How to Create a Template in Confluence - The Ultimate Guide

Article last updated on October 30, 2026

1. Introduction to Confluence Templates

Companies often find it challenging to standardize documentation and make sure everyone inside the team follows clear guidelines and can access the right data at the right moment. Documents can be anything from meeting notes, project planning, technical documentation, to strategic one-pager plans, employee onboarding, and so on. Since everyone can create content in Confluence so easily, you need good knowledge management to avoid chaos. And that’s where Confluence templates come in!

Confluence templates take your content creation to the next level by automating formatting and allowing data to be structured for everyone. Creating Confluence templates is pretty easy, but to get the most out of them, follow a few clever steps.

In this guide you'll also learn how to use your templates with 3rd party apps such as Meetical. If you are familiar with Templates and use Meetical already, check our separate guide on How to use Templates with Meetical.

If you're interested in templates for meeting notes, you might also like to read our Ultimate Guide on Confluence Meeting Notes.

With this guide, every type of document gets one clear structure and layout. This is especially important in Confluence because, with macros such as Page Properties, you can turn your pages into well-organized, semi-structured databases.

How this article is structured:

• In the Introduction to Confluence Templates, we'll discuss the basic ideas of templates, when you need to create a Confluence template, and the pre-made templates that are already available for you.
• In Creating a New Template we'll go through the types of templates you can create and how you can start doing that.
• In the Editing Existing Templates section, we will show you how to copy and edit existing templates and explain what Confluence blueprints are.
• In the Design and Layout section, we’ll go through the step-by-step process of creating new Confluence templates.
• In the Publishing Your Template section, we’ll explain how you can share your newly created template with teams and other Confluence users.
• In the Macros section, we’ll discuss the most powerful macros to use in templates.
• In the Content Properties section, we’ll build a small OKR database with templates and reports.
• In the Meeting Notes Template section, we’ll show the best ways to use Confluence for internal and external meetings.
• The Templates and AI section is new: what Rovo and Meetical AI do with your templates.
• The Best Practices section goes through nifty tips and tricks for Confluence power users.
• The FAQ answers the questions we get most often.
• And finally, we’ll Summarize everything for you.

This guide covers Confluence Cloud. When a feature needs a paid plan, I mention it. Most of the concepts apply to Confluence Data Center as well.

In this article, I have poured almost 15 years of experience with Atlassian tools, so you can start creating Confluence templates within minutes! So let’s dive in.

In short, Confluence templates help you keep your content under control. Every report, interview, transcript, campaign, epic, and brainstorming session creates a lot of content that needs to be cleaned up, structured and shared. You lose track of data, you lose your progress.

You’ll need Confluence templates if:

• You’re going to create similar content, repeatedly. Think of regular interviews, feature requirements, employee onboarding, and frequently asked questions—if teams use the same structure every time, you keep all the important data, everyone works faster and makes fewer mistakes.
• You want to standardize documentation across the company. It’s important to set content guidelines to reduce fragmented and incomplete data and increase overall trust in the Confluence database.
• You want to build semi-structured databases within Confluence. Powerful macros, such as Page Properties, combined with templates, help you build reliable document databases, categorize your pages, and keep order in a growing knowledge base.

Using the Confluence Template Library

You’ve decided to use Confluence templates to improve team productivity so you start creating your own. But hold on! Chances are, there’s a template that already exists for your needs. The Confluence template library has a large collection of ready-made templates from Atlassian and its partners including Indeed, HubSpot, Zendesk and Lucidchart. They cover almost every aspect of an organization—from business strategy, design, HR, and reports to project management, IT, marketing, startups, and agile teamwork.

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Atlassian updates the templates often, and the library keeps growing. Some of our personal favorites are:

• Meeting notes template, Project plan template, DACI: Decision documentation template — for project managers
• Retrospective template, 4Ls retrospective template, Sprint planning meeting template, Daily stand up template — for agile teams
• 1-on-1 meeting template, Leadership team health monitor template, 5 whys analysis template — for team leaders and executives

Head over to the Confluence template library, search with your keywords and find the one that suits your needs!

Why create your own templates in Confluence

Even with this large collection, the template library doesn’t fit every business. And that’s a good thing. You can create templates from scratch specifically for your organization and have more control over documentation. For example, at my previous company, we simplified the meeting notes template to an agenda table with two columns: “Agenda item” and “Results”, plus add a section for “Recordings” where we would upload Zoom recordings, when available.

