What is the best way to create a Multi Page template in Confluence?

[Ashley Jean]

My company wants to setup a standardized page structure for organizing the details of a project from planning documents through testing and acceptance documents. Such as the following, where each item is a page:

• Project Main
  • plan
  • requirements
  • design
  • development
  • test
  • implementation

It would be preferable if this can be done within an existing space, however, I'm open to creating a separate 'space' per project.

Is there any way I can create a template of some sort that my project managers can use to generate a project space or sub-space?

As a potential alternate, is there anything available that makes it possible to insert Add Page using 'x' template links to an instructional page that would guide users to add/create the necessary pages?

I'm open to work around suggestions as well.

[Ashley Jean · Accepted solution]

While some of the suggestions may work, none of the suggested plug-ins appear to be available in OnDemand.

Instead, I created separate templates for each page that my Project Managers need to create and gave them an instructional confluence page telling them which ones to create and in what order. It's not ideal, but it seems to be the most reasonable solution without another clear option for OnDemand.

[Michael Roff]

I do this at the moment using a template that then spawns other pages. To spawn the other pages, I use the create-page plugin. There are some issues with this approach, one being the child pages can never be deleted unless you control WHEN the child pages are created. I do this by placing the create-pages inside a report which checks the time of creation for the parent page. This then allows child pages to be deleted if required.

This is the code I use to create child and grandchild pages from a template. You need reporting, replace-and-render and create-page plugins for this code to work.

{report-block}
{local-reporter:content:creation date}
{date-filter:creation date|afterValue=-60s|format=hh:mm:ss dd MMM, yyyy}
{local-reporter}
{report-body}
{replace-and-render} {replace-body}
{create-child:zzzEngineering -%title%|parent=@self|template=Blank|render=once}
   {create-child:zzzAnalysis -%title%|parent=zzzEngineering -%title%|template=Blank|render=once}
      {create-child:zzzLiterature -%title%|parent=zzzAnalysis -%title%|template=Blank|render=once}
      {create-child:zzzReports -%title%|parent=zzzAnalysis -%title%|template=Blank|render=once}
      {create-child:zzzResearch -%title%|parent=zzzAnalysis -%title%|template=Blank|render=once}
      {create-child:zzzSimulation -%title%|parent=zzzAnalysis -%title%|template=Blank|render=once}
{create-child:zzzMarketing -%title%|parent=@self|template=Blank|render=once}
   {create-child:zzzMarket Analysis -%title%|parent=zzzMarketing -%title%|template=Blank|render=once}
{replace-body} {replace-item:%title%} {report-info:report:root content > page:title}{replace-item} {replace-and-render}
{report-body}
{report-block}

[Adam Carrgilson]

Are you able to provides links to the reporting, replace-and-render and create-page plugins you used for this please? I'd love to follow your example. Many Thanks.

[EPS Software Engineering AG]

Hi Ashley,

Our Add-on Page Tree Creator works a bit different than the Confluence blueprints / templates. The PTC-templates are based on normal confluence pages and can have entire page trees. Start the process by clicking a button or choosing the menu item, fill out the form and the page tree gets created.

Creating a page tree template is nearly as simple as creating a normal Confluence page tree. The only difference is that you can use the PTC-Tags and if it's needed one or two PTC-Macros.

Try our Live Examples (no registration needed).

Marketplace link: Page Tree Creator.

Regards,
Stephan

[Peter Poulos]

Rak, can you explain how you use

[R Condon]

You could use the scaffolding plugin...

[R Condon]

You could use the scaffolding plugin...

[Joseph Ramsey]

@Rak Are you using Confluence OnDemand and inserting this Wiki Markup code???

[R Condon]

no, I'm not..

[Peter Poulos]

@Rak, can you explain how you use scaffolding to create the template above.

Basically, if I create a page called xyz project how can the child pages be created or at least linked too using scaffolding?

For example a template project with a page name xyz creates links to the following

• xyz plan
• xyz requirements
• xyz design
• xyz development
• xyz test
• xyz implementation

More impressively would be to have within those pages structure as well. For example within xyz plan it would have some headings like Introduction, Due Date etc. Is this possible with Scaffolding?

[R Condon]

I use scaffolding to create a number of different templates. one for the project, one for each sub-page. Each page has headings and structure. One thing of note is once a page has scaffolding, the whole page is a template...

I link the pages manually to a project with a field in the scaffold - ie. Project . which is a drop-down-list of the projects in the project pages.

Then using reporting I summarise all the data from the sub-pages on each project, and have a programme summary page done with reporting too.

There are some good examples in the getsatisfaction help. But as noted above, this in not in an on-demand environment.

eg. http://community.customware.net/customware/topics/reporting_on_data_across_multiple_pages_and_on_multiple_rows_of_data_within_table_data_on_those_pages

Reporting on data across multiple pages, and on multiple rows of data within table-data on those pages

[Bob Swift (personal)]

How to create pages from templates is one technique. OnDemand is limited in what you can do within Confluence. Download sites can use CLI Plugin for Confluence to provide a self help page to do this kind of thing.