In this page

What is an excluded space?

Although most Confluence spaces benefit from content lifecycle management, there are certain situations when it is better to exclude spaces.

When you exclude a space, it will not be:

  1. collecting content events (views, updates, labellings, etc.)
  2. shown in the content status overview
  3. decorated with the app's user interface elements (e.g. the Content Status Indicator)
  4. contributing contents to the Content list
  5. processed by jobs, therefore the pages and blog posts it contains will be skipped during:
    1. content status refreshes
    2. notifications
    3. automations

When you exclude a space, it will be:

  1. listed on some dashboard reports (but with an "excluded space" lozenge)

It essentially means that excluded spaces are ignored by the Better Content Archiving app. The app will track content views and updates in the excluded spaces, though. It can be useful if you decide to enable content lifecycle management on the space later.

Which spaces should I exclude?

You should exclude the following types of spaces:

  • Irrelevant spaces: these are the spaces that should not be tracked because their status is not relevant. They include dead content (legacy garbage), never-changing content (static information), machine-generated content, and other content that would slow down the app in your site without creating real value for your users.
    Benefit: If you exclude these spaces, it can make a big difference in terms of app performance, especially in large Confluence instances. Properly configuring the list of excluded spaces is an actual optimization possibility. It both reduces clutter in the application interface (e.g. irrelevant spaces not polluting the content status overview) and the execution duration of your jobs.
  • Spaces with corrupt data: Confluence, other apps, custom scripts may sometimes create data that is considered corrupt. The app is designed to tolerate most types of corrupt data, but it may fail in non-recoverable situations like broken parent-child relations.
    Benefit: If you find a space with corrupt data and exclude that temporarily, your users can use the app in all other spaces until the data gets fixed.

What is the difference between archived and excluded spaces?

Archive spaces are handled the same way as excluded spaces for jobs, content events, and dashboards. Where needed, the app displays a dedicated "archived space" lozenge to distinguish them.

Note that archived spaces cannot be excluded, so they will not even show up on the Exclude spaces screen.

Manage excluded spaces

By default, the list of excluded spaces contains all personal spaces, meaning that the content lifecycle management is active only in global spaces. (You can remove personal spaces from the list any time, to activate the app features in those as well.)

You can add or remove spaces from the list at Confluence Settings (cog icon "⚙" in the top right) → Apps → Better Content Archiving → Administration → Exclude spaces.

The space list can be filtered by:

  • Space type (personal, not personal, or both)
  • Exclusion (currently included, currently excluded, or both)
  • Space key or name (free text)

If you apply filters, you can see the number of matching spaces at the bottom of the table.

The list shows a checkbox for each space. If it is checked, that means that the space is excluded from content lifecycle management. If it is unchecked, the space is actively processed by the app.

Check or uncheck the boxes as you need to. At the top of the table, you can select or deselect all spaces on the current page using the "select all" checkbox. If you have a large number of spaces, checking or unchecking the "select all" checkbox offers you a convenient way to select or deselect all spaces (matching your filters, if they are set), not just those that are immediately shown.

Use the filters and the pager at the bottom to navigate the list and include or exclude spaces as needed. Don't worry, changes you just made will be preserved.

When you are done, click Save. The app will show you a brief summary of your changes, and ask you for confirmation. Clicking Save in the confirmation modal saves your changes.

Questions?

Ask us any time.