Hey Reader,
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This is it! It's the first issue of the Weekly Alignment. I'm so excited I could burst! π₯³
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It is now the beginning of an effort to give back my knowledge to the masses.
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I started using Jira and Confluence many years ago (around 2014) and I fell in love with it the moment I started using them.
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Everything on my website and this newsletter is a culmination of everything I have learned over these past 11 years.
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This is for you!
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π£Spotlight Story
Building a homepage that your team actually uses starts with intentional design, not guesswork.
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In this weekβs Spotlight Story, I dive into How to Build an Intuitive Confluence Space Homepage.
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I walk through concrete steps - from mapping your user's journey to grouping content by function and adding quick-nav macros - to transform a blank Confluence Homepage into a self-service hub your team will actually follow.
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π‘Weekly Pro Tip
My favorite feature in Confluence is being able to utilize slash commands to build pages.
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Slash commands are easy to use and all you have to do is type for forward slash: /
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Once you type the forward slash, you will be presented with options, but if you type what kind of macro you want, you can easily insert it. Give it a try by typing:
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Want to take it a step further? Confluence also supports markdown commands. π€―
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βQuestion of the Week
Gwen on the Atlassian Community recently asks:
Hi I couldn't find any documentation about this.
I'm wondering what the function of the custom status labels is, aka what you get by pressing /status on a page.
Are they simply cosmetic or do they have a specific case of use?
This can be confusing because when people talk about Status in Confluence, they could be referring to two things:
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Page Status is a relatively new feature of Confluence. By default, there are 4 statuses:
- Rough Draft
- In Progress
- Ready for Review
- Verified
These statuses provide context for those viewing the page what state the content is. For example, a page status of "In Progress" or "Rough Draft" probably shouldn't be trusted quite yet. A page status of "Verified" is absolutely something you can trust.
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Status Macro is a visual representation of a status label/badge in your Confluence content. They don't particularly play a data role in your content. These are great to use to provide context for something very specific in the content.
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I really love to use them to call out some important information with a "WARNING" or "TIP" and then the thing I want to tell the reader:
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Do you have a question you want answered? Reply to this e-mail and I'll give you my own personal answer!
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πSneak Peek
In next week's issue, I want to bring you some tips to drive your team into Confluence. What good is your Confluence content if no one is going to it to read it? Plus, if no one is in Confluence consuming the content, then how is the content staying fresh? I'll get into all of that next week!
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Finally aligned,
Josh
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