Is there a way to ensure that Tasks are not duplicated when copying Confluence Pages?

[Ellen Gruebbeling]

Hello,

I am reaching out regarding questions/request for additional information regarding the structuring of reoccurring meeting notes/minutes that are maintained in Confluence.

There is a reoccurring meeting that our team tracks meeting agenda/minutes that they are currently copying the previous meeting minutes to update and create the next meeting agenda page and then copying the meeting agenda page to update for the meeting minutes and so on. Although it appears to have helped with PDF export issues (as there were issues exporting previous version/page histories directly for other meetings in Confluence), they are now encountering issues where the tasks that are within the agenda and minutes pages are being duplicated, as the pages are copied to create the next page (minutes copied to create next agenda and agenda copied to create minutes page).

Is there a way to copy tasks in Confluence without duplicating them (so that they are recognized as already existing in Confluence) or copying a Confluence page without duplicating the tasks included in that page? Or would it be recommended the tasks are removed from previous versions after copying and updating the most recent agenda and/or minutes page?

Our team has discussed moving away from the tasks gadget in Confluence pages and instead creating Jira issues directly in minutes in place of tasks. As there is no direct way to include tasks and assigned Jira issues/tasks in one place or the team to reference all of their assigned work in both Jira and Confluence at this time, one possible option could be to replace the tasks with Jira task issues. Therefore, when the meeting agenda page or meeting minutes pages are copied, it would still copy the Jira task and task in and of itself, but would not duplicate the issues, just relist it with that specific issue key.

Overall, any recommendations for best practices on maintaining these pages in Confluence and recommendations on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[Ted Nieblas]

Hello @Ellen Gruebbeling

I would recommend that you create a template from which you can create new meeting notes/minutes from. On this page you can have a Task report macro which displays all tasks from pages that meet your criteria (space, page, labels, created by, etc.). You would have a separate section in your page for adding new tasks from that specific meeting and they would show up automatically in any instance of the page created by the template without duplicating the task.

You can even filter the report to only show incomplete tasks to reduce noise.

[Ellen Gruebbeling]

Hello @Ted Nieblas

That is a great suggestion- thank you! The team tends to use the previous version that is copied as a template, as it contains the most recent updates. From the copy, they may add updates or new topics for discussion and/or remove closed topics. However, some of the meeting minutes/topics may be ongoing and the team uses the previous version to build upon. How would you recommend creating a template based upon this configuration? Create the first template with the most recent meeting minutes?

With regards to the task report gadget- I think this is a great suggestion, especially if the team was able to create a specific label that would be specific to these meetings/agendas. To confirm, would the team be able to add new tasks to each individual meeting minutes during meeting discussion (as notes are taken sequentially) and those would appear in the overall template as well as subsequent meeting agendas/minutes? Or would they have these new tasks have to be separated?

Thank you again for your assistance and recommendations!

[Ted Nieblas]

@Ellen Gruebbeling

This is an interesting problem. I can see the usefulness of using the previous version as the starting point for the reasons you specified. In this case I would consider using a different approach such as having a single page that is updated at every meeting. If you want to keep a snapshot of each meeting, you could save a copy after each meeting or export it to PDF for reference. There are obvious advantages and disadvantages to each approach, but we don't live in a perfect world :).

I have used the single page/archive methodology myself in the past. The issue it has is that the Task Report macro will continue to update so you lose any state of a given task at a given time (thus the PDF export). This may or may not be an issue for you so take that into consideration.

All that being said, there is nothing preventing you from creating the new page from the current one instead of using a template. Just add the Task Report macro to the page (I recommend at the bottom), and they can add/remove topics for the next meeting. They will also have to remove any tasks and start from a blank section, or you will run into your initial issue of duplicate tasks.