Curating Confluence - Day 4 - Templates

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Curating Confluence - Templates

Using Templates in Confluence: A Guide to Enhancing Site Consistency

The theme of this series of posts is that curation is key to a high-functioning Confluence site. Ensuring consistency makes it easier for users to create, find, and use the content in the Confluence site. No single feature of Confluence is more important to quality curation than templates.

Templates provide the creator with a structure and format that speeds the creation of content. Using templates consistently allows readers to anticipate what information they will find on the page and helps them to absorb the important parts of the content quicky.

Imagine, for instance, that your HR department has created a series of pages to help new employees understand the different forms that they are required to fill out daily, weekly, quarterly, and so on. But each page is structured differently. Some have a picture of the form at the top and others have no picture at all. Some include a dictionary of terms and others just a bullet list. New users are going to be lost and may quickly become frustrated with the process of being onboarded.

Enter Templates! A standard template for describing HR forms will structure the information needed to understand each form in a standard, consistent way. Your template might dictate that a PDF of the form be embedded at the top of the page. Then comes a field-by-field description. This might be followed by a dictionary or glossary of each term and acronym that needs further definition. Finally, you have a set of links to Frequently Asked Questions. Confluence can automatically suggest other related links to this form page when you use labels, as described in a prior post.

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Confluence offers two types of templates: Space Templates (specific to a space) and Global Templates (available across the site). Properly designed and managed templates can greatly improve site organization and user experience.

Global versus Space Templates

1. Global Templates

• Available across all spaces in the Confluence site.
• Ideal for common processes used organization-wide (e.g., meeting notes, project plans).
• Help standardize practices across teams and departments.

2. Space Templates

• Specific to individual spaces and tailored for team or project-specific needs.
• Useful for processes unique to a department (e.g., HR onboarding checklists, marketing campaign briefs).

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To Promote or not to Promote

You might think that every template that you create should be promoted so that it shows up at the top of the template list. You would be wrong. Not every template should be promoted. Here is a guide to making that decision.

When to Promote a Template

Promoting a template makes it more visible and accessible to users. Use promotion when:

• The template is widely applicable across teams or the organization.
• A standard format is critical for compliance, audits, or documentation quality.
• Teams consistently create similar content, such as meeting notes or incident reports.

When Not to Promote a Template

Avoid promoting a template if:

• It’s highly specialized and used by only one small group.
• The template requires frequent updates, which could cause confusion.
• It’s still being tested or refined; ensure it’s polished before promoting.

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Template Creation

1. Identify Common Use Cases:
   Determine repetitive tasks or document types that could benefit from a consistent structure.
   • Examples: Meeting agendas, project retrospectives, client onboarding guides.
2. Design Templates with Key Sections:
   Include clear headings, placeholders, and instructions for users.
   • Tip: Use tables, checkboxes, and macros (e.g., task lists) to enhance usability.
3. Test Templates Before Deployment:
   Get feedback from users to ensure the template meets their needs.
4. Promote Global Templates for Visibility:
   Navigate to General Configuration > Templates to promote frequently used templates for easy access.
5. Train Users on Templates:
   Provide quick tutorials or guides to help users understand when and how to use each template. Don’t forget about the power of Loom to create quick and powerful job aids.

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Example: Effective Use of Templates for Site Consistency

Scenario:

Your organization is experiencing inconsistency in how teams document projects, making it difficult for leadership to monitor progress across departments.

Solution: Implementing Standardized Templates

You can address this lack of consistency by creating Global and Space Templates that will help your team created well-structured and informative pages.

You might start by creating a Global Template for how management wants to view a Project Plan. This template would include the following sections:

1. Project Overview: Objectives, scope, and key milestones.
2. Current Status: Traffic-light indicators for project health.
3. Team Members: A table that lists the team members along with their responsibilities. Use @mentions to make it easy for someone to quickly get contact information for each team member.
4. Timeline: Milestones with dates. You might recommend or even require the use of the Roadmap macro to provide a depiction of the timeline with its significant milestones
5. Risks and Dependencies: Identified risks and mitigation strategies.

Promote this template so that all teams can easily find it. Also disable the out-of-the-box blueprints that might be used instead of this customized Project Plan template. This reduces the chance that teams accidentally use a template other than the one that you have created.

Space Templates:
Since Project Plans may depend on changes, the IT department may want to create a Change Management template specific to their space, including the following sections:

• Change description:
• Impact analysis.
• Approval workflow (with embedded Jira links).

This template would be the basis for documenting the Change Request(s) and linking it to the Jira ticket(s) that track its approval and implementation workflow.

Result

When a new project is initiated, the Project Plan template is used to document the relevant aspects of the project, making it easy for management to review the relevant details and status of the project as it moves through its process. When system changes are needed to implement the project, the IT department uses a consistent form for documenting and tracking the requested change. The project plan page can easily create a dynamic view into all of the requested changes, surfacing the overall status of the project for all stakeholders.

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Potential Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

• Overloading with Templates: Too many templates can overwhelm users. Use promotion to highlight key ones and archive unused templates. This applies not only your custom templates but to the out-of-the-box templates as well. If you have created a standard Requirements template, then archive the one that Atlassian provides.
• Lack of Updates: Regularly review and revise templates to keep them relevant. It is just as important to keep you Templates up to date as the content that you create.
• Poor Design: Templates that are overly complex or unclear may discourage usage. Keep them simple and intuitive. Templates should reduce the work required to provide the relevant content.

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Conclusion

Templates are a cornerstone of a well-structured Confluence site. When managed effectively, they foster consistency, improve efficiency, and make information accessible. By balancing global and space templates, and strategically promoting the right ones, organizations can ensure their Confluence site becomes a trusted hub for collaboration and documentation.