Here's a quick tip how to put Confluence Database to use - the tool is still in beta, many Confluence users don't know how it can be actually useful. So perhaps this will help.
Anyway... :)
I use it to get a quick overview of Confluence space where we author and manage Emplifi documentation. It makes life-cycle management (LCM) of our doc sets so much easier.
So here's what I have:
In this use case, I have an overview of the entire space and can easily sort the table to see the last updated/added pages, ensure they all have proper labels. I can turn it around and see the oldest pages in the space. Content by label is especially sweet as you don't need an extra page to deploy that macro.
The trick was to figure out how to get all pages (page links) in to the database. I wish it could be automated but it's a question of a couple of minutes to get it all done.
Here's a how-to gif (it's public link from my private Confluence as it's too big for a Community post.
The database works just fine even with 900 pages (tested). Sorting by date is relatively fast but it obviously depends on how many pages and details your database displays.
UPDATE: You can also get the list by going to Export space > HTML > Select what to export. Then simply copy paste the pages as i the video. The advantage is that you don't have to expand all the parents :)
Another use-case is monitoring a collection of pages that serves a specific purpose.
Say that you have a course in your LMS that relies on the content from your Confluence sourced docs.
Simply create a DB for that specific course, list the pages the course is using, enter the date when the course went live. If the 'last updated date' of a page is newer than the course date, you know that you need to update your LMS content.
You might argue that many of the features can be replicate by labels. But you can have all that, and more, in a single place with context for any individual information type. The app was called 'Orderly Databases' for a reason when it was first developed by K15t (before Atlassian acquired the app).
Kristian Klima
Director of Technical Content, Emplifi
Emplifi
Prague, Czechia
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