Below we’ll show you how to create a template in Confluence and the tricks you need to follow to get the best results.

2. Creating a new template

Note: The screenshots in this guide were taken in 2022. The Confluence interface has changed since then, the steps in the text are updated for October 2026.

You can create two types of templates: global templates and space templates. Global templates are available to everyone on your Atlassian site, while space templates are only available in one space.

Space templates keep each team’s templates where they belong. For example, the development team doesn’t need to see the email campaign templates of the marketing team. Global templates are useful when you need the same documentation standard across the whole company.

Global Templates

Creating global templates is easy.

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1. Click on the gear icon at the top right to open the Confluence settings
2. Select Configuration > Global templates and blueprints from the left sidebar
3. Click on the Add global content template button at the top right
4. You'll be taken to the page editor where you can edit the global template
5. After editing, you can save the page as template in Confluence

Important to remember: you can only add/remove global templates as a Confluence admin.

These are the basic steps. Later we’ll see how to create a great layout and which macros get the most out of your templates.

Space Templates

Creating Space templates is as easy as creating global templates. It’s a good option if you only want to make your template available for your team/project, or if you simply don’t have the permission to create global templates.

Create a Space template by following these steps:

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1. Open the Space you want to create the template for
2. Next to the space name in the left sidebar, select More actions (•••) and then Space settings
3. Then click on Look and feel
4. Go to Templates and select Create new template
5. You'll be taken to the page editor where you can edit the space template
6. After editing, you can save the page as template in Confluence

Important to remember: you can only add/remove space templates as a Confluence Space admin. Site admins can give that permission to users for each space. To get started with space templates, use your personal space, where you have Space Admin privileges by default.

New in 2026: on sites with the new role-based access, admins can also give people the Create content templates permission for a space. Then they can create space templates without being space admins.

Pages, live docs, whiteboards and databases

Templates work for pages and for live docs: placeholder text, variables and labels apply to both. Whiteboards and databases come with their own templates from Atlassian, but you can’t create your own whiteboard templates yet. This guide is about page templates.

What is a Confluence blueprint?

You have probably come across Confluence blueprints already, especially when creating global templates. Blueprints are very similar to the templates you create, so it’s important to know the difference.

Here’s what you need to know about blueprints, right from Atlassian — “Blueprints are templates created by Atlassian or by third-party developers. From an end-user perspective, blueprints and templates are the same, but there are some important differences for administrators.”

In short, blueprints are templates on steroids, and by steroids I mean code. Every blueprint needs a developer who builds it into an app, but this gives more control over the content structure. For example, if you use the meeting notes blueprint for the first time, Confluence will create a meeting notes index page, listing all meetings and action items in that space.  

Unless you are a developer, it doesn’t make sense to build blueprints. Create your own template instead.

Testing your templates

After creating your templates, test them. You’ll find them in the template lists, and there are three ways to test them:

a) Using your Personal Space

Your personal space is the safest place to start with templates. Just click on your user profile icon on the top right and either “Create personal space” or access your existing personal space from there.

b) Using Space Templates

If you need a solution for your whole team or project, I recommend space templates. You only require space admin rights to be able to create and edit these templates.

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c) Testing Global Templates

Global templates are the best way to standardize content across your whole organization. However, Confluence Admin rights are required. If you think everyone in your company would benefit from your template, ask your admin for temporary access.

3. Editing existing Confluence templates

You can use these steps to copy existing templates and/or turn any existing Confluence page into a template. We suggest you use a regular page to design the template and then copy it over to your template editor.

Copy templates

It’s always a good idea to first create a page from an existing template, to see how it looks. To copy or clone an existing template and edit it in your space, here’s what you need to do:

1. Click on the Global Templates and Blueprints from the sidebar, find the template and click edit
2. Press Ctrl+A or command+A to select the entire text
3. Press Ctrl+C or command+C to copy
4. Return to the previous page, and click on Create New Template button
5. Press Ctrl+V or command+V to paste the template

This also works for turning any Confluence page into a template. Just copy the whole content with Ctrl+A or command+A and paste it into a new template. Make sure to go over all macro settings and see that there aren’t any hard-coded page IDs or space key references. More on that later when we speak about adding macros.

