Filter Pages by Page Status

[Celeste Ramirez]

Hello everyone!

I was curious if there were a way to create a filter that would display all of the pages in a space that have a specific status?

This would be an amazing widget to put on or near the top level of a space so users can see what pages are in progress or ready for review, and perhaps streamline the process of vetting the information in our pages by multiple people.

Thanks for your time!

[Max Foerster - K15t · Accepted solution]

Hey @Celeste Ramirez , welcome to the community! 👋🏼 You have a few ways to address this in Confluence at the moment. I would like to expand on @Bill Bailey's answer because it only works under certain conditions/with specific Confluence macros.

The most important thing is that it does not work with the latest page status feature recently added to Confluence. 

I'll be happy to explain in detail two ways that I hope will help you.

Reporting on page statuses with the status macro and page properties

You need to use the status macro and page properties. For the report, you use the page properties report.

You add your data and the status macro to a table in the page properties macro and can pull it into a report based on a page label. The table exists on the page in Confluence. It's pretty straightforward. 😁

That's an example of the table design on the page with some metadata like the status:

The report will look something like this. You can even customize the report a bit.

This approach has a huge disadvantage because the status is only used as a macro and can be edited by any user. So you can't specify a fixed list and have a standardized set of statuses. You will have to educate the users on which statuses work best. 

The second disadvantage is that the macro for the report on the page properties does not provide filters for the report's content. You can only filter what to pull into the report based on a few things like labels, parent pages, titles, contributors, etc.

You can read more about it in the Confluence documentation:

• Insert the status macro
• Insert the page properties macro 
• Insert the page properties report macro 

Reporting on Confluence page statuses (content statuses) with Orderly databases for Confluence

If you want to use the page status (or content status like it is called in the UI) feature in Confluence spaces, you will need to tackle this differently. Mainly because it's still missing one or two essential features:

• You have no way to quickly get an overview of page statuses as they are not supported by the page property report and the Confluence search
• You cannot quickly edit the status without having to open the page editor and edit the page itself.

Start using the regular page status on pages like you would like to. That's the very easy part. 😄 If you now want to report on them and also have a way to be able to edit them from one central location (or on that page) without using the editor, I suggest having a look at our app Orderly Databases for Confluence on the Atlassian Marketplace. 

It's like tables and page properties but on steroids (and in smart) 😄 We recently added support for the page status field to the app to work with it more easily internally and to have a workaround for the given limitations. 😕

The gif below shows you a snippet of a table in Orderly with linked pages and their page status (and some other metadata you usually add to pages), which you can not only view but also edit directly. And yes, these are the page status name you have configured in that space the page is living in. So there's no messing up status names or creating inconsistencies. 🤘🏼

How do you get to this result?

In Orderly, the data exists not only on the page but in a database. So you don't have only the static table on a page and pull the information into a report. The information lives in this database and can be displayed and edited from everywhere.

I'll break it down to the most necessary steps on how to get the report:

1. Create a database
2. Change the title field to page link
3. Add a page status field and reference the title field
4. Create a new entry linking it to a page
5. The page status is pulled into the database and you can edit it there as well

I recorded a quick and dirty screencast for you to see what I did. 😄 Including me forgetting the page name to add it to the database. You can also see that you can filter the database view. And later on save the filter as a standard view in macros to display a report on pages

Let me know if you have any questions. I'm happy to help! :)

Best, Max

[Bill Bailey]

Just to be clear, I am not suggestion the use of the status macro, but rather have a key for Status, and then whatever value the user wants for status. Gets around a lot of the limitations.

[Celeste Ramirez]

Thanks for the detailed feedback Max! I will keep these possible solutions in mind!

[Polina Roma · Accepted solution]

If you're seeing this 2023 - note that the app mentioned in this thread's very first response, Orderly, was apparently so good that it got bought by Confluence. The newly acquired product is now called Confluence Databases and had a soft launch (currently in Early Access). Not sure on timing of general access. 

See more on this Atlassian Community post

[Iris Althoff]

Thank you for this comment, it saved me a lot of time :-)

[Janet Dixon]

With the new "Page Status" feature, there should be a macro that can be used to list pages within a space based on a specific status.  To edit the pages to add a Status macro to take the place of the new Page Status feature, just defeats the purpose of the new Page Status feature when you really need or want to know what pages have what status throughout the system.  Please don't complicate things.  Just develop a feature with thought in mind please.

