Adding Statuses to Confluence Pages: Overview of Options

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How are you keeping your team in the loop? Without the right visual cues, updates can go unseen, work can get missed, and misinformation could spread across the company. That’s where statuses come in - a small (but effective) way to keep communications transparent in Confluence.

You might want to add a status to share progress on specific tasks, or you might want to display the status of the page itself (e.g. if it's a work in progress or contains outdated content). We cover both in our guide below.

Giving status updates on specific tasks:

Option 1: Status macro (built-in)

⚡️Best for: Quick and straightforward status formatting

The Status macro makes it easy to tag your task progress. Simply add the macro to your page, type the status name, and choose the colour. It’s the ideal macro for keeping team members updated on work.

Because the Status macro is a built-in macro for Confluence Cloud, you don’t need a third-party app to get started. However, there's no way to track status changes (aside from digging through your page history), and with users able to add whatever text they like, status labelling might not stay consistent across content.

Option 2: Handy Status

⚡️Best for: In-depth statuses that stay consistent across your content

The Handy Status macro, included with Handy Macros, addresses the shortfalls of the Status macro.

It comes included with a range of pre-set statuses, from “task status” to “feasibility”, to help you keep your statuses standardised across your Confluence pages. You can even create your own status sets at an admin level, allowing you to customise statuses to your organisation’s requirements.

These statuses go deeper than the surface label, too - when you click on one, you can see its entire status history. This is perfect for gaining complete visibility over task status and finding shortfalls in project productivity.

Giving status updates on a page's progress:

Option 1: Page Status (built-in)

⚡️Best for: Simple, subtle page updates

 

Built into Confluence Cloud, this feature is a quick and easy way to set your page status - just look to the top of your page (in edit mode) and find the Status option. 

You can set a pre-defined page status or choose from one of Confluence’s suggested options. You can even use them on live docs, which is perfect for helping colleagues figure out whether content needs reviewing.

The main drawback of the Status feature is that it’s very subtle, which means it can be missed if users aren’t specifically looking for it. If you really want to shout that your page isn't finalised, you might need something more obvious.

Option 2: Alert macro

⚡️Best for: Creating professional, branded updates and ensuring maximum visibility 

The Alert macro is one of many customisable macros included with Mosaic for Confluence. It's the ideal way to guarantee users don't miss an update on page status.

The customisable macro has built-in options to alert users when they enter a page, such as instantly letting them know that information is outdated, or you can choose your own text, imagery, and colours to tailor it to your brand.

Updates don't have to be limited to page status, either. If you want to share something with every user who lands on your page, this macro is the ultimate way to ensure they get the message.

How do you keep your users informed? Share your tips with us in the comments below! 👇

[Stavros_Rougas_EasyApps]

If anyone needs to bulk update page statuses we recently added this feature to Space Content Manager.

[Fares Laroui_Vectors_]

Great article Zoriana!  Totally agree with your point about visibility. Status updates are only useful if people actually see them and have enough context. We have an app for that Content Status for Confluence  (perfect place to promote it :D). We let users add a short message explaining the context of the status and what action (if any) is needed. Of course, you can define a status list per space and you have a holistic dashboard. 

Anyways, have you experimented with Rovo agents for status management yet? Would love to hear your take on it!