Edit existing templates

Editing existing Confluence templates is easy as well. To easily edit a Confluence template, click on the edit button and start tweaking the elements in the editor!

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You can also edit the built-in templates and blueprints such as meeting notes. Simply find the blueprint/ template and click on the edit button next to it. Want a different meeting notes index page to be created with your first meeting notes page in any new space? Then choose the second template in the Blueprints section and edit that page.

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Yes, the index page and the actual template have the same name. This is confusing and probably a bug. Hopefully Atlassian renames the second entry to “Meeting Notes Index Page”.

Good to know: Atlassian retired the legacy editor in 2026. Old templates now open in the cloud editor, and template variables only work in templates created with the new editor.

Turn normal pages into templates

Unfortunately, this is not a native Confluence feature. To turn a Confluence page into a template, you can simply copy a page’s content, as outlined in the copy template section. Then paste everything into the template editor. Double-check that no macro contains a hard-coded space key or page.

Atlassian has a feature request for this since 2006 (CONFCLOUD-5877), and it’s still open. What’s new since June 2026 are block templates: select a part of a page, open the block menu and choose Save as block template. Block templates are private by default and you can share them. They are great for sections you reuse, like an agenda table. For a whole page, use a page template.

Import external documents and turn them into Confluence templates

Confluence lets you import documents from OneDrive, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs so you can quickly work with them in Confluence. It’s very useful if your company has a lot of documents elsewhere and wants to move them to Confluence. Just create a blank page or live doc, open More actions (•••) > Templates and import and select the Import tab!

Then, use the same process as we already described in copying a template to turn these pages into templates.

We’ve seen how to edit Confluence templates, now let’s create a great design and layout for our templates.

4. Design and layout your templates

The first thing you need to do is experiment with the template layout and structure to make it look and feel just the way you want.

Layout, texts, and tables

First of all, pages can have a full-width or fixed width, with all content centered. I recommend fixed width for a modern look, unless you really need the whole screen.

Next, you can either keep the simple one-column layout or use the “/” command to find multi-column layouts for your template. Alternatively, type /layout. Layouts now go up to five columns.

For layouts, you can use various widths of the columns and headline structure. Decide carefully whether you want a column layout, or a simple page with a table. Tables are more flexible and also come with features such as sorting and numbering. Layouts are better to structure content and make text easy to read.

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For content structure, use the pyramid style—put the most important information at the top, with H1 and H2 headings, and the details further down. If you press the shortcut command+option+1/2/3/4, you can quickly switch between heading sizes.

You can also combine a fixed-width page with a full-width element, such as a table. Use this if you only need more space for one section of your page.

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Adding macros

Macros are like extensions that take your templates to the next level. They make documentation a lot easier, especially for teams with complex tasks.

Just press “/” in the editor and start picking and editing the macros you want to use. For example, use the “Page Tree Search” macro, and place it on your template. This way all pages you create from that template will contain a search, which provides a quick way to search any pages under the created page.  

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If you’re going to create multiple pages and want to categorize them easily, we suggest using Content Properties (formerly Page Properties): the content properties macro and content properties report macro.

You have hundreds of macros to choose from, but not all of them work well in templates. The most useful macros follow in a later section.

Besides the built-in macros, the Atlassian Marketplace offers even more options and customizations. You can add these third-party macros on your templates too, such as the Meetical macros!

Adding third-party macros

You are not limited to the built-in macros. Apps add macros for special use cases. For example, if you want to use the Meetical Meeting Overview macro to show an overview and list all meeting attendees, type “/”, search for “Meetical” macros, and add them to the page. We suggest you start with the meeting overview macro that comes with a done-for-you overview table.

Here’s how it looks:

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Placeholder text

Placeholder text is a handy feature: it guides people to fill in the right information in the right section. You can also describe what needs to be done now and what later, with due dates. Placeholder text only shows while editing: until someone replaces it, it reminds them what to do next, and readers of the published page never see it.

With status macros, dates, and decision macros you make placeholder text even clearer and all the team members can start filling out the data.

Template Variables

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Template variables are very useful: they make sure certain information is always filled in the same way. Variables come with form fields. When someone creates a page from your template they’ll have to fill in the variables which will show up on the page. You can change the Confluence template variable name and decide how the form field would appear. For instance, multi-line text would be useful for sales teams that are recording multiple quotes and other conditions on the pages.