[Levente Szabo _Midori_]

If you want to look beyond the 5 statuses available in Confluence, take a look at the page status macro and the automated Confluence page status management feature by Better Content Archiving for Confluence.

• Get an overview of all page statuses across your pages with a content status overview
• Start using the built-in 19 statues and create your own without limits
• Create content status schemes to apply to one or multiple spaces
• Automate page status classification based on your custom rules
• Have the app take action automatically based on status like archiving, deletion, page reminders, or other notification emails.
• Include an automatically updating page status macro to any page

Read more on Confluence page statuses or watch this tutorial video to see how to view Confluence pages by status:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaAVluzLTEw

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

[Anastasia Bek _Stiltsoft_]

@Celeste Ramirez , Hi! 

Based on your need for a way to create a filter that would display all of the pages in a space that have a specific status, our Handy Macros for Confluence app can be a good fit. It is a bundle of different macros and we freshly released Handy Page Status Report to compliment our Handy Page Status Please see the examples below:

While Handy Page Status allows you to do the following:

• Indicate the Confluence documentation status.
• Create status options that work best for your company process
• Reuse these status sets across pages for status consistency
• Make updates in one click from the page view mode

Its data can be filtered into a report with following data:

• Confluence spaces where the status is set
• Handy Page Status sets
• Handy Page Status options
• Confluence users who set the status
• Handy Page Status dates

You can try our app on the Atlassian Marketplace to see the Handy Macros in action. 

Cheers,

Anastasia

[Drew Hart]

I just logged the following request to see if the native page status can be used for reporting and macros CONFCLOUD-75906 The ability to view all the Page status in a single place within Confluence

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

An update to our app now allows you to use the native Confluence Content status in the page properties macro and in the page properties report macro.  This allows you to report on the content status of pages.  Our app is called Document Metadata for Confluence Cloud. (paid)

[Jørgen Scheel]

Can you please explain how would use that to get the status on all articles in a space and have it listed in reports for each status on a page.

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

Hi @Jørgen Scheel ,

In order to have the content status on all pages, and in e.g. a space overview you need to use the page properties macro.  This is explained here: https://www.phaselockedsoftware.com/en/document-metadata/documentation/#content-status (you have to read the information on the page properties macro).

Please contact our support if you have any further question.

[Mike Bowen]

Hi Marc,

Thank you for sharing the Document Metadata for the Confluence Cloud (paid) plugin. It has solved my problem completely and works perfectly in a page properties & page properties report.

I got so sick and tired of manually updating the status on every page of my ISO 27001 ISMS, using the silly status macro.

Removing it recently was the last straw, but when I saw Confluence had the in-built page status, but no way of listing all the pages with a particular status, it got me thinking someone must have a solution for this and it was that plugin. It is a good price as well per month making it a no-brainer. 

I have a question though, What is the little square with a pencil icon above the status, which appears in the page properties report? See the screenshot attached. 

Kind regards,

Mike

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

Hi @Mike Bowen ,

Thank you for your kind words!

The little pencil icon is there to indicate that this page status was "inserted" by Document Metadata for Confluence Cloud.

Please contact our support directly if your use case needs this to change, we like to help.

[Bill Bailey]

Yes it is possible! You need to use the page-properties-macro on each page, and have one value as your status. Then you can have a report using the page-properties-report-macro to pull the information. I have used this structure many times as a way to store page attributes that can be easily queried.

[Celeste Ramirez]

Thank you! I would like to make use of the built-in page status feature, but I will keep this in mind if I change my approach!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Community!

How are you storing the page "status"?

[Celeste Ramirez]

Thank you!

I am using this feature!

I am hoping to create a page where I can post a report with the pages that are In progress and Ready for review so my team members can see what pages still need input or approval.

[Kieran Donnelly]

So annoying that many features come out half-baked. It's mostly useless in that one cannot report on this new status feature.

[Tim Lamoureux]

I agree, I am looking for (and hoping there is) a way to list pages having a specific page status without having to purchase another app from the marketplace. Otherwise, I do not see the point of that "feature"

[pks]

@attlasian any Progress with this?