Update content status with Confluence automation

[Bram Tulloch]

Is there a way to add or change the content status (the thing at the TOP of the page) as an action using Confluence automation?

We are already successful in using automation to alert authors of out dated pages, but we'd like something visual on the page to highlight the out dated page and the content status seems like a good place to start.

Any help is appreciated.

[Trevor Angle · Accepted solution]

Update, August 28: I'm happy to report that there is now a "Change page status" action in automation! See community post about it here

Old answer:

Hi @Bram Tulloch, this is Trevor from the Confluence automation team. At this time there is no action for updating page statuses from a rule. I think your two best options in the meantime are:

1. Use a page label instead of a page status for this purpose
2. Use the "Send web request" action component to update the page status through the Confluence API, as suggested by @Alex Koxaras _Relational_. You can see the documentation for the specific API endpoint you would need to use here (note that in the documentation "status" means something different, instead they use the term "content state" for the thing that goes at the top of a page).

[Kristján Mathiesen]

Hi @Trevor Angle 

Can you pretty please put the action "Update Page Status" on higher up on the Christmas wishlist? We are also needing this same functionality - having an Automation rule change the page status.

Using 2 "systems" to keep tabs on page statuses (i.e. labels and "page status") is not very viable and clear for end users, alas my request above :)

Thanks,
KGM

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

@Bram Tulloch  Here is an alternative approach that is more focused on content lifecycle management than managing separate automation rules, is more scalable and more intuitive for your users.

In my opinion, using automation rules are nice until your site is small and your notification rule are simple, but after a certain scale/complexity the followings start to hurt:

1. You have to maintaining a growing set of automation rules, one or two per status (one to set the status, one to email the contents in that status).
2. When new spaces are created, you have to add those to the scope of each automation rule. That's a PITA.
3. The Send email action doesn't allow sending page lists, so you will mailbomb your users if you have 20+ pages to notify about.
4. You will send either too much or too little emails, because the configuration possibilities are not granular enough.

---

Instead, I suggest you try the Better Content Archiving for Confluence app which avoids the previous limitations by its design decisions. (Discl. it's an app our team develops, but it is laser-focused on content lifecycle management, unlike Confluence Automation.)

Let's see some quick hints!

As for statuses, you can easily configure a CQL condition for each page status (and optionally another condition that will be tested on its ancestors, meaning that page status can be inherited with our app!). For example, this will change the page to "Expired" 200 days after its last update:

Note that statuses are grouped to schemes and schemes can be associated to any space, making this as reusable as schemes generally are in Jira. (There is even a default scheme, so you can choose which scheme the new spaces will automatically pick up.)

After you set up the scheme, the app will maintain the page statuses in the background, no need for manual work from your team members. Your users can see the status of each content in the top with meta-information like last view/update and analytics like how many individual users saw it in the last 30 days:

Having the content statuses automated, in a totally similar way you can set up automatic notifications and group these to notification schemes. Each notification has a schedule, a CQL filter, recipients, customizable subject and email body. Here is how to send the list of expired pages to those who can potentially update or archive that:

They will receive nice email notification with page lists (not a separate email for each individual page!):

I would like to, but I'm not going to write more. If you think it is worth your time, start a free trial now

+ The documentation is here (there is a lot more features than these!).

[Chae won]

Hello, I came across this article while searching for how to use the 'Remind teammates about incomplete tasks when scheduled (recurring)' feature among Confluence automation templates.
Our team doesn't subscribe to the 'Better Content Archiving for Confluence' app. In this case, it's impossible to find incomplete tasks in confluence, right?

[Trevor Angle]

Hi @Chae won,

You shouldn't need to subscribe to any third party apps in order to use that automation template. Are you having some issues using the template?

Trevor Angle - Confluence automation team

[Chae won]

Some automation templates work by triggering the status of a Confluence document, but currently Confluence documents in our project cannot specify status.

Isn't it only possible to specify document status if you subscribe to the 'Better Content Archiving for Confluence' app?

Thank you

[Levente Szabo _Midori_]

@Chae won 

Your exact use case is not fully clear here. What do you mean by "Confluence documents in our project cannot specify status"? Do you mean you don't see the option to add or change page status?

Do you want to remind people about "tasks" or send reminders about pages that are in certain statuses?

Confluence Cloud has a limited version of page statuses (5 statuses managed globally). Better Content Archiving for Confluence allows you to use many more custom statuses that are applied to pages automatically based on your custom rules.

You can also sync automated notification emails to statuses, so you can remind team members and content owners about pages in certain statuses automatically and periodically. (As explained by Arom Gombas above.)

Feel free to reach out to the Midori support team to discuss your exact use case and see how you can use and extend the built-in Confluence features so you get maximum value!

For further learning, here are two relevant blogs about automatic Confluence page statuses and notifications.

[Erki Tammik]

@Trevor Angle 

Are there any plans to add simple content lifecycle management features?
Yes, there are some good apps, but why not add a few simple features for the base Confluence?

What's the point of having page statuses and similar features if you can't even make simple changes with automation?
It would be useful if users could create a page, add a due date to it, and then we could use that due date to automatically update the page's status.
This functionality would grant us better control over outdated pages. I would use this with the upcoming Confluence Databases feature.

[Trevor Angle]

I'm happy to report a "change page status" action was recently added to confluence automation.

[Adrian Hülsmann - B1NARY]

Hi @Bram Tulloch ,

Confluence automation is a starting point, but you will soon hit limits regarding identifying outdated pages and establishing true content lifecycle management.

For instance, it would be beneficial to have dedicated views for showing pages to review or archive and have analytics on your review process and overall content quality.

For this reason, you might look at Breeze, available via the Atlassian Marketplace.

It is far beyond the scope of Confluence automation and automatically identifies outdated pages and implements review and archiving workflows for keeping your pages up-to-date.

Breeze is a feature-packed content lifecycle management solution and includes

• automated content analyses,
• page review and archiving workflows,
• page and space ownership,
• reports and notifications,
• bulk archiving and deletion,
• analytics,
• data export for all your content, ownership, and status information
• and more to update outdated pages quickly and enhance collaboration.

👉 Give it a try, or feel free to schedule an appointment with me for a personal demo.

Cheers and all the best, Adrian from B1NARY (we are the developers of Breeze)

[Bram Tulloch]

I'll look into this.

[Alex Koxaras _Relational_]

Hi @Bram Tulloch 

You can use REST API to get the info about the page status

GET /wiki/api/v2/pages/{page-id}/properties

which returns a value of the following format:

value": "{\"contentState\":{\"id\":435159063,\"color\":\"#2684ff\",\"name\":\"wip\"},\"version\":2,\"isSpaceState\":true,\"isNewState\":false,\"setterAAID\":\"5f9fb7c1c2e5390077abf628\"}",

and most likely you have to use the

PUT /wiki/api/v2/pages/{id}

to update the page with the specific property on its body. I haven't try it to be honest, but I think that it will work.