Organizing Confluence Content with Confluence Tabs

Have you ever felt lost navigating through countless Confluence pages? Read on to learn about common challenges and how to add tabs to organize Confluence. See our three use cases that show where and how you can create and use tabs to your advantage.

Why organize Confluence Pages?

Confluence by Atlassian is a fantastic tool for teams to share ideas, collaborate, and document processes. Here’s what an organized Confluence offers:

• Quick finds: Find what you’re looking for without sifting through countless pages.
• Collaborative: You and your team can easily contribute to relevant documents.
• Up to date: Important information is often maintained and doesn’t get lost.

However, keeping your Confluence space organized can become challenging as the number of pages, spaces and users grows. 

What happens if I don’t keep my Confluence pages organized?

Confluence users often encounter these common blockers:

• Difficulty in navigating between pages: Switching between Confluence pages is tricky. It’s easy to get lost or miss information if you forget to open links in new tabs. 
• Lack of organization within pages: Without a clear structure, pages can become messy. Endless scrolling when looking for information? Not fun.
• Challenges when integrating content from different pages: To display content from another page, some paste and copy the desired content. Your Confluence Administrator will confirm that this is a nightmare for maintenance.

How to organize Confluence pages with tabs

Creating pages is extremely easy, thanks to the new confluence cloud editor. Great templates and Whiteboards for brainstorming facilitate the work. All great, but this makes organization and structuring even more of a challenge.

How to create/add tabs in Confluence

Unlike many other content management systems, Confluence doesn’t offer a built-in tabs feature out of the box.

Imagine crafting the perfect Confluence page, meticulously structuring your content for optimal flow. Then, you realize the need for tabs – clean, organized sections to visually separate key information.

That is why, in 2017, bitvoodoo introduced “Navitabs,” an app that allows you to add/create tabs to Confluence Cloud, helping users keep their content tidy and easily navigate.

While this built-in feature might be missing, the Atlassian Marketplace has your back.

Here’s how the bitvoodoo tab solution “Navitabs – Tabs for Confluence” works: 

• Dynamic tab creation: For the content in your tabs, you can select and insert existing pages, child pages or pages with labels (see how it’s done in our video).
• Efficient navigation: The tab navigation allows switching between sections or topics without scrolling.
• Compatibility with all kinds of content: You can embed iFrames, HTML and more in your tabs.

• Custom tab design: Navitabs allows you to modify the tab design, aligning it to your corporate identity and managing all the designs in one place.

Here is our documentation to learn more about how Navitabs works. 

Best practices when organizing Confluence space with tabs 

Use Case 1: Cross-Team Project Management

Here’s a real-world example to show you how adding tabs in Confluence pages can make things much simpler.

A common challenge in cross-team projects

Imagine a project where different team members have their own Confluence pages. It’s like having separate chapters of a book scattered everywhere. With Navitabs, you can bind these chapters into one story, making team discussions more efficient.

For instance:

• The project planner creates a page with the road map
• The scrum master creates a page that lists all Jira tickets for this project.
• The fiscal manager creates a page with an overview of the budget.

Those pages are not necessarily located in the same space or might be spread out in different places of the page tree.  The team must manually navigate the page tree during recurring meetings to access the required pages. They might even duplicate content and publish it on the meeting note page.

The best way to organize Confluence space

Using a tab App like Navitabs, you and your team can create a meeting note page with tab navigation. This allows you to access and add tabs displaying the necessary content without navigating away from the main page. Since the tabs are created automatically, the team members don’t need to insert the content manually. The result? More efficient meetings, better collaboration, and no more duplicated content.

Demo: Project Management

The following video demonstrates how to add tabs using Navitabs’ Tab Wizard: Select existing pages spread throughout Confluence and display them as tabs on one page.

Use Case 2: Human Resources (HR) Documentation

The Scenario:

Your HR department has a variety of documents for new employees: An employee handbook, training materials, company policies, benefits overview, and more. New hires may find themselves a bit lost when they have a query.

How tabs can save the day:

Organize the page for new employees using tabs. For example, assemble all Confluence pages with the label “onboarding” that already exist:

1. Employee handbook: The A to Z of being an employee.
2. Training: Materials, schedules, and modules.
3. Company policies: All the dos and don’ts.
4. Benefits: Details on health, dental, vacation, and other perks.

Demo: Human Resources Documentation

The following video demonstrates how to add/create tabs based on labels using Navitabs’ Tab Wizard.

Here is what the resulting Confluence page with tabs looks like.

Use Case 3: long Confluence pages for internal processes

Note: This feature is only available on Cloud.

Make life easier for your employees by structuring long Confluence pages with tabs. This could be, for example, the Confluence page for absences. Navitabs function “create your own tabs” can bring a structure into this. It allows you to write your own tabs and embed a diagram showing the necessary steps in case of absence.

Demo: organizing long Confluence pages

The following video demonstrates how to organize Confluence pages by adding tabs on a page using Navitabs’ Tab Wizard.

The GIF demonstrates what the resulting Confluence page with tabs looks like. Note the tab “Diagram” with an embedded Miro board.

Confluence Tabs – a recap

Confluence is a powerhouse, and with tools like Navitabs, it becomes an organized, user-friendly platform. Whether you’re a daily user or an admin, adding tabs in your Confluence spage can transform your Confluence experience.

Give Navitabs a whirl!

Ready to elevate your Confluence game? Try Navitabs for free and see the difference. Got questions? Our support is happy to help.