Confluence Best Practices
The Power of Icons in Confluence
Visuals speak louder than words. That’s why we’re going to show you how to elevate
Confluence Cloud is excellent for knowledge management and collaboration for cross-functional teams. Finding your way around Confluence is essential to work as efficiently as possible. This can be difficult and confusing when it comes to Confluence navigation, especially during onboarding. In this article, we therefore explain how to create a customized Confluence navigation that boosts employee engagement and performance. Let’s go!
To understand why a custom navigation bar and custom dropdown lists in Confluence offer added value, it is worth understanding what exactly the purpose of a navigation menu is. The word navigation is derived from Latin and French and means something like course calculation. A functioning navigation bar therefore helps us to stay on course and guide the ship to a safe harbor. If you are trapped in a thousand dropdown lists, you will never reach your destination.
It is therefore crucial that you customize the Confluence navigation so that it fits your company (your ship).
By default, the Confluence navigation can be slightly adjusted with a company logo and custom colors.
But the true magic of a fully customized side menu is only revealed with appanvil’s Mantra.
We all know the problem: Important information is published: bookmark. Some interesting page is published: Click on Watcher. Then another relevant company news update: New bookmark. Little by little, the bookmarks for supposedly important topics accumulate, and the “Recent” tab in the Confluence navigation menu can’t be of much help.
To cope with this overload of information, there’s Mantra’s navigation.
As you can see, Mantra’s navigation menu is directly integrated into your Confluence Cloud navigation. In addition, Mantra comes with a fully customizable navigation bar that is accessible throughout Confluence. This allows you to keep your crew members on the right course. Simply customize the appearance of navigation items with icons, images or new meaningful titles — new team members in particular will thank you for this intuitive onboarding experience.
Wondering how two Confluence menus can help with onboarding or your day-to-day work? We’ll tell you: With the Mantra navigation menu, you have the most personalized user experience possible in Confluence Cloud. On the one hand, the original Confluence menu bar, which more experienced users may already know well, remains intact. On the other hand, the new navigation bar with Mantra allows you to guide users through numerous pages of valuable Confluence knowledge in a targeted manner.
As illustrated by the image below, you can customize the dropdown list in the Mantra navigation bar. This allows you to create personalized menus that are tailored to specific user profile fields or Confluence groups.
Thanks to Mantra in the Confluence Cloud, customizable navigation is not a luxury that is only available to admins. Every user can customize their dashboard according to their needs. For example:
Information overkill is not possible with Mantra! You have the choice of which feeds you want to display. Simply select the relevant posts from the Feeds‘ menu in the sidebar. This way, you can customize Confluence to your liking and avoid being bombarded with irrelevant information before your first coffee.
On the left-hand side of the Mantra menu, you can filter by news, posts, or events and further customize your Confluence Cloud journey.
You have these choices:
Dashboard: Quick overview of your whole organization
News: Company news written by admins or super users
Posts: Everything your colleagues want to share
Events: All about where’s the next summer party
Social Wall: Content of different company’s social media accounts
People: Your people directory to get along and find the people you’re looking for
Settings: Only for Admins
The admin predefines your selection options. How does this work? Like this:
To create a custom navigation menu in Mantra, you must have admin rights for Confluence. The exact steps are:
Install Mantra from the Atlassian Marketplace
Access Mantra within your Confluence instance.
Locate the action button situated beside your profile picture in Mantra’s sidebar, then choose Administration.
Select the Navigation tab and confirm that the Mantra as Home option is activated.
A sample menu bar is provided by default. You can activate, deactivate or duplicate this as you wish. Let’s start by editing it once. To achieve this, click on Edit.
Under Add Entry, you can insert an endless number of navigation dropdown menus into your Confluence Cloud.
Last but not least, let’s take a look at how we can customize the core in Confluence: The header. Imagine it’s Monday morning, you’re out of the house without breakfast, but you’re still late, start Confluence and see the boring default layout.
And then imagine you start Confluence and see something like this:
For example, a little something nice for Independence Day, Christmas, or a company event can be placed prominently.
Making a difference, right?
Whatever you wish for, how you can pimp the navigation in Confluence.
Mantra makes it possible.
It’s still the Confluence you love. But supercharged.
Try Manta out for yourself for 30 days via the Atlassian Marketplace.
And if you want more detailed information on how exactly you can customize your Confluence navigation to your specific use cases with Mantra, simply book a free, no-obligation demo. Looking forward to getting in touch!
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