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A guide to Confluence Labels
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A guide to Confluence Labels

Having a firm grasp on the ‘how’s’ and ‘what’s’ of Confluence Labels, can be the difference between a good instance and a great one. Whether you’re new to Confluence labels, or an expert looking for a refresh, by the time you’ve finished this blog you’ll be a labelling whizz.

What are Confluence Labels?

Improved searchability, organisation and automation are the hallmarks of a thoroughly labelled instance, but what are they?
Confluence labels are tags that you can attach to pages, blog posts, and other content types within Confluence. These labels serve as helpful metadata that let you browse all pages with that label in a single space or across the site, display a list of pages with that label, or search in Confluence based on that label.
Now, let's learn how to use them!

How to use Confluence Labels:

How to add a Label in Confluence?

  1. Open the Confluence page to which you want to add labels.
  2. Click the "Edit" button at the top right corner of the page.
  3. Once in edit mode, scroll down to the bottom of the page. You will see a "Labels" option in the footer.
  4. Click on the "Labels" option. A dialog box will appear where you can type in your labels. Labels are always lowercase and labels including multiple words should separate each word with underscores or hyphens (like-this, or_this)
  5. As you type, Confluence will suggest existing labels that match your input. You can select one of these or create a new label by typing it out fully and pressing "Enter". You can add multiple labels by repeating this process.
  6. Make sure to save your changes by clicking the "Publish" button at the top right corner of the page.
  7. Pages published from templates can also be labelled this way!

How to add Labels to a Jira task from Confluence?

If you're using Jira for task management and have it integrated with Confluence, you can add labels to your Jira tasks directly from Confluence. Here’s how:
  1. Open the Confluence page that contains the embedded Jira task or navigate directly to the Jira task.
  2. Click on the task to open its details.
  3. In the task details view, find the "Labels" field. Click on it to add new labels or select from existing ones.

How to delete labels in Confluence?

When viewing a page, an X appears alongside each label. Simply click the X to remove the label.
You can't remove, consolidate or manage labels directly. A label is created by adding it to a page for the first time, and is ‘deleted’ once it's been removed from all pages it was added to.

How to bulk add Labels in Confluence?

ScriptRunner for Confluence is an add-on that provides powerful scripting capabilities to automate tasks and extend Confluence's functionality. One of its niftiest uses is to bulk add labels to multiple pages. Here’s how you can do it:
  1. Go to the Confluence Administration section and click on "ScriptRunner" in the sidebar.
  2. Create a script:
    • Click on "Built-in Scripts" and select "Add or remove page labels."
    • Configure the script by specifying the space key, the label you want to add, and the CQL (Confluence Query Language) query to select the pages you want to label.
    • For example: space = "SPACEKEY" AND type = "page"
3. Make sure to check the list of pages being affected and then run the script!

That's it!

If you’re still thirsting for more labelling wisdom, read this blog to learn how you can use a Confluence labels system to keep content under control.
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Published on 9 December 2024
Authors
Charlie McCormack
Charlie McCormack
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