This page last changed on May 29, 2011 by smaddox.
This guide is for people who are using Confluence as a platform for an intranet. You will find this guide useful if you want to create a space where your team can collaborate and share information.
 | Quick guide to creating an intranet space
- Add a space.
- Set the space permissions.
- Customise the title and content of the home page.
- Subscribe to email notifications for any updates made to the space.
- Manage your existing Office documents.
- Import page templates.
- Set up your personal space.
- Publish a blog post.
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The rest of this page gives more details of the above procedures.
Step 1. Add a Space
Below is a quick guide to adding a space for your team.
- Go to the Confluence dashboard and click the 'Add Space' link.
- The 'Create Space' screen appears. Enter a space name and a short, unique space key.
- Leave the permission settings as default, or choose to allow only yourself to view or contribute content to this space. You can change these settings later and with more flexible options.
- Select a theme. We recommend the 'Global Look and Feel' theme for an intranet.
- Click 'OK' to add the space to your Confluence site.
The home page of your new space will appear. Because you created the space, you are the space administrator. Now you can do some basic configuration, as described in the sections below.
Step 2. Set the Space Permissions
Define the space permissions to determine who can do what in your new space.
- Open the 'Browse' menu and select 'Space Admin'.

- Click 'Permissions' in the left-hand navigation panel.
- Confirm your administrator access as prompted.
- Click 'Edit Permissions'.
- Set the permissions to suit your needs then click 'Save All'.
- You can add groups and/or individual users to the list, then select the permissions for each group or user.
- You can also set the permissions for anonymous users – these are people who have not logged in to the wiki and will not count towards the number allocated by your license. Anonymous access is available only if enabled for the entire Confluence site. However, it is unlikely you will need anonymous users for your intranet.
- Note that you can change these permissions at any time. You may want to restrict the permissions to specific groups now, and later open the space to more people.
More about Permissions
Confluence has a robust and granular permissions scheme that you can use to determine who can view, create content and comment within your intranet. There are three levels of permissions in Confluence:
- Global permissions apply across the entire site.
- Space permissions apply to a space.
- Page restrictions allow you to restrict the editing and/or viewing of a specific page.
Space permissions in Confluence are simple yet granular enough to be useful for an intranet. You can:
- Use the permission levels to control who can create pages, delete pages, create comments, delete comments, administer the space, and so on.
- Grant a permission level to one or more users, and/or to one or more groups, and/or to anonymous users. A space administrator has complete control.
Terminology:
- 'Anonymous' means people who have not logged in to the wiki.
- The 'confluence-users' group is the default group into which all new users are assigned. Everyone who can log in to Confluence is a member of this group.
For example, you might allow the 'confluence-users' group permission to create and edit comments, but reserve full editing rights for your team members. Let's assume your team members are all members of the 'dev-team' group. The example below shows that members of the 'dev-team' group have all permissions except space administration, but 'Ryan Reynolds' only has a few editing rights.

For detailed information, see the documentation on:
Step 3. Customise the Title and Content of the Home Page
When you created your space, Confluence created a home page with default content and a default title, 'Home'. You will want to change the title and content to suit your team.
- Go back to your space home page, by clicking the space name in the breadcrumbs at the top of the screen. In the example below, the space name is 'Development Team Space':

- The space home page appears. By default, the page title is 'Home'.

- Click 'Edit'.
- The page opens in edit mode. Change the title to suit your needs.

- Update the content to suit your needs.
Hint: If you do not know what to add yet, just add a short description. You can refine the content of the page at any time.
- Click 'Save' to save your home page.
Step 4. Subscribe to Email Notifications for Updates Made to the Space
You can configure your email notifications to suit your needs: Subscribe to all blog posts from Confluence, subscribe to your network, or stay informed about any changes in a specific space. Below is a quick guide to monitoring a space's content. See Watching a Space for a full description.
- Open the 'Browse' menu and select 'Advanced'.

