Confluence page trees: the ultimate guide
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The ultimate guide to page trees in Confluence Cloud
Daniel Domene Martinez
23 October 2024
4 min read
Daniel Domene Martinez
23 October 2024
4 min read
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What is a Confluence page tree?
How do I order a page tree in Confluence?
Drawbacks of Confluence page trees
The best way to organise Confluence pages
How to sequence pages in Confluence
Confluence page trees help you organise your content, but they can also get messy. Here's how to use them - and a solution to complicated page navigation.
Are you struggling with a cluttered Confluence space, endlessly searching to find the page you need to use? Do you wish you could navigate seamlessly between related pages?
Here we’ll go into how Confluence page trees work, how to use and organise them - and a better way to organise and find your Confluence pages.
For another way to help users navigate your content, read our guide on linking pages in Confluence.
Here we’ll go into how Confluence page trees work, how to use and organise them - and a better way to organise and find your Confluence pages.
For another way to help users navigate your content, read our guide on linking pages in Confluence.
What is a Confluence page tree?
A Confluence page tree is a hierarchy of all the pages that live within a Confluence space. It shows the relationship between pages, such as whether there are parent and child pages. You can view a Confluence space’s page tree in the left sidebar, or by using a Confluence page tree macro such as Guided Pathways for Confluence.
With the addition of Confluence whiteboards and Confluence databases, Confluence’s page tree is now also known as the content tree. This is because it’s no longer just pages that live within a space.
How do I order a page tree in Confluence?
Reordering your Confluence page tree is super simple - just click on the name of your page in the sidebar, and drag it to where on the page tree you’d like it to go. Your changes will automatically be saved.
If you want to make a page a child page, drag your page directly on top of the name of another page. This will nest it under that page. That’s it!
If you want to make a page a child page, drag your page directly on top of the name of another page. This will nest it under that page. That’s it!
Drawbacks of Confluence page trees
While Confluence page trees make it easier to find the page you want, they’re not always the most user-friendly:
- Time-consuming to navigate - there’s no quick way to sort through the pages in your page tree.
- Unclear relationships between pages - child pages that are related, for example, aren’t shown to have any relationship.
- Potential for errors - with more complex page trees being hard to navigate, there’s the chance that page content may be accidentally duplicated.
The best way to organise Confluence pages
Because Confluence’s pages are organised as a simple hierarchy, there are limits to how easily you can find what you’re looking for. For example, all child trees to a parent page are shown underneath it, with no further organisation.
But with a page tree macro like Guided Pathways for Confluence, you can easily pull your existing Confluence pages into branching step-by-step guides so users can quickly click through to find the right solution with no more searching.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you have a 'New Starter Guide' as a parent page, with various amenities listed by location as child pages. Finding the right perk for the right place can be time-consuming and frustrating.
But with a page tree macro like Guided Pathways for Confluence, you can easily pull your existing Confluence pages into branching step-by-step guides so users can quickly click through to find the right solution with no more searching.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you have a 'New Starter Guide' as a parent page, with various amenities listed by location as child pages. Finding the right perk for the right place can be time-consuming and frustrating.
But with Guided Pathways, you can organise pages so users click through a step at a time to filter out irrelevant information. This saves them time and ensures the result is tailored to their needs.
Guided Pathways lets you ‘choose your own adventure’
Let’s talk about how to organise your Confluence pages into sequential steps.
How to sequence pages in Confluence
1. Install Guided Pathways for Confluence.
2. In Confluence, go to Apps > Guided Pathways. This will take you to the guide homepage.
3. From here, click the + Create a guide button.
4. Choose a title for your guide, a category, and a description, then click Create.
5. Add your first step by giving it a name and choosing a published Confluence page.
6. From here, you can sequence pages by clicking the + (plus symbol) in the left sidebar. This will create a new child step underneath the first option and link the two together.
7. Give the child step a name, choose what will show on the parent step’s button, and then choose which Confluence page will appear on this step.
8. Repeat this for all the pages in your guide. Add child steps to your current one to include extra choices.
It looks like a Confluence page tree now, but when published, it will be much more user-friendly!
9. Click Publish in the top-right corner. You’ve just organised your Confluence page tree into simpler, more manageable steps! Here’s an example journey:
Ready to start organising your Confluence pages better?
Try Guided Pathways free for 30 days and see the difference it makes to your users.
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Written by
Daniel Domene Martinez
Technical Product Marketing Manager
With over a decade of digital marketing expertise, Daniel is the Product Marketing Manager for Kolekti's latest Confluence app, Guided Pathways. He excels at taking products to market, capturing customer feedback, and transforming them into actionable insights for product enhancements.
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