To add a variable, type /variable and choose Text, Multi-line Text or List. Variables work in templates for pages and live docs.

Create from Template Button / Macro

The “Create from template” macro is one of the most powerful shortcuts your team can use to create a new page from a template. It saves a lot of time for recurring processes and makes sure your team documents exactly the way you planned.

If you are using Meetical for your Meeting Notes, this button is less important, since you create your meeting pages directly from your Calendar events. However, there is an alternative macro included with Meetical: The Button to Create Meeting Notes with Meetical Calendar. It will lead users to the Confluence Meeting Calendar to create meeting pages.

When using the Create from Template macro in combination with your template, users will be prompted to fill out any variables you defined (Atlassian has an open bug where variables stay blank with this macro, CONFCLOUD-66456, so test it with your template). Additionally, the macro allows you to use specific variables in your page title, like the current date or space name.

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Here’s how to embed the “Create from Template” button:

1. Type “/” in the editor and search for the Create from template macro
2. Give the call-to-action button a descriptive name to make it clear what the user should create. For example, if they’re looking for a project description page, write something like “Create a project”.
3. Find and select your template from the template list
4. To automate page titles, use @currentDate and @spaceName. This way, all the pages that are created with the button will have the current date and space name at the beginning of the title. You can also use @spaceKey. The Space key setting of the macro decides in which space the pages are created, and the Type setting whether it’s a page or a live doc.

Apply labels to every page created from your template

At this stage, you have a few templates and in a few months, you’ll have hundreds of pages based on them. It will be almost impossible to find a particular page in all that content. So how do you make templates and pages easily discoverable? With labels!

Labels are like tags: they make your pages searchable, and they are lifesavers in busy spaces. Just head over to the three-dot menu at the top-right in the Template Editor, select ‘Add Labels’, and type your labels.

Besides allowing users to search pages via labels, you can also generate various reports based on them.

For example, you can use the ‘Filter by label’ macro (formerly Content by Label) and generate a report of all pages with the label ‘retrospectives’ in a space of your choice or even company-wide. Or you can use the ‘Decision Report’ macro, and show all decisions taken on pages with the label ‘retrospective’. A company-wide decision log, showing the power of Retrospectives, is pretty awesome, isn’t it?

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5. Publishing your template

You have created your templates, tested them out and now it’s time to share the news. After all, you want people to start using your templates!

Make your template available for your team or the entire company

Space templates are easy to share and promote within a space. Give the template a clear name, and hit save! From the template list, you can add a short but detailed description to help teammates find it easily.

Promoting your template

To promote a template for everyone to use:

• Go to the space
• Open Space settings and select Look and feel > Templates
• Find your template and select “Promote”

When users create a new page they’ll be greeted with the Confluence template gallery in the sidebar, and promoted templates appear near the top of the list.

Making Templates available for Meetical

Once you have created your meeting templates, you want to use them for the meetings in your calendar, by integrating your Calendar with Confluence. To add templates and make them available for Meetical, add the Meetical template label "meetical-template" to your template.

Select "Add labels" from the top right ... menu, type “meetical-template” and add that label. That's it!

Want a template to be the default? Add the label meetical-default-template: on a global template it’s the default for the whole site, on a space template the default in that space. Users can still pick another template, and every meeting series can have its own agenda template in the Series Settings.

For more details, head over to the dedicated Templates for Meetical guide.

6. Most powerful macros to use in templates

Macros do all kinds of things, so your mileage may vary. But some macros are more useful than others, and you’ll use them a lot. For templates, avoid macros that need a fixed parameter. Your templates should always have dynamic references, such as currentPage, currentSpace, etc.

Macros relative to the current page

The first category of useful macros are the ones that add features around the current page. In our case, the current page refers to the page a user creates from our template!

Here’s a list of ideas:

• Add the Table of Contents Macro to your template, to show an index of all headings on the page.
• Use the Change History Macro to show the recently published versions of the current page.
• The Related Labels Macro used to show the labels of pages that share at least one label with the current page. Atlassian removed it, and it can no longer be inserted.
• To show a list of people who authored, contributed, and commented on the current page, use the Contributors Macro

There are many possibilities and additional options on the Atlassian Marketplace! Next, let’s have a look at macros that can generate reports based on all subpages of the current page.

