If you manage Confluence documentation, you’ve probably noticed a pattern: as the number of pages grows, so do the structural problems. Pages become long, navigation gets messy, and important information often ends up buried.

Macros are one of Confluence’s most powerful tools to overcome that. Based on what we’ve seen working well for dozens of Confluence sites, and what teams consistently ask for, this blog post highlights macros and macro-combinations that make documentation easier to maintain, more user friendly, and more scalable.

Macro #1 — Expand Macro for cleaner, easier-to-navigate pages 

Many teams use the Expand macro for FAQs or long policies. But its real value is in controlling information density: making sure readers see what they need upfront while keeping detailed content accessible. This helps page navigation and prevents readers from feeling overwhelmed.

Where the Expand macro is useful

• Policy or procedure pages: Keep summaries or key points visible and place exceptions, rationale, or background context inside expanders.
• Process and workflow documentation: Collapse long sequences of steps, alternative paths, or edge-case instructions to keep the main flow clear.
• Technical specifications: Show the core spec by default and hide diagrams, code samples, detailed parameters, or architectural notes.
• Meeting notes or decision logs: Make outcomes, owners, and next steps visible, and collapse discussion history or supporting context.

Tips for making the Expand macro work

With the following best practices, your pages will be more scannable and simpler to navigate for the majority of users, but still support power users who need full depth.

• Organize important content — don’t hide it: Use Expand macros to simplify your content. But keep essential instructions, decisions, and action items visible at all times. You want users to have an easier time finding critical information. Expanders should hold additional detail that helps only when needed. 
• Make titles clear and consistent: Keep Expand titles clear so users know exactly what’s inside before clicking. Avoid nesting multiple expanders within each other, which can lead to confusing page behavior.
• Less is more: While the Expand macro is very useful, make sure you implement it thoughtfully. A few well-placed expanders can improve scannability, but too many can make the page feel fragmented. If a piece of information is essential to the reader accomplishing a task — leave it visible. If it’s context, background, optional detail — expand it.

Macro #2 — Panel macro for better visual structure without code

When teams want to make their Confluence pages look more intentional, their first instinct is often to experiment with colors, emojis, or formatting shortcuts. Those work in small doses, but they don’t scale — and they often lead to inconsistent design across pages or teams.

The Panel macro is a more reliable, built-in way to create clear visual hierarchy without touching HTML or CSS.

Panels let you define a box with optional borders, background color, and a title. Small change, big impact: they give readers context cues, break up long pages, and guide attention to the right information.

Where the Panel macro is most useful

• Key information or summaries: Highlight the core message before diving into detail. This is ideal for “what you need to know” blocks at the top of long pages.
• Risks, warnings, or exceptions: Instead of bold red text scattered throughout your documentation, it’s more effective and user friendly to wrap critical cautionary content into a clearly styled warning panel.
• Versioning or metadata callouts: For documentation that changes regularly (product specs, policies, procedures), panels can make update notes and version information more clear and transparent.
• Instructions or step-by-step guidance: Panels help readers recognize instructional content versus narrative explanation.
• Decision outcomes or approval blocks: Panels also create a tidy home for sectioning off content into clear ownership or approval fields. For example, you can use separate panels to clearly denote “Decision,” “Owner,” “Date,” and “Rationale” fields.
  
  

Tips for making the Panel macro work

The Panel macro is a reliable, low-maintenance way to bring structure and visual clarity to your content — without relying on code, plugins, or custom styling. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind with this macro:

• Keep styling consistent: Choose two or three panel styles for your space (e.g., “info,” “warning,” or “summary”). Use them intentionally and avoid using too many styles and colors across your pages.
• Use titles sparingly: A titled panel helps scannability, but overusing titles can make the page feel fragmented.
• Avoid stuffing panels with too much content: Panels should support clarity, not create new walls of text. Use them for highlights, not as containers for entire sections.
• Pair with Expand macros for enhanced structure: Use panels as headers or context blocks above Expand sections to create clean, readable workflows.

