Easily Assign action items in Confluence

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Add, Assign, and View Tasks

Keep track of the things that need to get done with tasks. With the ability to give each task an assignee and due date, and plenty of ways to see your tasks, you can make sure nothing slips through the cracks.

Add a task

You can add tasks on any page in Confluence. For example, you might add tasks under action items on a meeting notes page, or in a project planning page – anywhere you need a lightweight task management solution.

To create a task:

In the editor, choose the Task list button or use the keyboard shortcut [ ]
Start typing your task – @mention someone to assign the task to them, and type // and choose a due date

The first person you mention in a task is the assignee; you can even assign tasks to yourself.

Note: If you assign a task to someone who doesn't have permission to view the page or space, they won't see the task.

View tasks

There are a number of ways to keep track of tasks assigned to you, or tasks you've created for others.

On a page

The simplest way to see a task is on the page it was originally created on. It's easy to see if a task is complete, who it's assigned to, and when it's due. If a task is nearing or passed its due date, the colour of the date will change (red for overdue, orange for due in the next 7 days).

In your profile

The tasks page in your profile gives you a place to see all the tasks relevant to you. Easily keep track of the status of tasks assigned to you, and tasks you've created and assigned to others.

To view the tasks page, go to Profile > Tasks. Use the filters to show tasks that were assigned to you or created by you in the last 6 months, and toggle between complete or incomplete tasks.

If you need to see more than just your last 6 months of tasks, use a Task Report.

In a Task Report

If you're looking for a more custom view of tasks, the Task Report blueprint is a great way to track tasks assigned to a specific team or project.

To create a task report:

Choose Create > Task Report
Select the type of report:
- Assigned to my team – for tasks assigned to particular people.
- In my project – for tasks that appear in a specific space or page.
- Custom – for a wide range of filtering options, including by date or page label.
Follow the prompts to create the report.

This blueprint uses the Task Report Macro. You can also choose to use this macro on an existing page, for example, on a project or team space homepage.

Notes

The date picker can be triggered by typing // or by typing a date in the format dd/mm/yyyy or dd-mm-yyyy. Typing other date formats in the editor won't trigger the date picker.
Personal Tasks (created in the Workbox in older versions of Confluence) don't appear in the Tasks view or Task Report. To migrate any incomplete personal tasks, go to Workbox > Personal Tasks and follow the prompts.
The wiki markup based Tasklist Macro has been removed from the macro browser. If you have a Tasklist macro on a page it will continue to work, but you will be unable to add new Tasklists using this macro.

Stay informed (but not bombarded) with Confluence notifications

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By John Wetenhall, Product Marketing Manager, Confluence

Confluence

On June 15, 2016

Confluence keeps you up to date about edits to your pages, feedback from teammates, and announcements. But you know this.

Here’s what’s new: batched notifications.

With batched notifications, Confluence will now send you more relevant email notifications. You’ll still receive the information you care about most but – and here’s the good part – you’ll receive fewer of them.

And while we’re at it, let me pass along five tips on how to use Confluence to stay informed about changes to your work as well as making sure you get the right updates from your team and around your organization.

The secret to less email

Batched notifications is our solution to the tricky balancing act between access to all updates and the updates you need most. Confluence now collects all the updates to pages you’ve worked on – things like edits, deletions, etc. – and sends you a summary email of activity on each page. Batching happens every ten minutes as long as there is activity. This prevents notification storms after someone makes tons of edits to a page you’ve been working on, but still captures a summary of all the changes to each page so you can follow the plot.

Current Confluence Cloud users might have noticed emails like this one landing in their inboxes already. Early results show that Confluence is sending about 25% fewer emails each week with the new batching system.

This is now live for all Confluence Cloud users and available for Confluence Server in version 5.10.

Five tips for staying up to date in Confluence

Confluence allows you to follow pages, spaces, and blogs using the “Watch” feature. This enables you to get notified of updates and changes. Here are five tips for tailoring the information you receive from Confluence.

1. Watch Spaces to follow along with a team or project

Spaces are collections of work and information for a particular team or project. If you’re the type who likes to know what everyone is working on so you don’t miss a thing, watching a space is for you. You can choose to watch all the pages or just the space blog. Watching a space’s blog is a great way to stay informed of the latest announcements from that team or about the project.

2. Watch ‘All Blogs’ to keep a finger on the company pulse

If your company has a culture of blogging internally like we do at Atlassian, the best way to get all the latest news is to watch all blogs. You’ll get notified every time a new blog post comes out so you don’t miss a thing. Turn this on in your personal email settings.

3. Follow the conversation of comments

Each time you comment on a page, Confluence automatically watches the page for you so you get notified of additional comments on the page – whether inline, on the page or on files within the page. If you’re no longer interested in the commentary, simply stop watching the page. You can also watch any page to get notified of future comments even if you have nothing to say yet.

4. Quickly jettison notifications you don’t need

Every email notification has a handy link at the bottom – “Stop Watching Page” – so if a page no longer needs your careful attention, you can stop notifications with one click. If only it were that easy to get rid of the rest of your emails!

5. Cull notifications en masse when they go out of date

I have a tendency to watch tons of pages from each project I work on and areas I’m interested in, which sometimes leaves me with a bunch of notifications that I don’t really need any more. You can stop watching a bunch of pages all at once from the “Watches” tab in your user profile.

The new batching system for notifications and these five tips should help you spend less time tracking down the information you need and save your inbox from a bunch of unnecessary emails!

Batched notifications are available now in Confluence Cloud, and in the latest server release, Confluence 5.10.

Get more out of Jira with keyboard shortcuts

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Keyboard shortcuts are a great way for you to speed up editing, navigating, and for performing actions without having to take your fingers off the keyboard. Today, we'll take a closer look at some keyboard shortcuts that will help you navigate Jira Software more efficiently and boost your agility.

Navigate across Jira Software

The 'G' key is your passport to navigate across Jira Software. The 'G' key pairs with another key to select the destination screen. Let's take a look at how the 'G' key works:

Try it yourself Press 'G' and then 'D' (not at the same time) to go back to the Jira Software Dashboard.

Boost Agility

These shortcuts are available on Jira Software screens only.

The three most important shortcuts for agility are unsurprisingly '1', '2', and '3'.

Use 'N' and 'P' to move between columns in active sprints or the kanban board.

If you're working on a smaller screen or a projector during sprint planning, the 'T' and 'Z' keys help optimize space.

While you're planning sprints, move issues to the top of the sprint or backlog with ease.

Try it yourself Press ‘G’ and then ‘A’ and then press ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ to rotate through the different views of Jira Software.

These are just a few of the 40+ keyboard shortcuts that exist in Jira Software. Ditch the mouse and get more out of Jira Software by staying on the keyboard.

Easily Assign action items in Confluence

Add, Assign, and View Tasks

Add a task