How to find information/pages on Confluence which are outdated?

[Pawan Kumar]

We are using Confluence in all our business units and there are tons of pages everyone is creating. Although everyone knows how to search in Confluence but it is becoming extremely tiring to find the stuff which is relevant. There are lots of similar or common pages, there are lots of pages which haven't been updated for last 4 years etc. It's like a black hole where in information goes in and then gets lost.

We would like to know the best practices to use Confluence so that people can get the right information quickly and they can be confident that this information is up to date as well.

Thanks,

[Ste Wright · Accepted solution]

Hi @Pawan Kumar

A few points I think are worthwhile considering:

• Labels: I find labels are useful for page searching - it can mean if ten different teams are all creating retrospective templates, you could mark each as "retrospective" and "template" - and search for those to see them all. Or you could mark each with a specific team label - eg. "team 1" so each team can find theirs easily. 
• Insert Page / Insert Excerpt Macro: Using these macros you could embed the detail from one page onto another. I find this useful if lots of teams are using the same content - rather than replicate them many times (and then need to update them all), you can have the data in one master space and share it out to many others.
• Advanced Search: Access the advanced search on Confluence where you can search for things like "last modified" to see pages which haven't been modified in X amount of time. 
• Content Archiving: Apps such as Better Content Archiving can be great - it allows you to see how much pages are being used, updated or viewed and can be a good way to clean your instance.

^ If you have a specific issue which you think isn't solved here, let us know as we might have met that scenario before :)

Ste

[Stephan Kuempel]

Hi, 

we released a plugin called "Outdated for Confluence" which does exactly this.

Users can mark pages as outdated with an additional button.

A outdated review table macro then lets you keep track and review the outdated pages.

For more info see:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1219467/outdated-for-confluence?hosting=server&tab=overview

https://emapps.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/EAD/overview 

Best Regards,

Stephan

[Janette Lipinski]

Hi @Stephan Kuempel,

Although its already a year since your post maybe I'm lucky here.
Do you still work on the plugin Outdated for Confluence and if yes is there any plan for a compatibility update for Confluence server soon?

Best regards,

Janette

[Lasse Ganske]

Hey @Pawan Kumar 

check out M.wikiGardener for Confluence M.wikiGardener provides the ability to list and edit outdated pages. Useful to clear up spaces