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Using Labels in Confluence to Manage Information for a Release Cycle

Labels Magic

Anthony Pelosi, San Francisco Atlassian User Group

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Searching Confluence• One of the biggest issues in Confluence (or any Wiki) is how do I find

the information I am seeking.

• Common Approaches• Search• Sometimes successful• Need to know page name

• Navigate the Pages• Tough to enforce standards• Info may span multiple pages

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Related Information in Confluence• But if you are an author and you know some of the more common,

general questions ahead of time, you can bring that information to the user.

• For Example,• "Where can I find all of our monthly Google Analytics news item reports?"• "Where can I find all design documents for our application architecture?"• And today we will focus on, "Where can I find all information related to a specific

Software Release Cycle?"

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The Inflexible Approach• Place all pages with content related to the

release cycle under a parent page.

• Inherent issue - page can only have one parent.

• If a featureʼs development spans two releases (3.0 & 3.1), where do you place the specs page for that feature?

• Increases likelihood of moving pages as features are re-prioritized or de-scoped.

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The Flexible Approach• Organize pages per business unit (Product Management, Support,

Development, Quality Assurance, etc.) or some other non-time sensitive structure.

• Use labels and the contentbylabel macro to pull in all pages related to something time-sensitive such as a release cycle.

• For example, create a page called Release Cycle 3.0 as a child page to Release Cycles that contains information specific to that release (overview, key dates, team members, jira filters) and the contentbylabel macro to pull in related pages located elsewhere.

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Release Specific Information• Overview of features/goals/initiatives for the release.

• Important dates such as release cycle kickoff, contract meeting, code freeze, etc.

• Team members and focus for each team.

• Lead (and possibly rotating role) assignments.

• Links to Jira filters for the release or place a jiraissues macro using a Jira filter for the release on the page.

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Related Pages• Related pages include child pages of

Product Management, Development, Quality Assurance, Support, etc.

• Do you best to establish a hierarchy standards for each of those business units, but it ultimately doesn't matter for purposes of building a release cycle page.

• Child pages for release specific items such as weekly demos, retrospectives, etc.

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Label the Related Pages• In order for authors to "get" their documentation on the release cycle

page, have them add labels to their pages.

• For example, "bpe_3-0", and "support" if you want to further organize the related pages by business segment.

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Display the Related Pages• On the release cycle page, either place a

contentybylabel macro for the release ("bpe_3-0") or one per business segment for the release ("bpe_3-0" and "support", "bpe_3-0" and "development").

• {contentbylabel:bpe_3-0,development|operator=AND|type=page|...}

• It is OK to add instructions for the authors to the release cycle page - this is not something you are going to show to customers!

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