This page is part of the guide to developing a knowledge base on Confluence Wiki. We have already shown you how to create your knowledge base space. Now we offer an introduction to the templates that Confluence provides, and show you some useful macros for formatting your content. Quick guide to templates A template is a page with predefined content that can be used as a prototype when creating other pages. Templates are available across the Confluence site (global templates) or per space (space templates). Both 'global templates' and 'space templates', as described on this page, define the content of a page. They do not define the content of an entire space. To create a template for an entire space, see our guide to creating your documentation space. You can import predefined page templates from the Atlassian Marketplace. Space information design One question that comes up is whether a knowledge base should be implemented as a decision matrix, with a multi-select or other list. We knew that most of our users visit our documentation directly from search engines. Early on, we learned from Google Analytics that most traffic was coming from search engines, not from within our site. So, we knew to focus on optimising page titles and tags rather than focus on a decision matrix. On this page:

ページ テンプレート

Confluence's page templates are a good place to start. Begin by choosing how you want your templates to look. Here's the wiki markup for our page template:

h3. Symptoms
FILL IN SYMPTOMS HERE

h3. Cause
FILL IN CAUSE HERE

h3. Resolution
FILL IN RESOLUTION HERE

{htmlcomment}
ENTER SUPPORT TICKET LINKS
{htmlcomment}

Useful add-ons:

• The {htmlcomment} macro is part of Adaptavist's Content Formatting Macros, a handy add-on.
• Consider the Scaffolding add-on or Form Field Markup for filling out forms. Our support engineers are quite used to using wiki markup (we live and breathe Confluence!), so we left this template as is.

Content macros

Some favourite macros for formatting content are the Tip, Info, Warning, and Note Macros, and the Code macro. Try the Noformat Macro for ensuring plain text.

We also use Adaptavist's Content Formatting Macros when we really want to make our content look great.

JIRA Issues macro

Using JIRA for bug tracking? You can't expect your users to have exactly the right JQL filters to show the appropriate topics. We have some nice JIRA Issues macros on display. One of my favourites is in the JIRA KB's Causes for OutOfMemory Errors:

{jiraissues:url=http://jira.atlassian.com/sr/jira.issueviews:searchrequest-xml/temp/SearchRequest.xml?jqlQuery=project+%3D+JRA+AND+issuetype+in+%28Bug%2C+Improvement%2C+subTaskIssueTypes%28%29%29+AND+component+%3D+%22Performance+-+Memory+leaks%22+ORDER+BY+key+DESC&tempMax=200|columns=fixversion;summary;status;key|anonymous=true}

The JQL includes components and sorting, plus the specific columns.

Labels and macros

Sometimes an article needs to be cross listed. For that we label our articles. Some great macros to use for this are {contentbylabel}, {listlabels} and the {dynamiccontentbylabels} macro in the Content Survey add-on.

次のステップ

You now have a good idea of how Confluence templates work, and have seen some useful formatting macros. What next? Take a look at Proactive Communications in a Knowledge Base.