Macros reporting on sub-pages

Another group of popular macros reports on sub-pages and uses current page filters. With the @self/current page filter, you can create powerful dynamic reports.

• To show a list of all sub-pages, relative to the current page, use the Child items Macro (formerly Children Display).
• The Filter by label Macro (formerly Content by Label) can show a list of all sub-pages with specific labels. Since it supports the relative parent ‘Current page’, you can use it to show a report of all sub-pages which might get created under your template.

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• If you want to provide a quick and easy search over all subpages of the current page, use the Page Tree Search Macro. The page tree macro supports a relative parent. Actually, the default search root is the current page, so no configuration is needed. Just place it on your template and the search field will search on all subpages of the current page which was created from the template.
• Also, the Decision report macro can be set up to show a report in relation to the current page. Simply choose “current page” as the ancestor and you’ll get a report on all decisions made on any sub-pages!

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• Last but not least, there is the very useful Task Report Macro. Unfortunately, that macro currently does not support a dynamic filter to work out of the box relative to the current page. It’s a shame! In Meetical, our Confluence app, all recurring meetings are automatically grouped under a common parent page. We wanted to show a task list for each meeting series, and found out this was harder than we thought. Fortunately, we found a workaround, and now every occurrence shows a list of all open tasks in the series (Open action items in this series)! So you can start every meeting by reviewing the open action items of the series. That macro works on pages created from the Calendar with Meetical. For your own templates, a possible workaround: add placeholder text next to the macro to remind the template user that there is work to be done. Another idea could be to use a specific label on all sub pages and apply a label filter. Not ideal but could work.
  Update 2026: Atlassian closed the feature request in July 2025 for low engagement, so don’t wait for it. Also note that the task report macro doesn’t work in live docs.
  Need more than the native macro? The Advanced Task Report for Confluence is included in Meetical. One report shows every viewer their own tasks, you can group tasks by assignee or by page, and it also works in live docs. You can even complete a task with a comment right in the report, and the update is written back to the page. Want your Confluence tasks on a Jira dashboard? Task Reports for Jira brings the Advanced Task Report to your Jira dashboards as a gadget.

And there is one more special macro category to be mentioned here: Content Properties macro (formerly Page Properties macro). They get their own chapter.

7. The Power of Content Properties (Page Properties) in Confluence Templates

This guide wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Confluence Page Properties in detail. Placing page properties on your templates, and combining them with template variables, placeholders, and reporting macros, is one of the many reasons Confluence users simply love this tool.

Atlassian renamed these macros: the page properties macro is now the content properties macro, and the report is the content properties report. They work the same way, also on live docs, and the report can filter by label, ancestor and parent.

To demonstrate this, we’ll create a simple OKR template and turn our pages into a manageable database!

1. Create a new template named “Key result”

2. Add the label “key-result” to the template

3. Add the page properties macro, and add a table as indicated below

4. Save the template and create a new page “OKR overview”

5. Add the “Create from template” button to the page – choose the “Key result” template when configuring the macro

6. Add a Page Properties Report Macro, and choose "key-result" as the label when configuring the macro

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And voilà!

Every user who creates a new OKR with the help of your button will create a new structured Key result page, and the report will automatically include every new key result.

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8. Templates for Meeting Notes

Keeping meeting notes under control is one of the hardest tasks for project managers. With templates for Confluence Meeting Notes, every meeting gets the same structure, participants know where to add what, and your meetings stay productive and fun.

Many companies customize their meeting notes templates in Confluence. And I certainly recommend that! Our Confluence app Meetical fully supports native Confluence templates when creating your meeting notes from your calendar events. It will also apply any labels you define on templates and automatically use the right template for your recurring meetings. Remember to label your templates with "meetical-template" as described in our guide for How to create Meetical Templates.

What’s new since we first wrote this guide:

• Included templates: Meetical comes with 11 meeting templates, from 1-on-1 and Weekly Tactical to Retrospective, and the new AI Agenda Template: just the meeting overview and a preliminary agenda, the AI notes fill in the rest. Admins create them in Meetical Admin > Templates.
• Defaults for the whole site, per space and per series: the label meetical-default-template on a global template makes it the site default, on a space template the default for that space. Each recurring meeting can have its own agenda template in the Series Settings, and every user can save their own defaults per space.
• Labels: every page gets the labels of its template, plus meeting-notes, so it shows up in your meeting reports.
• Titles: pages are named “YYYY-MM-DD Event title” automatically, no title variables needed.
• Meeting data: instead of template variables, use the Meetical macros like Meeting Overview, Attendee List, Event Title or Event Date & Time. They show the data of the calendar event.