Macro #3 — Chart macro for visualized data + clarity

When you’re tracking metrics, project status, KPIs, or anything numerical, charts help turn raw data into insight. 

The Chart macro transforms tables into visualizations that readers can understand at a glance. It surfaces trends and changes more clearly than tables alone, giving stakeholders an immediate overview before they dive into the details, and reducing interpretation errors — especially in cases where qualitative labels like “Low,” “Medium,” and “High” have shifted meaning over time.

Where the Chart macro is most useful

• Project status dashboards: Charts can make it easier for you to see whether work is moving as expected, where bottlenecks are forming, budget constraints, or which risks are changing over time.
• Presenting support metrics (ticket volume, resolution times, backlog age): Support teams often rely on tables pulled from reports. Charts transform those tables into more digestible summaries that highlight problem areas quickly, helping teams understand data more quickly. 
• Retrospectives or team metrics (feature delivery, bug counts, user feedback categories): Visualizing retro data helps teams spot recurring patterns, particularly useful for engineering teams trying to improve delivery processes.
• Team health or effort reporting over time: Whether you’re tracking sprint load, cross-team dependencies, or operational tasks, charts can give broader visibility into how team effort is shifting over time.

Tips for making the Chart macro work

Used properly, the Chart macro will help you turn documentation from pages of data that users need to dig through, into approachable information:

• Keep the input table simple and well-labelled: The Chart macro is really only as good as its data. You’ll want to use consistent units and clear headers in your charts. This will help ensure the chart renders correctly and avoids confusing or mismatched axes.
• Use chart types intentionally: Choosing the right chart type is essential for communicating insights effectively, because each type serves a different purpose. Line charts highlight trends over time, bar charts make it easy to compare values, and pie charts help illustrate how parts contribute to a whole.
• Add context near the chart so readers don’t need to guess scope: A small note beneath the chart will help you to clarify whether the numbers reflect the last sprint, quarter, month, or a specific dataset. Use dates and filter criteria to give important context to the chart data.

Macro #4 — Content Properties and Content Properties Report for metadata at scale

When your Confluence instance supports multiple projects, teams, or content repositories — like policies, technical specs, meeting notes, or initiative documentation — you need a reliable way to keep information structured and consistent. 

That’s where the Content Properties and Content Properties Report macros become essential (these were previously known as Page Properties and Page Properties Report macros). Used together, they turn individual pages into nodes in a larger documentation system by standardizing metadata and making that metadata easily reportable across spaces. In practice, this is how you move from “a lot of pages” to “a structured knowledge base.”

Here’s how they work together:

• Content Properties sits on a page and captures key metadata fields — things like status, owner, summary, version, or review dates.
• Content Properties Report aggregates those structured fields from multiple pages to build a living dashboard. When a contributor updates the metadata on one page, the report updates automatically.

This pairing is a powerful way to bring order and visibility to your Confluence documentation.

Where the Content Properties + Content Properties Report are most useful

These macros come into their own when you’re managing information that appears across many pages but needs a unified, high-level view. 

• Project overviews: When you want a single overview of all active initiatives — with owners, statuses, milestones, and updates all visible at a glance. Great for PMOs, leadership reviews, or sprint planning.
• Policy or process libraries: Ideal when version tracking, review dates, and ownership need to stay current and auditable. A report can flag outdated or unlabeled content automatically.
• Meeting notes or decision logs: Stakeholders benefit from a structured index that brings together outcomes, dates, responsible teams, and follow-ups across recurring meetings into one report.
• Technical or product documentation: Specifications, RFCs, and architecture notes can be rolled up into a structured overview that helps engineers and PMs find related work quickly.

The Content Properties and Content Properties Report macros are ideal at helping you build quick, structured indexes — where readers see the latest updates without hunting through spaces. Basically, any situation where you want consistency, traceability, and a clear line of ownership across multiple pages is a strong fit for these macros.

