Creating a Custom Space Template

[Omkar Borle]

I have created Global Templates of all the Pages I'd like to be a part of all my Spaces that I create. Is there a way to do this?

Or Optionally, If I create one Space with all my required page templates, and then use that to duplicate and create all my future Spaces - 

What is the best way to achieve this?

[Andy Gladstone]

@Omkar Borle what exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you created them as Global Templates, they should be available in all Spaces since they are not limited to any specific Space. 

Creating one space with Space specific templates and then copying the space is not recommended:

1. You need to install the Copy Space App. This adds cost to your instance.
2. Copying a space replicates all existing content, which you would then need to archive or delete, which adds administrative overhead.

The golden rule is that templates should be Global unless you have a reason to limit them to a specific space. Sounds like you have what you need already.

[Omkar Borle]

@Andy Gladstone  Thanks for the response! Not Copying the space makes total sense now. To explain what I am trying to achieve is:
I create space for each of our clients (we are an agency) - In each of those Clients/spaces we create Page Templates related to those clients. Eg: Template to save all Articles, A template to link all Media Plans etc.

And because we offer the same service accross, the page templates remain the same for each client.  Now we onboard a new client, I want to create a Space for that client and when I do so, I'd like to have all those Page templates i have created to be by default a part of that Space. Possible?

[Aaron Smith]

@Omkar Borle would love to know if you've discovered anything else about this. We have a very similar situation... we're migrating to Confluence over the next 2 months. We're a research consulting firm with lots of client projects. Our basic plan is to create a space for each client engagement and we want spaces to have consistent overview pages, setups, look and feel, etc. Project have enough similarities that we want to reduce the cognitive load of staff switching between projects or joining a new project.  I was hoping to create a Customer Space template that we could use to have out admin team create the project space each time we onboard a new project and reduce the burden on the project lead to pull the right templates and create pages, etc... (and reduce the variation that will creep in).  

But I haven't found a good way to do this yet.  My plan is to have our Admin team that sets up the new project spaces to populate it with an Overview page and an Initial set-up to do list.  But I wish we could have more in there to standardize how people approach it (like we can have a template project trello board that we just replicate for new projects).  

[Allen Trevethan]

I wanted to give this one a bump. I have the same issue as @Omkar Borle

Have you found a good solution? I'm playing around with using Zapier to populate a "Blank" space with our Global Templates to initialize a new Client Space, but would LOVE it if there was an easier way that I just didn't know about. 

[Brian Catagnus]

@Omkar Borle this may not fit your use case but if you use Jira as well you may be able to use Jira Automation to accomplish this goal. It may get more complicated than you would like to setup but once complete you could use Jira issue fields to provide custom info for already created (empty) spaces that provide the structure you want.

So, you would create a single Jira project. In that project you would have a custom issue type that contains a custom field that you use to populate the name of the space. Then instead of using an automated trigger use a manual trigger to execute the automation that adds the page/child page structure to the space. 

Since your templates are global, they should already be useable from any space. 

If you use this method, you can track space creation requests using Jira and setup the page structure from the same issue. You could also create a field in the Jira issue that allows you to control what pages are created when the automation is executed. This would give you a template like experience since you could choose different groups of pages for different clients. Like having 3 or so distinctive space styles a customer could choose from.

I agree with the custom space template and have voted for the feature using the aforementioned link, but this may be an acceptable workaround for now.

[Omkar Borle]

@Kishan Sharma If I am not wrong, Global templates are for individual pages. I want to create a whole Space as a template - that has multiple different pages that get replicated each time I create a new space.

@Aaron Smith @Allen Trevethan  For now I have done this. I have created a Template Space. Where I have designed it the way I want all my spaces to look like. Created all the Pages in Folder structures. 

When I create a new space, I just Copy the Template Space format and the new Space now has everything my Template Space has. 

- Create a New Space and give it a name

- Open Template Space > Overview and click on copy 

- Select the New Space in the Dropdown and Include all the Child Pages (Eg: is Test)

- Include all Child Pages 

[Kishan Sharma]

Hi @Omkar Borle Currently it is not possible to create a space template on cloud. There's already a suggestion raised on this - Creating a Space Template 

I would suggest you to vote for it and start watching it for future updates.

Until this feature is released, you have to take the manual steps that you are currently following already.

[Allen Trevethan]

Thanks, @Omkar Borle

That looks like it would have worked decent! Thanks for the suggestion link, @Kishan Sharma I'll go add my vote there!

[Kishan Sharma]

Hi @Omkar Borle If you have created a Global Template, it will be automatically available to all the spaces that you create and to any existing spaces that you have. So its the best way to have them so that those templates are available across your site. Hope this helps.

[Omkar Borle]

Is there a way to create a Global Template for a Space? So when I create a new Space and apply the Global Template all the pages, subpages etc. will be available? 

[Kishan Sharma]

Yes, this functionality already exists. As I mentioned earlier, when you create a Global Template, it will be available to all your new/existing spaces across the site. Refer these steps on how to create Global Template on cloud.