Confluence Labels
Pages in confluence can be a range of great information. Tables, policies, attachments and more are all hosted information that helps teams thrive. Of course, that information is only useful if people can find it when they need it… and not being able to find what you need is one of the biggest challenges faced when using Confluence.
Fortunately there's a few ways to help improve findability. Things like grouping information under related parents, using keywords in titles, and setting up home pages are just a few. One of the most underutilized, however, is using labels. Just like you might put a label called “Kitchen” on a box of moving supplies to know where it should go, you can put labels on content in Confluence to help others (including the system) know what to do with it.
What do they do
Labels also serve as keywords on a page, helping pages they’re attached to show up higher in search results. This is the first, and most obvious, way labels help. Of course, this only works if the labels relate to the keywords that are being search for, meaning taking time to plan out labels is even more important.
Labels also help search by allowing users to limit results to just selected labels. This can quickly narrow down a long list of search results making it much faster to find things. It also makes it very easy for someone looking for a specific type of content to locate it. It is especially useful for finding content across spaces if labels are consistently used.
The second way is through macros. Many macros allow you to filter for content which includes a specific label. For example you can pull in a list of pages with only certain labels, or you can pull in page properties for just one label. This gives you a lot of flexibility - as long as your labels are good! Using labels this way makes it incredibly easy to create lists of related content, for example pulling every “how to” guide onto one page.
How are they created
As long as you can edit the page labels can be added to a page while editing (More Actions -> Add Labels) or when viewing a page by hitting the “L” shortcut. Labels are all lowercase (thankfully! Having them be case sensitive would make things a lot harder to manage), and cannot accept spaces. Confluence will, however, convert any spaces you have into a hyphen. This makes it easy for multi-word labels (“new-hire-onboarding”).
The labels on a page can be modified at any time, so it’s not uncommon for teams to regularly review and adjust their labels. Since anyone with edit access can modify labels, it’s also not uncommon for teams to make adjustments on the fly as they realize something needs to be changed.
Labels are unique to your Confluence instance. This means a label created anywhere will be available everywhere. This can be a bit annoying at times as different teams may use different variations of labels, but having the ability to search across all of Confluence for a specific label is a great benefit.
Labels best practices
Labels, like any tool, can be very useful if used properly, but it can be hard to figure out how to best manage there. There are some best practices I frequently use to help keep them being useful:
Plan your labels - Take time to sit down and think about why types of labels your space will use. Personally I find it useful to have a Confluence page where I track my labels. Typically this looks like a table with each label (or group of labels) listed out and a brief description of what they’re for. Examples include labels by team (“HR”, “Engineering”, etc)
Share your plan - Make sure the main groups of people creating content know what labels you plan to use and when to use them. This helps ensure creators know what to do.
Monitor labels - The “Labels list” macro shows a list of labels in a particular space. This helps you keep tabs on what labels are in use, and quickly find pages that use them.
Add them to templates - Templates can come pre-loaded with labels. This makes it very easy to set your team up for success by including specific labels on specific templates.
Too many labels
Labels can be created by anyone with edit access to that page. This is both good and bad. It’s good because it means anyone who can edit pages can add or modify labels. This empowers your team and lets them help keep things maintained overtime. It’s bad because it means anyone can remove necessary labels, or create new labels. It’s not uncommon to have several versions of a label (“eng”, “engineering”, “engggineering” etc) that have been created by different people over time.
This particular challenge can be overcome a few ways:
Monitoring - Regularly review the labels in use in your space and remove un-needed ones.
Consolidate - Combine similar labels where you can. For example you likely don’t need both “engineering” and “eng”.
Hard to find
Labels are also not immediately visible when viewing a page, which results in many folks simply not knowing they exist. This can make it challenging for teams to keep them up to date as team members might not know about them. This can be addressed by including information about labels in training when someone joins, and by actively monitoring pages. Taking even a few minutes every month to check what labels are in use can help catch challenges.
