Confluence templates made easy

How to drive adoption, increase content visibility, and improve content structure in Confluence with templates and ScriptRunner.

We’ve all seen it and we’re all guilty of it. When it comes to creating content in Confluence we often don’t take the time to consider its long term survivability. We dive straight in, as do our colleagues, and before we realise it, there’s unstructured content everywhere, in as many different styles, formats and in as many locations as you have users. Not only does this make content difficult to find and digest, but if left unmanaged the problems scale to a point where removing an egg from an omelette would be less time-consuming.

One way around this problem is to use Confluence’s built-in templates, which help teams to improve structure consistency and content visibility. But as useful as they are, they don’t address the issue of content organisation as users can still add templated content throughout the instance’s existing hierarchy.

Another challenge, that templates alone cannot overcome, is that it can sometimes be difficult for users to decide on which templates to use. As a result, this can lead to them being forgotten and eventually neglected altogether. After-all it’s far easier (and quicker) to just create unstructured content.

Fortunately, these challenges with templates can be addressed with ScriptRunner, by using two great features, Create Page and the Project Creator script. Here’s how they’ll turn your team into template power-users and make your content easier to find.

Create Page macro in ScriptRunner Confluence

The Create Page macro in Scriptrunner for Confluence provides a simple solution to the problem of messy hierarchy and template visibility. This simple, one-click solution, gives you full control over when a template is used, which specific template is used and where a new page will be created in the hierarchy. This allows teams to save time through automating an otherwise time-consuming process and ensuring that some consistency is brought to their content strategy.

Using the create page button, you can specify where a new
page is located and what template is used.

How does Create Page achieve this?

The Create Page macro allows you to predefine a host of information thus giving you control over your content’s naming conventions and taxonomy. You can add prefixes, suffixes and even have your naming conventions created from variables such as the parent page name. Also, by predefining where a page should go and what template it should use you can really standardise your information architecture. So gone are the days of inconsistent content in your confluence instance.

Project Creator script for ScriptRunner Confluence

Sometimes using one template to create one page isn’t enough for your project. Let’s say that you’re a project manager and you need to create multiple pages with the same taxonomy over and over again. Being able to create one page from a single template isn’t going to be enough for you.

With the Project Creator script you can create multiple templated
pages with only one click using our script.

You can power-up your content management strategy with ScriptRunner’s Project Creator script. The Project Creator script allows you to bring together several features of ScriptRunner to enable you to create a reusable set of templates for a project. With a single click you can create multiple pages in a structured hierarchy. No need for you to worry about deciding where a page should go or what template to use, it’s all automated for you. Now you can easily create multiple pages with the same taxonomy over and over again, thus turning a potentially monotonous and tedious task into a walk in the park - freeing your time up to tackle those all-important projects.

Want to get drastic?

But what if you wanted to enforce your information architecture and content layout strategy throughout your instance? With ScriptRunner you can remove the create button all together, ensuring that users only hit the Create Page button or use the Project Creator script. You could also replace the create button with one or more buttons linked to specific templates, should that fit your business processes.

For example, if you're a technical writer and you have a set of four templates that you use across a specific documentation site, ScriptRunner would allow you to keep those templates front of mind.

Removing the Create button allows you to lock down content
creation and better direct where new content is placed.

Unlock the full power of templates in Confluence with these ScriptRunner macros

Create Page and Project Creator for ScriptRunner for Confluence help you maximise your content management experience. ScriptRunner allows teams to better utilise templates, enabling them to scale their information architecture, increase content discoverability and make content easier to use. If you’re already using Confluence but are looking for that little extra to tidy up your content then these two ScriptRunner features are perfect for you and your organisation’s continued success. No other app gives you the same flexibility and power to tackle users creating unstructured content than ScriptRunner does. 

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