Confluence administration: Make your team's content sing [Atlassian University Live webinar]

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As part of an ongoing series, Atlassian University offered this free webinar to strengthen your Atlassian product skills and learn directly from Atlassian experts. In this webinar, you will learn how to manage users and content in Confluence spaces. We demonstrated how your teams can utilize out-of-the-box Confluence functionality to effectively build and manage spaces and content. 

Watch the recording to:

• Discover the features of space administration that help you manage teams and their content.

• Dive deep into macro and template usage

• Consider content solutions for different use cases

This webinar is intended for Confluence content managers, Confluence administrators, and those preparing for the Confluence Space Administration Pro Skills Badge. Topics are relevant to Confluence Cloud.

Some top questions from the webinar—and their answers—are below!

Question: Why are labels important?

Answer: Labels help keep your content organized by tagging pages. Here is Atlassian’s documentation: Use labels to organize your content

A few things to remember for labels:

• Pages created from templates will have labels added automatically.

• You can add more than one label to a page.

• You can search for a specific label in Confluence’s advanced search.

There are several macros dedicated to labels:

Labels list macro

Learn how to show a list of all Confluence Cloud pages in a space with a certain label using the labels list macro.

Related labels macro

Create a list of labels from every Confluence Cloud page which has one or more labels in common with the current page using the related labels macro.

Popular labels macro

Display the most popular labels used throughout your Confluence Cloud site or within a space using the popular labels macro.

Content by label macro

Learn how to display lists of Confluence Cloud pages, blog posts, or attachments that have particular labels with the content by label macro.

Recently used labels macro

Show a list of the Confluence Cloud labels that have been most recently added to a page, blog post, or attachment with the recently used labels macro.

Question: What are templates and blueprints, and what is the difference between them?

Answer: Templates and Blueprints can be utilized to create content with pre-formatted pages. They have extra benefits by creating indexes in spaces so you can view see a list of similar pages with a single click. Also, labels are applied automatically when a page is created from a template.

Confluence comes with many built-in templates and admins can create new ones or modify existing templates. You can also purchase templates from the Atlassian Marketplace.

Blueprints are sets of page templates that have additional features, such as additional formatting, embedded social features such as “at” mentions, and that enable creation of content in other applications such as Jira.

As they are templates, they assist users in easily creating pre-formatted pages in a standardized, guided manner. Blueprints help maintain consistency across teams by organizing work and information in a uniform way, making things easy to find. Using templates is also a good way to bring new teams into Confluence.

A few features specific to blueprints include the following:

• Pages created using specific blueprints are automatically organized into an indexed list for easy access and page overviews.

• Blueprints are tailored precisely to specific use cases, such as team meeting notes, product requirements, blog posts, and attachment lists. These are included with Confluence.

• If your app provides a macro, an obvious use of a blueprint is to create a new page with an instance of it (as described in the macro pattern). This is a great way of increasing visibility for any macros that are part of your app.

Here is Atlassian’s documentation: Pre-format your content with templates

Question: What are analytics?

Answer: Analytics help determine how users are interacting with your site, spaces and pages. You can view site, space, and page-level reports to understand user engagement and make better decisions about resources and content.

Analytics is available for Premium and Enterprise instances.

Here is Atlassian’s documentation: View analytics to see how content is performing

Question: What is Automation for Cloud?

Answer: We’re excited to introduce Automation for Confluence, now available in early access. It is available to preview for Confluence Cloud Premium and Enterprise customers.

Save time and energy when managing content across your growing Confluence site with Automation for Confluence by setting rules to complete a variety of repetitive tasks and workflows. With valuable time added back into your day you’re empowered to focus more on your creative, human skillset instead of tedious paperwork and housekeeping. Read more here: Introducing Automation for Confluence

Question: How can I let people that do not have a license view my Confluence content?

Answer: Giving anonymous users access to your content lets you share content with people who don’t have licensed access to your Confluence site. This means you can let them view and collaborate on content, without having to add them to your license count. You do not need to have Jira Service Management to share Confluence content with anonymous users.

Here is Atlassian’s documentation: Share your site externally with anonymous access

Note that anyone on the internet will be able to find and access your site

When you make your content available to anonymous users, this means anyone on the internet. The anonymous access feature can’t accommodate sharing with some anonymous people and not others. It’s all or nothing.

Content shared with anonymous users will show up in Google searches.

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This Atlassian University Live webinar was hosted by @Emma JL Rush and supported in Q&A by Hilary Dubin, @Joanna Thurmann @Traci Wilbanks and @Ree Kent

[Jimmy Seddon]

Thanks for the heads up @Jaime Netzer!  I'm going to do my best to attend this session!

[G subramanyam]

Hi @Jaime Netzer , thank you for posting. I have signed up for the webinar and looking ahead for new stuff and best practices.

[Laurie Vazquez]

Question: what’s the best way to determine if you need a blueprint vs a template (i.e., a go-to-market plan that touches on multiple teams)?

[Joanna Thurmann]

For anyone ready to approach Atlassian Certification, we have the APB-220 Confluence Space Administration Pro Skills Badge from Atlassian University.

[Emma JL Rush]

Hi, @Laurie Vazquez. If you click the Templates link in the top menu of Confluence, you'll see all of the Blueprints (i.e., pre-built templates) available for you to use. You can filter by type, so you can look at marketing and sales-related Blueprints. 

If one of these fits but needs some modification, you can edit the content in the Blueprint on a space-by-space basis. 

If none of these apply, you can build your own content in a template.

So the Blueprint is a type of template that's been created for you. A Template is completely new, generated by you content.