Every space in Confluence can contain any number of templates. These allow editors to quickly format pages to speed up content creation and also set expectations of people reading pages about what to expect. Confluence even comes preloaded with 100+ “blueprints”, ensuring you start off with some great options.

When non-admins create a template it’s only usable in the space it’s created. For example if I make a new template (or edit one) in the “Rob” space, that template is only usable in the Rob space. There is a way around this when creating a page, however, most folks are unaware of the dropdown to pick different spaces and it adds extra steps.

This limitation, whoever, can be overcome with global templates. These can be created by Confluence admins (e.g. instance admins) and are available in every space in that instance. This allows your team to ensure everyone in your organization has access to the same set of templates.

Read on for more or check out this youtube video

Where do they live

Confluence admins can access global templates in a few places.

The first is by opening the Templates menu from any space’s space settings, then scroll all the way to the bottom. (It is under every blueprint, so I didn’t know it was there for quite a while).  Clicking on “Manage Global Templates” will bring you to the “Global templates and blueprints” admin panel, which is the second way to access them.

The Global templates and blueprints panel is accessible from the admin panel and is where global templates live. It looks and feels almost exactly like the templates panel from a space. The only difference is templates created or edited here will be available in every space.

Why is this useful?

Global templates are useful for a few reasons:

1. They ensure templates are available everywhere. This doesn’t seem like much, but it can be frustrating when you can’t find the template you want. Creating it as a global template ensures it’s available to everyone, making uniform content significantly easier.

2. They centralize administration. Without global templates may groups will make multiple copies of the same template in different spaces. This makes it incredibly hard to keep them all updated as each one is a separate template. Global templates remove this pain as updating it once updates it everywhere.
   
   
   

What else can you do on the global templates and blueprints page?

There’s a few other nifty things you can do from the global templates and blueprint page.

Manage blueprints - Blueprints are provided by Atlassian (or third parties) and are by default turned on and available in Confluence. These can be a great resource for folks looking for a template… however, they also clutter up the templates list, and in most cases they aren’t used. The global panel allows admins to disable them across the instance, freeing up visual space and reducing confusion.

Editing default pages - Admins can also change the default pages assigned to new spaces (including personal spaces). Doing this is helpful as it makes the beginning experience in a space more uniform or useful to the team.