Display dynamic data in pages?

Nathan Baxter January 22, 2025

Hi,

I am looking for a way to display/reference data on page(s) throughout confluence in a way that when the data source is updated the display text changes as well?

For example, I want to create a device object with fields such as hostname, ip_address, serial etc. I want to be able to reference device.ip_address so that it links to the device object while displaying the text on the page.

I have looked at confluence databases but when you reference a cell value on a page it only displays the database name. If I have a database named "Device List" and link to a cell value (device.ip_address) on a page it ends up displaying "Device List" as the text instead of the referenced cell value (1.1.1.1).


Is there anyway to solve this issue without using 3rd party apps/plugins or paid alternatives? Any help is greatly appreciated.

2 answers

1 vote
Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_
Community Leader
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January 22, 2025

Hi @Nathan Baxter ,

From what I could gather here it's that you'd like to have one 'source' where you would like to maintain all your objects, and then you would like just to display one 'attribute' of any object within a Confluence page (e.g. IP address of one router, let's say)? Am I following this right?

If so, I've tried playing with it a bit but didn't come up with any fancy workaround. I would say Databases would be the best way to go with this, but, as you noticed, if you would embed one value from an entry, it would display the database name.2025-01-23_08-47-46.png

I've managed to find a feature suggestion that included this improvement (ability to enable/disable database name in embeds): CONFCLOUD-78152: Confluence database improvements 

I was also thinking of having one 'main' page with a standard Table macro which would be the source and then using Excerpt macro within that page so you could insert excerpt part into another page but you cannot add this macro inside a table so that's a no go as well 😕

Apart from trying to find some third-party options, I don't have any smart ideas 🤔 If anything comes to mind I'll be sure to share it here.

Cheers,
Tobi

Nathan Baxter January 23, 2025

Thanks Tomislav. Unfortunately yea, I prefer more of a hyperlink sort of look so its easy to read when going through docs and fits into the paragraph. Thanks for the suggestions though.

1 vote
Kristian Klima
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
January 22, 2025

Hi @Nathan Baxter and welcome to the Community.

You can create, for example, a Google Docs spreadsheet and then use the iframe macro to display it.

And, depending on the source, smart links might work too.

The only caveat is (can be) authentication. For example, it works for me because both our Google services and our Atlassian cloud are under the same SSO scheme. 

Nathan Baxter January 23, 2025

Thanks Kristian, appreciate the suggestion.

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