Tips for making Content Properties + Content Properties Report work

• Start with a simple schema: A handful of fields (Summary, Owner, Status, Last Updated, Next Review Date, and Priority) cover most use cases and keep templates approachable.
• Keep field names consistent: Reports rely on exact matches. Even slight naming differences (“Owner” vs. “Page owner”) can break aggregation or create duplicate columns.
• Use space-level templates for further consistency: This ensures every new page includes the correct Content Properties table from the start, reducing maintenance overhead and formatting inconsistencies.
• Apply labels predictably: Labels determine which pages appear in a report. Set a naming convention and use it consistently across your space or team.
• Review your metadata periodically: Quarterly checks or reviews tied to project cycles help you ensure that dates, ownership, and status fields stay accurate and trustworthy.

Recommended fields (as a starting point):

• Title / Summary
• Owner / Responsible team
• Status (e.g. Draft / Published / Deprecated)
• Last updated / Next review date
• Priority or impact (if relevant)

That basic schema goes a long way. As your documentation grows, you’ll appreciate the predictability and transparency.

Macro #5 — Widget Connector for embedding external content

Part of good documentation is reducing friction. If readers constantly need to open external tools (slides, videos, calendars, whiteboards), you’ve already lost some of that advantage. 

The Widget Connector macro solves this by embedding external content directly within Confluence pages so users can find context without leaving the page. This reduces unnecessary switching between tools and helps teams collaborate more effectively from a single, centralized source.

Where the Widget Connector macro is most useful

• Onboarding or team home pages: New team members benefit from embedded welcome videos, org charts, team calendars, or training decks — all available without needing access to multiple tools on day one.
• Product documentation: Embedding Figma prototypes, demo videos, or technical walkthroughs keeps product and engineering teams aligned while reviewing specs or feature proposals.
• Project or release pages: Roadmap boards, Trello views, analytics dashboards, or planning sheets can sit alongside the written documentation, creating a single source of truth for cross-functional teams.
• Knowledge base or support documentation: Embedding how-to videos, process diagrams, or external system references improves self-service content and reduces ambiguity for users trying to resolve issues quickly.

Tips for making the Widget Connector macro work

• Embed only what’s necessary: If a full board or prototype isn’t relevant, link to it instead. Over-embedding can clutter pages or introduce slow load times.
• Use placement intentionally: Put embedded content near the section that references it. For example, place a Figma embed next to a description on design rationale, instead of at the bottom of the page.
• Avoid stacking multiple embeds together: Too many widgets in a row can overwhelm readers and disrupt page flow. Space them out within logical sections.
• Pair widgets with supporting explanation: A short sentence explaining what the embed contains (and why it matters) helps readers interpret it without guesswork.

Confluence Expand macro combination strategies

We’ve talked about the usefulness of the Expand macro — but many Confluence pages aren’t built with just the Expand macro by itself. Instead, they rely on an array of macro combinations that improve clarity, highlight the right information at the right time, and scale well as documentation grows. 

Below are macro pairings we commonly see teams use when they want pages that are structured, predictable, and easy for readers to navigate.

Expand macro + Panel macro

This is a strong pairing for process documentation, policies, or knowledge base articles that need to balance clarity with depth. Panels give readers clear visual cues (“Summary,” “Exceptions,” “Key Details,” or “Warnings”), while Expand macros keep optional or detailed content neatly tucked away. It’s especially useful for onboarding, step-by-step workflows, and compliance-heavy documentation.

How to use this pairing in practice:
Use a Panel at the top of a section to signal the purpose of the content (e.g., “Steps to follow” or “What you need to know”). Directly underneath, place Expand macros for additional depth — alternate flows, extended explanations, troubleshooting notes, or background details that don’t belong in the main narrative.

Why this macro pairing works:
Panels establish context immediately, and expanders prevent the page from feeling overwhelming. Readers can scan quickly, and power users still get access to the full detail when needed.

