Here’s the scenario: You’re writing a Confluence page and there’s some info you need to highlight. If you’re new to Confluence, you might use some basic formatting options like making the text bold, Italic, underlined etc. This is completely fine, but does it make the text stand out! In a way yes but not quite as panels. But if you really think about it, Confluence panels are the perfect solution.
If you’ve been following my posts (and if so, consider me flattered), you know the routine. We’ll begin by diving into why panels are important, explore the native Confluence panel macro, and finish with some practical tips and best practices to get the most out of them.
Why are Confluence Panels Important
Highlight Key Information
You’re reading a documentation and there’s an important note, warning, or a pro tip. More often than not, that text will be contained within a panel. And for a good reason. Directing your attention to that area so it becomes harder for you to miss.
Confluence panels act like a highlighter on a page but with more customization and control over how the information is presented.
Instead of having important points lost in blocks of text, panels kind of break the flow (in a good way), guiding readers and making sure key information isn’t just read—it’s seen.
Improve Structure and Navigation
Panels can do more than just highlight text—they can help organize your entire page layout.
When dealing with a lot of information, it’s important to structure content in a way that doesn’t overwhelm your readers. Panels help divide your content into clearly defined sections, creating a sense of direction and structure. This makes your Confluence page cleaner and easier to navigate.
And when creating their default templates, Confluence took notice of this. If you check some pre-built templates, you can see panels are extensively used as Welcome messages on top of page, and so on.
Improve Visual Appeal and Mirror your Brand Style
Plain text can be a little boring and not easy on the eye. Confluence might give you an endless canvas to write on, but you still need to capture your audience’s attention. Panels can help you elevate the look and feel of your pages, giving them a professional touch. With color, borders, and icons, they make your content more engaging and visually appealing all while mirroring your brand identity (especially for customer-facing pages).
Incorporating panels into your pages shows you’ve taken the time to make the content both functional and attractive, which can increase user engagement and make the information easier to go through.
What About the Native Confluence Panel Macro?
Now, you may be thinking, “Doesn’t Confluence already have panels?” Yes, it does—and they’re quite handy! The native Confluence panel macro lets you insert simple panels by typing /panel. You’ve got a variety of types to choose from including: Info, Note, Success, Warning, etc. From there you can add your text, and that’s it.
Simple and extremely convenient. Yet when both these adjectives are used for a feature, you can always expect some limitations. Although useful, native panels offer only basic customization options—mainly colors and emojis. You don’t have much room to kind of make panels your own. For instance, you can’t change the border style, add icons, or fully control the layout.
And perhaps, the one major limitation, is the fact you can’t nest other macros in there. Personally, I don’t do that, I always want my panels to be simple. But people do love their macros. And not having the freedom to nest macros such as buttons, or maybe even tables, make people look for more advanced options. Which we do have within our ever growing suite of Content Formatting Macros (Not trying to hard sell or anything 😀)
Best Practices to Use Confluence Panels
Use Panels When You Really Have to
Too much of a good thing is always bad (Just can’t remember the right quote but you get the point).
The role of Confluence panels is to emphasize information, and if you have too many, you can’t really pin point which information matters the most.
Panels are most effective when they’re used sparingly and with the right customization options.
As mentioned earlier, you can use panels to highlight:
- Important announcements and welcome messages
- Alerts, warnings, or pro tips
- Summaries of sections.
- And more…
By strategically placing panels, you help guide your reader’s eye to the areas that need the most attention.
Customize Your Panels for Consistency
Panels are at their best when they’re consistent across your pages. If you start changing layouts and styles, it can confuse your readers. For example, if you use panels for pro tips with a yellow color, you can’t be adding other colors for other documentation pages.
Maintaining a consistent style makes your pages easier to read and information easier to spot.0
With Vectors panels, you get complete control over your panel’s layout and design. You can choose from a variety of display options, customize borders, change font styles, and even add icons that match your brand. This allows you to create a cohesive, branded look across all your Confluence pages.
Know When to Use Panels or Other Macros
While panels are best suited for highlighting key sections or information, they’re not always the best solution for every scenario. And this is a mistake that some Confluence users, especially beginners, make.
And here, there’re a lot of things to consider before choosing which macro to use, mainly content type and content length.
- Use expanders instead when: Does the information need to stand out or do I have to give readers control? You can see where this is going. If the information is not too important, you’re better off using expanders. They allow readers to show or hide info all while making use of space.
- Use tabs instead when: Is my content describing detailed sections and is a bit long for a panel? In this case, you might think of using tabs. They’re ideal to break down detailed information and enhance overall navigation. Putting too much information within one single panel is not visually appealing, and generally, they’re not made for such content.
- Use buttons instead when: This is pretty much straightforward. Use buttons when you need to prompt users to take action and when the content is way too short for panel.
Pro Tip: A great combination is to use panels in conjunction with buttons for action-oriented pages, such as task lists or project dashboards. This keeps the information prominent while allowing users to take immediate action.
Advanced Confluence Panels with Content Formatting Toolkit:
And you made it to the pitch 😀. To properly incorporate the best practices that we went through, you might need to consider our very advanced panels. In addition to being simple and intuitive, you’ve got a wide range of customization options, and of course, the ability to nest macros.
Getting started is fairly simple:
- Type /Panels | Vectors (Formerly: macro panels)
- Specify your display options. Here you can choose the background and border colors along with the panel shape.
- Choose specific icons, their alignment, and border style.
- Now you can add your text, nest macros, and more.
- Of course, once you finish, hit update to see your panel in action.
Panels aren’t just a cosmetic feature—they’re a vital tool for organizing, highlighting, and beautifying your Confluence pages. Whether you’re using the native Confluence panel macro or the enhanced panels from Content Formatting Toolkit Cloud, they help improve navigation, emphasize key details, and elevate the overall design of your pages.
So, if you’re ready to make your Confluence pages more engaging and organized, give panels a try here.
