Ever wondered about the best way to showcase the latest news and timely announcements on a Confluence page? Tabs, cards, panels… or expanders? All are plausible options, but each comes with its fair share of limitations. Too much text in tabs feels heavy, cards and panels take up space, and expanders can hide important updates your team actually wants to see.
What if you could have a native macro dedicated to just that? That’s where the Carousel macro comes into play. It can help elevate your Confluence page by letting you turn updates, key content, and links into a small, interactive series of frames.
In this article, we’ll explore what carousels do, why they’re helpful, and tips to make sure your carousel works perfectly in Confluence.
What the Confluence Carousel Is (and Where it helps)
The Carousel is a native Confluence macro that lets you display up to 10 frames. Each frame can have a title, a short description, an optional image, and a clickable link to either internal or external resources. Think of it as a compact, interactive way to spotlight the most important content at the top of your page.
In Confluence, carousels are mostly used on space homepages or the company hub. Internal communications specialists, HR teams, and space managers rely on them to showcase timely announcements, important updates, or high-priority content. That way, visitors can quickly see what’s new or most relevant—without endlessly scrolling or hunting for updates.
Where carousels come in handy:
- Timely announcements: Place key updates or news at the top of the page so they catch attention immediately.
- Highlight what matters most: Showcase the content your team looks forward to: Top resources, upcoming events, or critical updates.
- Quick, clickable links: Turn Confluence, Jira, Atlas, or external links into visually appealing, interactive frames that are easy to navigate.
When to Use Carousels in Confluence?
When deciding how to organize content on a Confluence page, think function first, not just aesthetics. There is a host of both native and third-party content formatting macros to choose from.
The key is to focus on what you want your readers to notice and act on.
Understanding what each macro is best for and where people tend to misapply them makes it easier to see when a carousel is the better pick.
Here’s a quick comparison:
- Tabs: Great for breaking content into categories. Yet, it is common to see teams put announcements or temporary updates in tabs drawn by the macro’s structured appearance. The problem? It often backfires, since tabs hide content behind a click. As a result, important news often goes unnoticed.
- Cards: Perfect for showcasing equally important elements like team directories, quick links, or key resources. But if you toss in a time-sensitive item, it might just blend in and get missed since all cards get equal weight.
- Expanders: Handy for optional or detailed content, like FAQs or extra explanations. But giving readers control over what to show or hide is not the way to go for important items. Sometimes key info gets tucked inside expanders, and if it matters, you don’t want them to have to click a box just to notice it.
- Carousel: Best for timely or featured highlights you want to spotlight for a limited period. For example, a new hire announcement, a milestone, or a temporary highlight can rotate at the top of the page. When new updates come in, you can swap them out, keeping the page fresh and focused on what matters most right now.
Best Practices to Make Your Carousel Effective
To get the most out of your carousel, keep these tips in mind:
1. Limit the Number of Slides
Confluence carousels let you add up to 10 slides, but only one panel is visible at a time. Place the most time-sensitive or important updates in the first 3–4 slides, and keep the total to 3–5 to avoid losing your readers’ attention.
2. Maintain Consistent Styling
Use a uniform style across all slides: same colors, and layout. Consistency makes it easier for your readers to focus on the content instead of getting distracted by changing designs.
3. Choose the Right Navigation Indicators
The carousel lets you use either progress circles (dots) or thumbnails (previews of the next three slides).
- Dots: Perfect for simple, linear sequences. They also give readers a sense of how many slides are in the carousel and how far along they are.
- Thumbnails Useful when each frame has a distinct identity and you want users to jump quickly between slides (e.g., three separate initiatives).
Pick the option that fits your content and makes navigation intuitive for your readers.
4. Keep your text within the frame limits
Confluence limits titles to 255 characters and descriptions to 700. This is enough for a clear, concise message, not a wall of text. If your image contains text, make sure to repeat the key points in the description so everyone can catch the info (and it’s easier to find via search).
5. Link with intent
If a slide includes a link, make it the main call-to-action for that frame. Something like “View playbook” or “Learn more.” Keep the slide focused on that one action so readers know exactly where to go next.
How to Add a Carousel in Confluence: A Step-by-Step Guide
Adding a carousel is simple. Here’s the correct way to do it with the native macro:
- Enter Edit Mode: Navigate to the page where you want to add the carousel and click on “Edit”.
- Insert the Carousel Macro: Either click the “+” icon in the toolbar and type/select “Carousel,” or type “/carousel” directly on the page. Confluence will then add three empty frames.
- Configure the Carousel: Click on each frame to edit its content. An edit button will appear at the bottom left. Clicking this will open a new panel on the right, where you can add a title, description, and link to each frame.
- Title (≤255 chars) and Description (≤700).
- Optional Link to Confluence, Jira or external resources.
- Optional Image (upload, pick from Unsplash, or pull from the link). Atlassian recommends 700px+ width.
- Customize the Appearance: Adjust the styling options to match your page’s design, ensuring consistency across all slides.
- Choose the navigation style (progress circles or thumbnails) in the carousel settings.
- Save and Publish: Once you’re satisfied with the carousel, click “Save” and then “Publish” to make it live on your page.
Tip: Heads-up on permissions: when a frame pulls content from a link, that display can be visible to anyone who can view the page (even if they can’t open the source link). Keep that in mind for sensitive items.
Carousels are available on Confluence Premium & Enterprise with no indication they will be added for Free or Standard. As an alternative, you can opt for some workarounds like tabs, images with links, and more.
To learn how to better design Confluence pages, make sure to check out the blog and YouTube channel.
FAQ:
1. Which Confluence plans include the carousel macro?
For the time being, carousels are only available on Confluence Premium and Enterprise.
2. What type of content works best in a carousel?
Released around the same time as the Confluence company hub, carousels are primarily designed for such hubs. Think latest news, announcements, featured stories, and more.
3. When should I use cards vs carousels in Confluence?
Use cards for items of more or less the same importance (additional resources for example). Opt for carousels when dealing with time-sensitive content and whenever you want to feature updates.
4. Can carousels be combined with any other macros in Confluence?
A not that straightforward yes. You can place carousels within or alongside other ones, but you can’ nest anything inside them. Do you really want to do that? Apart from layouts (2 columns at most), carousels kind of lose their value when embedded inside a table, expand, or a panel.
