Hey Reader,
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Five weeks.
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That's how long I've been sending this newsletter - every Monday without fail. π
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Some weeks I've felt ahead. Most weeks, not so much.
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I've kept showing up tho. Even when I wasn't sure it was good enough. Even when no one replied. Even when I thought, "Does this even matter?"
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If you've ever felt that way with your own work...
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Hi. Me too.
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Now... on with the show! Here's this week's Weekly Alignment.
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π£Spotlight Story
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Confluence Templates that Scaleβ
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Without structure, Confluence turns into a junk drawer. This post walks through how to build templates that don't just look good... but actually scale across teams and reduce chaos. From placeholder macros to smart buttons and future-proof metadata, you'll learn exactly what to include.
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π‘Weekly Pro Tip
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Page Properties without a Page Properties Report is like tagging files and never searching for them.
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This week's blog post talked about using the Page Properties macro, but didn't really touch on using the Page Properties Report macro.
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Consider this a mini tutorial on how to use the Page Properties Report Macro. Here's a quick run down:
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- Use a consistent label on every page that uses your template.
- Add a "Page Properties Report" macro to your index page.
- Filter by that consistent label.
- Pick the fields to display.
- Optionally sort the report.
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Put that index page in your team's Confluence Homepage and call it "Active Projects" or "Live SOPs" -- Now you've got a self-updating list - powered by your templates.
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This is how you scale your docs without losing track of what's live, what's stale, and what needs attention.
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Side note... Would you be interested in a full on walk-through of setting up Page Properties and the Page Properties Report? Let me know, just reply to this email.
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βQuestion of the Week
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I have created a template for my team to use, but should I force them to use it?
Not at first.
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If you drop a rigid system on a team that never asked for one, they'll either ignore it or resent it.
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Start by making templates the easiest path, not the mandatory one.
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Set them as defaults. Pre-fill them with helpful context. Make them feel like a shortcut, not a chore.
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Once people start using them because they want to, then you can raise the bar.
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Thatβs when you bake templates into your processes.
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Thatβs when "just use the template" becomes part of the culture, not a top-down command.
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Adoption before enforcement.
Always.
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πSneak Peek
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Coming soon: Making Documentation Part of Your Definition of Done
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Ever finish a project and think, "We'll just update the docs later" ?
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Yeah... I bet they never get updated, do they?
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Next week, I'm digging into how I bake documentation into the Definition of Done - so it stops falling through the cracks and starts becoming second nature.
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No nagging. No chasing. Just baked-in accountability.
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Well... that's it for this week. See you next week!
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Finally aligned,
Josh
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