - Product 1 [PAGE]
        * Specs
        * Docs
        * Support
    - Product 2 [PAGE]
        * Specs
        * Docs
        * Support
    - Product 3 [PAGE]
        * Specs
        * Docs
        * Support

> Other Project [SPACE]
    - Page 1 [PAGE]
    - Page 2 [PAGE]
        * Sub-page 1
        * Sub-page 2

> Other Project X [SPACE]
    - Page 1 [PAGE]
    - Page 2 [PAGE]
        * Sub-page 1
        * Sub-page 2

This structure could be used if Website, ERP and Integration are all different projects that need their own Spaces for documentation. If they are all part of the same project, they could be under the same Space.

There is no explicit recommendation on how to use the structural capabilities present in Confluence. If keeping old version of pages is something needed for your projects, Confluence can take care of it:

Create, Edit, and Publish - Page version and history

Also, Space Permissions and Page restrictions are things worth noting when talking about Instance content organization. As a basic, users need enough Space permissions to interact with a given space and also need to be granted pass through Page restrictions to interact with a given page:

Permissions and restrictions

Space permissions overview

Add or remove page restrictions

Let us know if this helps you out on deciding which structure is the best for your company!

Keep in mind that each environment may have different needs and no formula works for everyone when organizing content.

[Darshanaa _ServiceRocket_]

Hi @Bill Quinn  ,

I was just wondering if you've come across a challenge in organising or locating pages in your spaces? 

If you or your team have, I would recommend you to try Space Manager for Confluence.

It helps to give you a visual view of your entire space(s) and you're able to clearly see which document relates to what project. 

I can't wait to hear your thoughts on the app. Please feel free to leave any questions/feedback here. 

Thanks & have a great day! :)