How to reuse content but include some differences?

[Ruby Cheng]

Is it possible to reuse content but include some differences? For example, I have three different products, A, B and C, and they all share the same configuration steps. I want to reuse these steps for A, B and C but with different product names, IP addresses, etc. I've tried excerpt macro and include page macro, but they cannot help me reuse contents while including some differences. Is there a way to achieve this?

[Matt Reiner _K15t_ · Accepted solution]

Hey @Ruby Cheng

There isn’t a great way to handle this in Confluence out of the box, but my team makes two apps, Scroll Documents and Variants for Scroll Documents that can help you do just what you’re looking for.

You’ll be able to create variants of your content that readers can pick from, so people can pick Product A from a drop down and read the setup steps with the correct IP address and other settings.

You can see it in action in this video: https://youtu.be/deQOXnbuTQc

[Ruby Cheng]

Hi @Matt Reiner _K15t_ 

Thank you for your reply. I've watched the video and looks like "Conditional Content" might satisfy my need, but I am wondering if I create varients at paragraph level, when updating the contents, do I have to update the contents more than one time?

For example, if I would like to add a few words to the paragraphs below, can I just add them to the Data Center paragraph, and Varients for Scroll Document would help me to automatically add these words to the Cloud paragraph so I don't have to add the same thing twice?

Thank you!

[Matt Reiner _K15t_]

You would have to enter the text twice in this case, which I know isn’t always ideal.

If you’re writing a lot of text that’s exactly the same, you could consider using this in conjunction with the page include or excerpt include macros. This way you could write the similar content in one place and then include it in both conditional content macros.