You can create your meeting notes from your defined templates from the Meetical Calendar in Confluence, or use the free Confluence Chrome Extension or the Outlook Add-in.

But even if you use Confluence without Meetical, customizing the existing template, or adding a template for your weekly team meeting can be very valuable. Copy-pasting existing pages from past meetings is not very effective and comes with the danger of duplicated action items and incomplete participant lists. The quality of your agendas and meeting notes will have a direct impact on meeting productivity!

To create or edit a meeting notes template in Confluence, follow the exact same steps as outlined already. In addition, always add the label “meeting-notes” to these templates, as all standard reports in Confluence will rely on that label. I also recommend adding action items and decisions to the template, so people actually use them and your notes stay structured.

Next, let’s see what AI changes for templates.

9. Confluence Templates and AI (2026)

AI doesn’t replace templates, it uses them. The template gives the structure, the AI fills it. Here is what’s possible in Confluence Cloud today.

Create with Rovo

With Rovo, Atlassian’s AI, you can create a page, live doc, whiteboard or database from a prompt, and attach a template as context so the result follows your structure. In the template library there is a Create with Rovo button next to Use template. Rovo is included in Confluence Standard, Premium and Enterprise (not Free) and uses Rovo credits.

What Rovo doesn’t do: build a reusable template for you. You still create templates as described in this guide. And that’s a good thing, because the template is where your team agrees on a structure.

Pages created from templates are normal Confluence pages, so Rovo can also summarize them and answer questions about them. A consistent structure makes pages easier to compare, for people and for AI.

AI meeting notes with your templates

For meeting notes, Meetical creates the page from your calendar event with your template, so the agenda is ready before the meeting. Meetical AI (Early Access) joins the call on Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet (Webex on request) and adds the summary, decisions and action items below your agenda. Nothing on your page is replaced. If you want the AI to do most of the writing, start with the included AI Agenda Template.

My advice: keep the agenda part of your meeting templates short. The template carries the structure, people bring the decisions, and the AI writes the minutes.

For a comparison of Rovo, Loom and Meetical AI for meeting notes, see Part 7 of our Confluence Meeting Notes guide.

Let’s now have a look at more best practices around Confluence templates.

10. Best Practices when Creating Templates in Confluence

Naming your templates

Templates are about bringing order to chaos, so their names matter. Follow a straightforward naming convention to help people find the right template. On top of that, be descriptive and precise enough to stand out from other templates. For instance, if you're creating a template for interview notes, write something like “Job Interview ”. I recommend not including the word “Template” in the template name, to follow the same naming convention as the built-in templates.

Always include a description

It’s very important to always include a description of your template. Let users know what this template is good for, and what it might not be helpful for. You might also mention side effects, like the fact that a bunch of labels will be added, and in which reports the pages created from such templates will appear.

Use the Create from Template button

The Create from template button has one big advantage over the template library: It will create the page under the current page, and thus the pages are under the correct parent. Use it whenever you can to reduce misplaced pages. – When using the Meetical App, for meeting notes use the alternative "Button to Create Meeting Notes with Meetical Calendar" macro.

Prefer Space Templates when getting started

Large organizations create enormous volumes of content every day. From product roadmap and marketing strategy to annual reports—everything needs to be documented. To avoid clutter, create space templates for specific spaces and use your personal space for experiments. Don’t forget to promote your space templates as described earlier to make sure they stay at the top and get more visibility.

Still planning your spaces? Read our post on a Confluence space structure that scales.

Carefully consider what templates should get created on a global level. Global templates need to have macros that are not tied to any space and have very good titles and descriptions for easy access and correct usage.

Define page labels on templates

As we’ve already seen, it’s possible to define labels on templates, and have them added automatically to each page created from that template.

As we already mentioned, if you modify your meeting notes template(s), make sure you add the label “meeting-notes” to the template, since all standard reports on Confluence use that label. That way the pages created from your template are included.