- Click 'Start watching this space' in the bottom section of the left-hand navigation panel.
If at any time you wish to stop watching the space, just click 'Stop watching this space'.
Example of an Email Notification
Here is an example of the email notification you will receive when someone adds a comment to a page:

More about Notifications
You can specify the notifications you want to receive on a global, space and page level. The quick guide above demonstrated how to set up notifications for a space. Now we will show you how to configure your notifications on the global and page levels.
Global Notifications
Global notification settings determine the overall behaviour of the notifications you receive from Confluence.
- Open the 'User' menu (Your name) and select 'Settings'

- Click 'Email' in the left-hand navigation panel.
- Click 'Edit'.
- Change the default settings to suit your needs. You can alter these email settings at any time.
- Click 'Submit' to save your changes.
Page and Blog Post Notifications
Follow the quick guide below to receive notifications from Confluence about changes to and comments on a specific page or blog post. See Watching a Page or Blog Post for a full description.
You can watch any given page or blog post that you have permission to view. We will use your space's home page as an example.
- Open the home page of your space.
- Open the 'Tools' menu and select 'Watch'.

You are now watching the current page and Confluence will notify you about any updates made or comments added.
Note that Confluence will not notify you about content changes that are due to the output of a macro. For example: The output of the Children macro will change if someone adds a child page. The page containing the Children macro will show the new child page. But the page content itself has not been edited, so no notifications will be sent.
You can stop watching a page or blog post at any time. Just open the page, go to the 'Tools' menu and click 'Stop Watching'.
Step 5. Attach or Import Office Documents if Applicable
Below are some guidelines on managing your existing Office documents in Confluence. You can choose to attach them to a Confluence page, so that team members can view and access them in Confluence. Or you can import the documents into Confluence, converting the content to wiki format.
Attaching Office Documents to a Page
You can use Confluence as a central repository for your team's the Microsoft Office documents. This means that you can share your Office documents without having to email them to your teammates. People can view the Office documents even if they do not have Office installed on their computers.
- Go to your space home page, by clicking the space name in the breadcrumbs at the top of the screen.
- Hovering over the 'Tools' menu and click 'Attachments'.
- Choose one of the following methods for attaching files to the page:
- Use the 'Attachments' view's 'browse and attach' feature to attach one or more file(s):
- Click the 'Browse' button.
- Browse through your files and select the file that you would like to attach to the page.
- Enter a description for the attachment in the 'Comment' text field (optional).
- Click 'Attach more files' if required. More attachment entry fields will appear, allowing you to attach more files.
- Click the 'Attach' button.

- Alternatively, use the drag-and-drop feature to attach one or more file(s): Drag one or more file(s) accessible from your computer and drop them onto the 'Attachments' view. The 'Attach File(s)' message box appears, indicating the upload status of the file(s) being attached to your page.

Importing Existing Word Documents into Confluence
You can also import content from Microsoft Word into Confluence, so that it becomes a wiki page. See Importing an Office Document into Confluence for a full description.
- Go to your space home page, by clicking the space name in the breadcrumbs at the top of the screen.
- Open the 'Tools' menu and select 'Import Word Document'. The Office Connector import screen will appear.
- Click the 'Browse' button and find the Office document on your local drive or network.
- Click the 'Open' or 'Upload' button provided by your browser. The path and file name of the document will now appear in the text box on the Office Connector import screen.
- Click the 'Next' button. The import document options screen will display.
- Enter the following information:
- 'Root page title' – The title of the wiki page that will contain the information from your imported document.
- 'Import as a new page in the current space' – A new wiki page will be created with the page title specified above.
- Choose what you want the importer to do if there are page title conflicts, by selecting one of the following options:
- 'Rename imported pages if page name already exists' – Confluence will assign new names to any new page which would otherwise have a duplicate name. The content of existing pages will remain unchanged.
- 'Split by heading' – Use this field to split your document into multiple wiki pages. If you do not want to split your document into multiple wiki pages, leave the default 'Don't split' option selected.
- Click 'Import' to import your document.
When the upload has finished, the content of the Office document will have been transformed into Confluence page content. You can now view and edit this page in the normal way, using the Confluence Rich Text Editor or Wiki Markup. There is no connection between the original Office document and this wiki page.
Step 6. Import Page Templates
In order for an intranet to be effective, people need to use it. One way to spur new user adoption is to provide your team mates with templates so that they can focus more on content creation and less on page format. Confluence offers a number of templates, including a template for 'Meeting Notes' and a 'Three-Column Layout', to help your team get started populating your intranet and improving its productivity. See Importing Templates for a full description.
- Log in to Confluence as an administrator and go to the Confluence 'Administration Console'.
- Click 'Import Templates' in the left-hand navigation panel. The 'Import Templates' screen will appear, listing the template packages deployed to your Confluence instance (for example, 'Default Templates Package') and the templates included in each package.

