Making a template

A template is a space you already set up, plus a few settings.

The source

A template reads from a whole space, or one page and everything under it. Press Read it and find the blanks and Space Factory shows how many pages, attachments and labels it can see, lists every blank it found, and names any page it couldn’t read.

Reading it again later picks up new blanks. The blanks you have already set up keep their settings.

Name and key

Two rules decide what each new space is called:

• New space name — for example {client} onboarding.
• New space key — for example CL{client}. Confluence keys are letters and numbers only, so anything else is stripped once the blanks are filled: CL-{client} for Acme gives CLACME.

If the key a request works out is already taken, the preview says so and suggests free ones. A key counts as taken, too, when another request that is still waiting would get it, or when a space with it is being made right now — so two requests can’t both be approved for the same key. Space Factory looks through up to 2,000 waiting requests for this; on a site with more, the preview says it couldn’t check every one.

Who gets a role

Confluence Cloud sets space access by role, so Space Factory does too. You can give a role to:

• the person who asked for the space — the usual choice for Admin;
• a group;
• one named person;
• whoever is picked in a person blank, so {owner} becomes the space’s Admin;
• everyone with a Confluence license.

Or turn on Copy the source space’s access instead and the new space gets the same people and groups as the template.

Somebody has to have Admin, or nobody can manage the new space. The editor won’t let you save without one.

A welcome page

A template can add a page called Welcome to your new space that @mentions whoever asked for it, so the person who requested the space knows it is theirs. It goes under the home page, after the copied pages. The home page itself gets the template’s own home page text. The welcome page is off unless you turn it on, and it is only added to a brand-new space — not when a template’s pages are added to a space you already have.

What gets copied

Attachments (whatever their size), page labels, page restrictions, and page settings and macros. The new space’s description is the one you write on the template, in Description of the new space; blanks work in it.

Two more you can tick:

• Comments on the pages. Footer and inline comments on the template’s pages are added to their copies, with the blanks in them filled in.
• The space’s blog posts. The template space’s blog posts, with their attachments up to 4.5 MB, are added to the new space, blanks filled in. Blog posts belong to a whole space, so they are only copied into a new space: when a template’s pages go into a space that already exists, they are left out, and the preview says so. The preview counts them, and stops if the template space has a blog post you can’t see.

Space Factory creates those itself, so they show the app as the author, with the original author and date written in. See What is and isn’t copied.

Who may use it

• Groups who can use this template. Leave it empty and only Confluence admins and the groups allowed to make templates can use it.
• Someone must approve each request. Off, and anyone in those groups creates a space straight away. On, and requests wait for an approver.
• Groups that skip approval, for the people you trust to go ahead. They skip it only if they can use the template, so put them in its allowed groups too.

Versions

Saving a template makes a new version. A request keeps the version it was made against, so editing a template never changes a request already waiting, and a creation already running keeps the version it started with.

Space admins

A Confluence admin can let space admins copy their own space, from that space’s Space settings → Space Factory. It’s off until you turn on Space admins can copy their own spaces in Settings. It doesn’t let them make templates: that takes a Confluence admin, or someone in a group allowed to make templates.