Getting Started with Page Blueprints (old)

Owned by Adil Nasri
Last updated: Apr 27, 2021
4 min read

This is the documentation for Blueprint Creator version 2.x. If you are using the Blueprint Creator in version 3.x click here.

Give your authors a helping hand by using blueprints to publish new pages. You will need Space Administrator or Confluence Administrator permissions to create blueprints.

1. Create a blueprint

You can either create a global blueprint (Confluence Administration > Global Templates and Blueprints) or a space blueprint.

For creating space blueprints proceed as follows:

  • Go to the space and choose Space tools > Content Tools from the bottom of the sidebar.
  • Click 'Create New Template' on the top right in templates section.

The Confluence editor opens up and you can start creating your new template.


The Blueprint Creator provides you with a configuration sidebar on the right if the Confluence editor. Aside from enabling you to define meta information in the settings it allows you to add placeholders to your blueprints.

2. Add placeholders to your blueprint

In order to lower the threshold for content creation you can use placeholders. These act as form fields in the Create dialog that help your user to provide the information you determine necessary for your standardized documents.

  • Click on (plus)-icon on the top of the sidebar

You can choose from various field types that fit your information type best.

  • Text

  • Multiline text

  • Select

  • Multiselect

  • Date

  • User mention

For every placeholder you add you have to choose a field type and a name. Additionally, you can add a short description for them. Depending on the field type you can specify the parameters. You can use multiple placeholders of different field types in one blueprint. 

Created placeholders are displayed in the sidebar where they can re-arranged via drag and drop.

On this page


Detailed documentation

3. Provide meta information

To promote your blueprint for the intended use cases you can add a simple description that helps your users determine to choose the right blueprint from your selection. Furthermore you can add instructions that guides users when filling out the custom data entry form, automatically add a prefix to a page title and visualize your blueprint with an icon and specify the content type (page or blog post).

For purposes of standardization or providing additional information such as dates you can add prefixes to the titles of pages users create with your blueprint.

You get to choose from different parameters:

  • Text
  • Date
  • Space key
  • Space name

Example

Here is an example of a blueprint used for meeting notes:

Editor view

Corresponding blueprint form


4. Build overview pages

One very popular requirement that is often associated with blueprints is an overview page that lists all pages that were created using blueprints. These index pages can be generated by using a combination of the Page Properties and Page Properties Report macros. They work together to show summary information from one page on another page.

A detailed documentation can be found here:


5. Create as many blueprints as you need

If you followed these steps you just created your first blueprint without requiring any programming skills. Congratulations! (big grin)

A detailed documentation can be found on the following pages:


In every organization there are a lot of different processes that need to be documented. The Blueprint Creator helps you to remove the obstacles that prevent your users from doing so. Here are some examples for blueprints organizations all over the world use:

  • Onboarding
  • Meeting notes
  • Status reports (projects)
  • Scrum meetings (plannings, reviews, retrospectives)
  • Idea management
  • Server documentation
  • Work instructions
  • etc.