Clutter-Free Confluence
Confluence spaces can become disorganized and unwieldy over time – but it doesn’t have to be that way. Make a habit of keeping your pages clear, open, updated, and unique.
PREP TIME
0m
Run TIME
25m
Persons
1+
5-second summary
- Check for related pages before creating anything new to avoid duplication.
- Use labels and intro text to provide context about what’s on the page and how it’s related to other content.
- Get your team on board so everyone’s working together to keep Confluence clutter-free, save time, and make even better decisions.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
- Digital collaboration tool, like Confluence
PLAY resources
How to keep your Confluence clutter-free
Keep your Confluence pages clear, open, updated, and unique.
What is Confluence?
Confluence is a digital workspace where your team can create, collaborate, and connect your knowledge – all in one place.
While this Play is made for Confluence, many of the steps and tips apply to any collaborative knowledge management system.
Why run the Clutter-Free Confluence Play?
Like a house with many roommates, Confluence spaces can become disorganized and unwieldy over time. This play helps your whole team learn easy steps to take to keep your Confluence clutter-free, which helps in a number of ways:
- Saves time by reducing duplicative efforts; searching for the right information; and assessing whether a page is accurate or complete
- Reduces mental load by clarifying what can be confidently used, while leaving space for early-stage work
- Improves decision-making by maintaining higher-quality, streamlined information; ensuring teammates are using the same content to inform their choices; and preventing situations where teammates make decisions based on outdated content
- Keeps teammates aligned around the same content vs. scattered comments or discussions
When should you run this Play?
This Play is all about establishing habits that you do every time you create a new Confluence page. You can also use this Play as a starting point for auditing and cleaning up existing Confluence content.
3 benefits of an organized Confluence
- Save time and reduce frustration:
Teams spend up to a quarter of their workweek searching for information, with difficulty finding answers cited as the #1 barrier to moving fast. Keeping Confluence clutter-free means teammates spend less time hunting for answers and more time on meaningful work. - Cut down on unnecessary meetings:
78% of workers say too many meetings get in the way of real work. A clutter-free Confluence promotes alignment and helps teams self-serve answers, cutting down on unnecessary meetings. When teams make information self-serve, they are 4.9x more likely to be effective and 4.4x more likely to be productive. - Focus on what matters most:
Every minute spent sifting through clutter is time not spent on higher-value work—like meeting goals, innovating, or connecting with teammates. Research shows that emphasizing these hidden costs can motivate better habits across the team.
1. Check for related content
Est. time: 5 MIN
Before creating a new page, do a quick search to see if related content already exists. This way, you can avoid duplicative work and content.
Rovo Search within Confluence is especially helpful for this.
Initial prompt:
Find the most recent pages about [describe topic].
- Optional Look for pages by [author]
-
Optional Look for pages that incorporate [describe recent context or decision]
Follow-up prompts
Summarize how the pages relate to each other.
- Does one page take into consideration a certain decision or piece of context that another one doesn't?
-
Do the pages contain any conflicting information? If so, what is it?
How do the comments on these pages contribute to the conversation?
- What opinions were voiced?
- What topics seem unresolved?
Tip: Meet Rovo
Use this short online course to get started quickly with Rovo Search.
2. Edit, archive, or create a new page
Est. time: 5 MIN
If a page already exists and could be updated, consider adding to or editing the existing page, especially if it was written by collaborators.
If a new page is needed, take a few steps now to avoid confusion later on:
- Add a note at the top of the new page about the purpose of this new content, linking to existing and/or related pages if appropriate
Archive the existing page, or add a note to the top to explain that the new page now supersedes the existing one, with a link to the new page. (If you didn’t create the page, contact the author to make these updates.)
Tip: Archive to keep your space clean
Archiving doesn’t mean you’re getting rid of the page, just keeping it out of your team’s daily workspace. While archived content is excluded from quick search and analytics, links to it still work and can be found in an advanced search.
3. Set the page status
Est. time: 1 min
Include a page status in the header for clarity.
| Situation | Status |
| Early thinking, not settled facts | Rough draft/in progress Rough draft |
| Finished draft, awaiting review | Ready for review Ready for review |
| Official, reliable team info | Verified Verified |
Need more specificity?
Create other custom labels with your team, but make sure they’re easy for others outside of your team to understand.
4. Stay open by default
Est. time: 1 min
Unless there’s sensitive information, keep your page open to help teammates discover information and learnings for their work. This also reduces duplicative work since others, including Rovo, can only find what’s already been created if they can access it.
If your page contains sensitive information, you can adjust permissions by clicking the “Share” button in the top right corner and selecting who should have access.
Tip: Label rough drafts
Worried about sharing early thinking? Just label it as a rough draft! (See Step 3.)
5. Get your team on board
Est. time: 10 min
Like keeping a house clean with many roommates, it’s everyone’s responsibility – and benefit – to keep Confluence clutter-free. Here are a few ways to motivate your team to keep your space organized.
The carrot: Send surprise rewards
Research shows people are more motivated by immediate rewards than future ones. If your teammates aren’t motivated by making it easier for others to find quality information, consider sending a random reward (such as a public shout-out or a small gift card) to teammates who follow these practices well
The stick: Make the pain more obvious
Agree as a team that whoever follows these practices the least will be responsible for creating the onboarding guide for the next new teammate. When a new teammate joins, vote on who gets the task. This will make the frustration of poor organization more obvious and hopefully motivate more alignment in the future.
Highlight pains and gains to emphasize their importance
Humans feel the pain of a loss twice as intensely as the pleasure of a gain. Stress to teammates the amount of time wasted searching for information if these practices aren’t followed.
For example: “The average team loses a quarter of the workweek to searching for accurate, up-to-date information. Imagine how much more we could accomplish if we didn’t waste that time!”
On the other hand, people often forget the potential gains they’re giving up when making a choice. Point out the other valuable things your teammates — and leaders — could be doing with that time.
For example: “It’s not just our teammates losing time, but our leaders too. Would you rather they spend their time on searching for information? A longer one-on-one with you? Putting more thought into providing feedback on your work or your performance review?”
Still have questions?
Start a conversation with other Atlassian Team Playbook users, get support, or provide feedback.
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Sample Slack message highlighting gains of keeping Confluence organized
Developers give feedback on their product manager’s planned innovation cycle upgrades