In addition, for every template, always apply at least 1 label to be added to each page created from that template. This way you can relate the page to the template later on. This will help you and your users leverage reporting macros such as the Filter by label Macro to keep an overview of the content created.

Prefer Placeholders over Template variables

Template variables are currently quite limited on Confluence Cloud. They support text and multiple-choice options, but someone has to maintain these options by hand. I prefer placeholder or example text over fixed text variables.

For example, don’t use a template variable for the document @owner, because variables can’t contain mentions. Use a placeholder instead! Or, if you want your template users to include status, instead of a hard-coded variable list, just add all statuses with the color-coded native status macro. This allows users to easily add a new status if required, without the need to modify the template. Yes, you can use Confluence as a kind of database, but it’s semi-structured on purpose: it’s still documents you organize, not a rigid database.

11. FAQ

How do I create a template in Confluence?

Go to your space, open Space settings > Look and feel > Templates and select Create new template. For a template everyone can use, a Confluence admin goes to Settings > Configuration > Global templates and blueprints > Add global content template. See Part 2.

What is the difference between a space template and a global template?

A space template is only available in its space and is managed by the space admins. A global template is available in every space of your site, and only Confluence admins can create it.

Who can create templates in Confluence?

Space admins create space templates, Confluence admins create global templates. On sites with role-based access, admins can also give the Create content templates permission to other people. Block templates can be created by everyone.

Can I turn an existing Confluence page into a template?

Not directly. Copy the page content into a new template and check the macros for hard-coded page IDs or space keys. For sections you reuse, save them as block templates. See Part 3.

Can I set a default template in Confluence?

Not for the Create button, Atlassian has an open feature request for it. You can promote templates, so they show near the top of the list. For meeting notes, Meetical lets you set a default template for the whole site, per space and per meeting series.

Do templates work for live docs, whiteboards and databases?

Page templates work for pages and live docs, including variables and labels. Whiteboards and databases have their own templates from Atlassian; custom whiteboard templates are not possible yet.

Can Rovo or AI create Confluence templates?

Rovo can create a new page or live doc from a prompt and use a template as context (Standard plan and above). It doesn’t create reusable templates for you. See Part 9.

How do I use my own templates for meeting notes?

Create the template like any other, add the label meeting-notes, and include action items and decisions. With Meetical, add the label meetical-template, and your template is used for the pages created from your calendar events. See Part 8.

12. Summary

If you have reached this far, congrats, have a chocolate! You should have a good idea of how to create a great template in Confluence. The template feature is certainly one of the most powerful things in Confluence when it comes to standardization and productivity.

We’ve seen why and how to create your own templates in Confluence, both space templates and global templates.

We looked at how to publish your template, make it available to third-party apps such as Meetical, and how to use your personal space as a safe playground to test drive and prototype your templates.

Then we had a closer look at the macros that are useful in Confluence templates, with a focus on using macros to add context and generate dynamic reports based on all sub-pages. In that section, we also discovered how to combine page properties, labels, and reports to create semi-structured databases based on Confluence templates.

It might have started with you searching for Confluence Create Template on the web, but now you went from zero to hero with Confluence templates! I hope you enjoyed it, thanks for reading!

I’d love to hear your feedback: write to me at info@meetical.io, and follow me on LinkedIn, where I share what I learn about Confluence and better meetings.

This article has been written by Lukas Gotter, Founder & CEO of Meetical. You can reach him on LinkedIn. – Also read our Ultimate Guide on Confluence Meeting Notes!

Sources

• Atlassian Support: Create a template, Create a global content template, Promote a template, Create from template macro, Block templates (accessed October 2026)
• Atlassian Support: Macros that are unavailable in the Cloud editor, Content properties report macro, Filter by label macro, Child items macro, Task report macro (accessed October 2026)
• Atlassian Support: Legacy editor deprecation, Import external documents, Confluence roles, Create with Rovo (accessed October 2026)
• Atlassian Developer: Confluence blueprints (accessed October 2026)
• Atlassian feature requests: CONFCLOUD-5877, CONFCLOUD-38755, CONFCLOUD-66456, CONFCLOUD-76623, CONFCLOUD-45607 (status October 2026)
• Meetical documentation: Create custom Meetical templates, Included meeting templates, Meetical AI (accessed October 2026)