Are you using these Confluence Macros

During the Harman days, I got exposed to this Confluence tool. Mind-Blowing experience I say in the short period of time. I have been using traditional SharePoint all my career, however, duo of Confluence and Jira is really boom to Agile Project Management.

Confluence automatically integrates the newly created Jira issues and provides a holistic view of your project status which it makes it easy for one to keep up on the progress of the team’s work being tracked in Jira.

You can also use confluence for knowledge and configuration management.

✅ Communicate and socialize your ideas with well-structured content

✅ Find essential resources you need to do your job

✅ Brainstorm and document your most important ideas

✅ Give and receive feedback with teammates in real-time

✅ Stay in the loop on your team’s work

Do check the post on SharePoint vs Confluence before scrolling down my list of favorite confluence macros. I will be posting another post on the top free Add-ins to use from the Atlassian marketplace. Stay tuned.

What & Why should we use Confluence Macros:

Macros are most efficient features that help you to extend the capabilities of your Confluence pages.

It allows you to add extra functionality ( table of contents) or include dynamic content (Jira issues, Pivot tables & Charts)

Say for example, Table of contents, chart, pivot tables, change history, gallery, profile picture etc.

Many macros have optional parameters you can use to modify the macro’s output based on the requirements.

Are you using these Macros in your confluence pages?

Jira Issues Macro / Jira Chart Macro / Jira Roadmap Macro: Create a dashboard in confluence using these Macros. There are different chart types like Pie/Line/Matrix chart. To be noted that selections of issues can be done using Jira Query language (JQL). Learning JQL is very useful and easy once you know the crux of it whether you’re just a Confluence or Jira user.

Status Macro: Status macros is very useful and must to use in confluence. It helps to highlight important status tasks, actions, and items. The status will be highlighted with color and round bar for background which helps for easy identification. For example, to track your action items in terms of Open, In Progress, Closed or to create Kanban board like Backlog, To Do, WIP, In testing, Done. Status can be directly updated in the page.

Task Report macro: Assigning and tracking task is most common activity in your confluence page. @mention someone to assign the task to them, and type // and choose a due date. The task report macro is used to display a list of tasks on a page. It allows to filter the tasks by space, page, label, status, created date etc.

Excerpt & Excerpt Include macro: Very handy macros and goes hand-in hand. When you want to re-use any part of the page in confluence, just place the content within the Excerpt macro. Then to re-use it, call the Excerpt Include Macro to insert the original content in the new page.

Table Excerpt & Table Excerpt Include macro: This is must use when you want 1) to create pivot tables and pivot charts in confluence 2) create references of large source of table data in various confluence pages 3) Using the same table for generating multiple Charts – Use it with Table filter, Pivot Table & Chart from Table macros.

Chart macro: Many variety of charts can be created from the table like Pie, Bar, Line & Area chart. Add the Chart macro to a page to display a chart based on data in a table on the same page, or from an attached file.

Change-History Macro: Very helpful reference to know the versions control of your confluence pages along with summary and comments. It also enables to go back to the first version to see what was added/changed/removed from later versions.

Info, Tip, Note, and Warning Macros: When setting up new page, all these individual macros will help in a set of guided messages on the page to your team. Make use of them effectively. Key contacts and Project Announcements can be updated by using this macros.

Page Index Macro: Tells you how many pages are within your space, but will also show an index of your pages in alphabetical order

Page Tree macro: It displays a dynamic and hierarchical list of pages based on the selected root page. It can act as a table of contents or a list of related topics. 

Table of Contents macro: Scans the headings on the current Confluence page to create a table of contents based on those headings. This helps readers find their way around lengthy pages, by summarizing the content structure and providing links to headings. 

Attachments macro: As the name states, this displays a list of files attached to a confluence page. It also allows users to upload a file to the page, edit attachment properties and labels, delete an attached file (this deletes all versions of the file), download all files attached to the page.

Profile Picture macro: Used to display a user’s profile picture on a confluence page. For Example, if you want to create Org structure for your team, then you can use this macro to show all members of a project team.

Panel Macro: As I have used in this page with a panel kind of structure, you can add the Panel macro to a page to format your text in a customizable coloured panel. It’s very useful when you want to grab attention to a specific message on the page.

Section & Column Macro: When you want to provide information in the format of columns, then you can use these to a page to organize your content in sections and columns. Its very important to know that Section macro defines an area and Column Macro will tell you the number of column bars you have in your section with defined width.

Label List Macro: A simple but most effective one to be on your page to ensure you can easily navigate based on the categorization of the confluence pages. This will be very helpful when you have more and more pages and subpages within the space.

Stay tuned 🙂