- Select the templates you want by ticking the check boxes next to the template names.
Note: You can view a preview of the template by clicking the template name.
- Select the import destination for the templates in the 'Import To' dropdown. If you want the templates to be available to a specific space only, select the name of the space, otherwise select 'Global Templates' to make the templates available to all spaces.
- Click the 'Import' button to import the selected templates.
How Users will Find Templates
Now that you have made Confluence's templates available to your site or space, other Confluence users will be able to choose a template when they want to create a page.
Choosing a Template from the Dashboard
When you add a page from the Confluence dashboard, you will be able to select the template and space for the new page at the same time.
- Go to the Confluence Dashboard by clicking 'Dashboard' from the breadcrumbs at the top left of your screen.
- Click the 'Add Page' button. The 'Add Page' dialog appears.

- Select the space where you want to add the page.
- Select the template you want to use to populate your page.

- Click 'Next' to create the page.
Choosing a Template from within the Editor
Often you will add a page from within a space, or as a child of another page. This guide shows you how to choose a template from within the Confluence editor.
- Go to your space home page, by clicking the space name in the breadcrumbs at the top of the screen.
- Hover over the 'Add' menu and click 'Page'. This will launch the Confluence editor.
- To populate the editor from a template, click the 'Select a page template to start from' link below the 'Title' field. This will launch the 'Page Template Wizard'.

- Choose a page template from those available in the list.

- Click 'Next' to populate the editor with the selected template.
Step 7. Set Up your Personal Space
Now that you have created a space for your team, let's create your personal space. This is a place where you can publish your own pages and blog posts. Once you have created it, Confluence users can reach your personal space by clicking your name in the People Directory or by searching for your name via the quick navigation search box.
- Go to your name at the top of the page and select 'Create Personal Space' from the dropdown list.

- Enter a few details about your space:
- Choose who can view content.
- Choose who can contribute (create and edit) content.
- Choose the 'Global Look and Feel' for your personal space.
- Click the 'Create' button.
- The 'Home' page for your new space is displayed.
Step 8. Publish a Blog Post
Blog posts are a good way of letting your team mates and the company know your news. People can blog about product and strategic ideas, team updates, and things they want to get ideas about. New employees can write blog posts introducing themselves. People write about getting married or the birth of a child. Blog posts are a great way for people to share their visions, get to know their c-oworkers and start lively discussions.
Remember to set your email notifications to alert you about the blog posts published within Confluence, as described in an earlier step.
See Working with Blog Posts for a full description of adding, editing, viewing and linking to blog posts.
- Go to a page in your space.
- Hover over the 'Add' menu and select 'Blog Post'.
- Change the title to suit your needs.
- Update the content to suit your needs.
- Click 'Save' to publish your blog post.
Setting up a New Global Space
Global Permissions Overview
Assigning Space Permissions
Setting a Page's Restrictions
Users and Groups
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