Exclude pages from Confluence Search

[Rhys Gottwald]

Hello everyone, 

Here is the use case.  I am using Space Sync for Confluence to synchronize pages from a master spaces to other spaces.  This means I end up with a pages which are created multiple times within my confluence instance.  So if I search for a keyword, I end up with multiple identical results, this is because the same page is being returned as a result, once for each space that contains the page.  

I would like to be able to exclude these duplicated pages from the search results.  Is there away to do this yet in Confluence.

[Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_]

Hi @Rhys Gottwald ,

I've never used Space Sync but I'm guessing if you could use Confluence search (quick and advanced) to just filter out spaces you'd like. For example, just to display results from master space(s).

I'm not sure what's the use case, but would just embedding (or inserting) an existing page into new/other pages be better solution than duplicating content?

Cheers,
Tobi

[Kristian Klima]

Hi @Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_ 

Apps like Space Sync and Comala Publishing do duplicate content but they serve very specific use cases that embedding/inserting pages/excerpts just would not suffice.

(I'm using both apps as workflow tools and to ensure that I can chain apps from various vendors - they actually simplify content management :) ) 

[Rhys Gottwald]

The Include Page macros would be first prize here but in my case there are a few issues with it in its current form.  We give our customers guest access to our Confluence instance.

1. You need at least view access to the page being included to see the content,  so the user accessing the data will need at least view access to the Space that contains the "master page" and the site they are viewing the inserted page on.  Guest accounts can only have access to one Space at a time.
2. Contents of an included page is not returned in search results,  which is what we want for our staff but for our customers it is not ideal.

[Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_]

Ah got it. I've never had this particular requirement so I could say this is a valuable insight. Thanks guys!

As for filtering content, I've managed to find a suggestion related to 'saving filters/advanced search', so this might be something that could help in these scenarios (but again, it needs to get developed first): CONFCLOUD-75285: Save/Remember search filters 👀

[Kristian Klima]

Hi @Rhys Gottwald 

I'm using Space Sync AND Comala Publishin so I know the pain :) 

You can just quickly restrict the search results in the modal with Filter by Space:

You can search within the space by page title:

(You can also use Content manager to search by title)

What I wasn't able to figure out was restricting content to a space when creating links, but since the space is always identified, me and my team are just extra careful to always link to the correct space's page.

[Rhys Gottwald]

Thanx Kristian, I would prefer to not have to manually filter, although it looks like that is the only way to get it done.  It would be nice if there was a way to apply a filter before the results were returned.

[Kristian Klima]

@Rhys Gottwald 

I have an idea.....

I wonder if you could restrict what appears in search with permissions.

Scenario:

Specific users (groups) can only access content in specific spaces (target spaces of your syncs).

So you restrict those users / groups from seeing other spaces (and the source space). This way, only the pages from spaces they can access will appear in their search results.

(It may not work for all use-case scenarios with synced spaces but it does work)

[Rhys Gottwald]

I am leaning that way, in our environment it would not be a complete solution but it might work.

[Kristian Klima]

Yeah, it's how we approach it, it's about minimizing the impact.