There's No Place Like Home (Page) - Live learning followup

[#1]

If I learned anything last week it's that I didn't pack nearly enough Wizard Oz references into the 'No place like home' live learning! Despite that, it was a great sessions.

Check it out here in case you missed it

I've also got this shorter video explaining what home pages are

Ive realized a lot of groups don't make time to build out useful home pages. This is a bit of a shame as the home page is the first thing someone sees when they go to space. Not having a well though out home page represents a lost opportunity to engage your audience and help them find something they need.

We went over a number of topics that help us make better home pages - including things like:

1. Formatting - using layouts (columns), dividers (which oddly proves divisive), and macros to improve the look of the page. We also explored the Card and Carousel macros (including a new feature on cards that makes them dynamic) to see how they can give some visual pop to the page.

2. Karma (the app, not the philosophy) - this is a free cloud app that drastically improves our ability to visually layout a page (it's night and day compared to the stock features). It's got a paid tier, but I highly recommend the free one as it has a bunch of features that will supercharge your pages

3. Functionality - a number of folks in chat asked how we can make home.oages dynamic. The answer is macros! In the training we covered the Content by Label macro (pulls in content based on labels, which updates the home page as new.content is added), but there are many other ways to automagically pull in info.

Interactivity

There was also a lot of great interactions in chat! My favorite was an easter egg that some put into Confluence… they put a page outside the hierarchy called “open the pod bay doors Hal” so it only showed up in search. Then they added a Hal image to their home page with a search bar under it and if someone asked it to open the pod bay doors they went to the page that just say “I”m sorry dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”.

A great idea someone shared was that they include deep search on their home pages. Basically this means adding a 'live search' macro and restricting it to the current space. This instantly makes it easier for folks to find things - and to ensure they don't get distracted. That macro also has some great settings that help you filter the search (for a sample by content type or label).

The best tip/trick that I learned was change the home page in order to 'archive' a content structure. Archiving in Confluence removes items from the content tree, but also doesn't maintain any structure (e.g. there's no parent/child relationship in the archive). To get around this we can change the home page, and then use 'Reorder' to move the 'archived' pages out of the home pages tree. They won't appear in the content tree, but are still easily searchable.

Questions from chat

There were a lot of great questions coming in from Chat - including things like:

1. How can we make our home pages dynamic?

   1. Macros! There's several that help pull in content dynamically, but by adding these you'll get rid of the need to add new links every week.

   2. The 'cards' macro (I believe this is cloud only) now supports dynamic content

2. What kind of coffee are you drinking?

   1. Costcos Kirkland Signature brand 'sumatra' roast. ☕

   2. Although if you want to send me better coffee please feel free!

3. Does Karma have templates?

   1. Yes, it comes preloaded with a number of useful templates.

4. Where can I get examples of good home pages?

   1. I’ll look for more, but this page has some good ones

5. Why can't I see the company hub?

   1. The Hub isn’t available in Data Center, but it can be hidden by admins in Cloud, so it’s possible your admin has simply turned it off.

6. Can people see my drafts?

   1. No! Drafted pages are only visible to the creator, so until you publish it the page doesn’t exist….

7. Can people see unpublished changes?

   1. Yes! Someone editing a page will see unpublished changes, although if they don’t have edit access they will only see the published content.

8. What is the company hub?

   1. The company hub is an instance-wide home page that is always accessible in the nav bar (unless your admin turns it off!). It’s a great place to add information you think everyone at your org will find useful.

9. Can I chance the owner of the home page?

   1. Sure can! The current owner and space admins can adjust the owner.

[Amanda Barber]

[Patricia Modispacher _appanvil_]

Thank you, @Robert Hean!

Unfortunately, I missed your session due to my own ACE 😂

First: There could have been no stronger reference than the title of your live learning ... I immediately got it and felt the urge to watch Judy Garland and then the Wicked movie in a row and compare everything 🎉

I really love that you sum up the key essence of your session for those who missed it. Thank you so much!

You rock. 🤘🏼