A strong combination for:

• Onboarding guides where you want visible instructions and collapsible deep dives
• Step-by-step workflows that include exceptions or optional steps
• Policy pages with must-know information followed by compliance or rationale sections

Expand macro + Widget Connector macro

This is a helpful pairing when you need to provide richer context without overwhelming the main page layout. Expand macros keep the core content clean and scannable, while the Widget Connector embeds supporting materials — videos, prototypes, calendars, dashboards, or reference documents — only when the reader chooses to view them.

How to use this pairing in practice:
Put your primary instructions, summary, or decision up front, then use an Expand macro to hold embedded widgets that provide deeper context. For example, an onboarding guide might show a high-level overview and keep training videos or shared calendars inside expanders. A product spec might lead with requirements and place Figma prototypes or demo recordings within Expand sections labeled “See design walkthrough” or “Watch demo.”

Why this macro pairing works:
The Expand macro prevents large embeds from dominating the page or slowing down the initial load. Readers who need the additional detail can access it with a single click, but those who don’t aren’t forced to scroll past dense or media-heavy content.

A strong combination for:

• Onboarding and training pages where embedded videos or decks are helpful but not critical to the main narrative
• Product or design documentation that benefits from embedded prototypes or diagrams, but doesn’t need them front and center
• Knowledge base articles that include optional walkthroughs, demos, or long-form reference material
• Support or troubleshooting guides where expanded widgets can show a relevant dashboard or system view without cluttering the page

This combination is ideal for pages that need to stay lightweight and structured, while still offering optional, media-rich content when deeper context is needed.

Specialized tools for improved page structure: Refined Macro Toolkit

Confluence’s native macros cover the basics, but as your site grows, teams often need more flexibility than the out-of-the-box options provide. You may want cleaner layouts, more structured patterns, or components that make pages easier to read without relying on workarounds or HTML. 

That’s where Refined Macro Toolkit can make a powerful difference.

Macro Toolkit adds a set of simple, reliable content formatting macros that help teams build clearer and more consistent pages. Tabs, grids, panels, buttons, icon lists, and other components give authors more control over how information is presented — without increasing complexity or introducing custom code.

With Refined Macro Toolkit, teams can:

• Create more readable, structured pages that guide users through content more effectively.
• Enhance visual clarity so key information stands out and pages are consistently easier to navigate at a glance.
• Speed up content creation by giving authors a suite of easy to use macros for any use case — documentation, wikis, intranets, or project management.
• Improve the overall user experience of your Confluence sites, especially when they’re used for documentation, onboarding, or knowledge sharing at scale.

For teams managing large or fast-growing Confluence sites, Macro Toolkit provides a practical middle ground: more flexibility and better presentation than native Confluence alone, but without the overhead of custom development or heavily designed templates.

FAQ: Confluence macros

Do macros affect page performance?

Generally no, but overusing complex macros can slow editing or page load times. If you’re using, for example, many nested Expand sections or large tables, it can cause some slowdowns. 

What macros are the most valuable for scaling documentation?

Use Content Properties and Content Properties Report. They create structure, enable governance, and easily save teams hours of manual maintenance.

Build better Confluence pages now

Macros are a powerful tool for creating Confluence pages that scale as your organization grows. With the right macros in place, you can improve navigation, surface information more clearly, reduce context-switching, and maintain documentation long after the first draft is published.

Pairing built-in macros with consistent metadata, templates, and additional macros from Marketplace apps gives your team the structure they need to move from scattered pages to a dynamic, reliable knowledge system.

If you’re responsible for documentation quality, onboarding, or knowledge management, start by reviewing your highest-impact pages. Where are users getting stuck? What’s hard to maintain? What information is buried? There’s almost always a macro — or a macro combination — that can help solve it.

Learn more about mastering macros by reading our blog post on best practices and advanced tips.

Try Macro Toolkit free for 30 days on the Atlassian Marketplace.