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What is the Better Content Archiving app?

The Better Content Archiving for Confluence app is the #1 content lifecycle management solution for Confluence.

The app supports flexible content workflows, lifecycle and retention strategies for Confluence pages, blog posts, attachments, comments and other types of content. It drastically enhances your content management processes through consistent workflows and automation.

What is Content Lifecycle Management (CLM)?

Content Lifecycle Management (CLM) is the process of collaboratively creating, publishing, maintaining and archiving content during its full lifetime in Confluence. Content, in this context, includes every type and every format: Confluence pages, blog posts, attachments and comments.

Why should I use content lifecycle management?

For smaller teams with minimal content creation, CLM might not be that important. However, evolving teams with a growing number of contributors find keeping control over their content an impossible task: the need for CLM grows exponentially.

When content managers can no longer keep track of the content lifecycle of a company, it is high time to introduce the Better Content Archiving app to the Confluence site.

How does it work?

Better Content Archiving is a standard Confluence Cloud app that seamlessly integrates with the Confluence user interface and user experience, enhancing that with content lifecycle management features.

What content workflows are supported?

Content lifecycle can be vastly different from one piece of content to the next.

Here is a couple of frequently used, simple content workflow examples implemented with the app:

• Expiration on a specific date. A tree of pages expires on a specific date, like the end date of the fiscal year, for instance. The pages should not be archived automatically, but a designated supervisor of the content will decide whether to archive them. If he decides so, he can mark them for archival. The background job executed during the night will take care of it.
• Periodic content reviews. A monthly report page needs reviews in every 30 days. Its maintainers should be repeatedly notified about the expiration until the page gets an update. When the page is updated, members of the management (who watch the page) get a notification email.
• Automatic archiving of unused content. When pages in a space receive no updates for a longer period (100 days), they are automatically transitioned to the "expired" status. It indicates to the visitor that the content may or may not be accurate. The visitor can confirm it (meaning that it is still accurate without any update), edit it to make it up-to-date again, or just leave it as is. If not updated for 150 days, it will be automatically archived.
• Automatic clean-up for not-viewed pages. In some fast-growing space, no-one knows if certain pages are actually in use or not. You configure the rule: if a page is not viewed by anyone for 100 days, it can be archived automatically to reduce the clutter. If you find out later, that someone still needs the page, no problem: it can be restored from the archive space. (It is preserved with its full history, attachments, comments and other metadata.)
• Automatic content retention. Ensure compliance with data retention regulations by automatically purging information 365 days after it is archived. You can set up an automation to handle this process in the background. To prevent accidental deletion, you can configure notifications to alert you 10 days before the purge.
• "Evergreen" pages. Mixed with other pages, there may be meeting memos or contracts or other types of "fixed content" that should never be checked for updates or views. They can be simply excluded from content lifecycle management.

... and your own content strategy!

How does the Better Content Archiving app implement CLM?

Using the Better Content Archiving app, content lifecycle management is implemented by defining workflows as outlined below, and executing them on your Confluence site.

Let's walk through the most important concepts and the app's key features briefly.

Content statuses

The Better Content Archiving app introduces the concept of content statuses. Content statuses are distinct states of contents that you can assign to your Confluence pages and blog posts. They are characterized by a name, a colored icon, and an optional description.

(Do not confuse the app's status concept with Confluence's built-in content status feature, which offers only limited functionality. The app's content statuses provide greater flexibility and a wider range of features to better support your workflow needs.)

Content status schemes

Content statuses are organized into content status schemes. Each scheme is a collection of content statuses and conditions that define the rules for assigning statuses to contents.

Conditions are defined using CQL queries. When a condition is met (meaning the CQL query matches the content), the corresponding status is assigned to that content. You can use general content fields in your queries, such as the content title, ancestor page, space, creator, and more. Additionally, you can use fields provided by the Better Content Archiving app, including expiration dates, archiving dates, content owners, and more.

You can define multiple content status schemes and reuse content statuses across different schemes. Each space on your site is assigned to exactly one content status scheme at any given time.

Based on the configured schemes and space-to-scheme assignments, the app automatically calculates and assigns a status to each piece of content on your site. These updates are primarily performed through periodic background jobs.

Notification and automation schemes

Once content statuses have been assigned, you can use them to configure the app to send periodic notifications or execute automations based on the current status or virtually any other content metadata. To do this, you can define notification schemes and automation schemes.

Within these schemes, you specify conditions using CQL queries, just as you do for content status schemes. For each notification or automation action, you can use configurable cron expressions to define when the scheme should run that action. You can also configure additional settings, such as who should be notified and what actions should be performed on which content.

Similar to content status updates, notifications and automations are performed by background jobs. Each space on your site also uses exactly one notification scheme and one automation scheme at any given time.

Reporting and integrations

Besides notifications and automations, you can use the app's comprehensive reporting and dashboard features to view reports and gain insights into your content health, fully integrated into Confluence's user interface. You can review a wide range of metrics across your entire site or within a specific space.

Using the app gadgets built around CQL, you can query and browse contents in a highly flexible way and even export data to work with external software. The app also provides advanced features, such as inheritable ownership control, to help you address complex content lifecycle management use cases.

Restrict app scope

If you do not want the app to process certain spaces, you can exclude them from content lifecycle management. For excluded spaces, the app's interfaces are not available and content statuses are not calculated (cleared, actually). Additionally, no notifications are sent for their content, no automations are executed, and the spaces are not included in the metrics displayed on the site dashboard.

You always have the option to reinclude excluded spaces later if you change your mind.

Next steps

Please read the child pages of this page to learn more about the different app features.

Questions?

Ask us any time.