Automatic lists are part of every Confluence instance. Especially the Dashboard lists all recent changes automatically. And there are macros to list documents by label and other properties. The projectdoc Toolbox supports queries on any properties defined for your documents. This allows you to provide lists of references to your readers that are relevant in a given context.
Teams who work collaboratively typically need to communicate continuously. New information needs to be published effortless to get team members informed in-time. New members of your team can catch-up quickly. So you typically create a new page, then add the valuable information, and finally continue with the next task from the board.
Being able to release information about what has been recently done in a given context is not only relevant for team, but also for individuals. Think of journals where you track your work, note discoveries, new ideas, or notes for activities to do in the future.
There is little to no time to add links to pages to make the new document browsable. Therefore the wiki need to add links to this information automatically. Confluence provides a number of macros that allow to render these links. The projectdoc Toolbox supports queries on any properties defined for your documents. Template authors use automatic lists for creating new page blueprints.
The macros to support this automatic, sometimes called dynamic, linking are:
- Display Table Macro - Lists references to projectdoc documents in a table. Allows to select document properties for columns. Also non-list representations are provided.
- Display List Macro - Lists references to projectdoc documents in a list. List contain names and optional short descriptions.
This is how it works:
On the right side you see the Display Table Macro.
The macro parameters allow to specify
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Select | The properties of the documents in the result set you want to display. |
| Where | The query constraint to select documents with the given properties. |
| Sort By | The sorting criteria for the documents in the result set. |
So in pseudo syntax, this is what you actually specify:
SELECT Name Short Description, Documentation Type, Iteration, Categories WHERE Tags = "Core" SORT BY Sort Key, Name
On the left side you see the result of the query in a table.
The Where Parameter allows to specify complex Lucene queries.
PropertyOne = "Some String" AND
(PropertyTwo = "Another String" OR PropertyFive = "Something")
The Transclude Documents Macro - Renders transcluded content fetched from documents of a result set. is a cousin of the two macros mentioned above. It also allows you to query for documents. Instead of rendering links, it renders excerpts from the documents in the result list.
