Automation basics
Understand the general concepts and best practices of automation in Atlassian Cloud products.
Actions in Confluence automation
Automation is a new admin feature available in Confluence Premium and Enterprise. Read the announcement in this community post to learn more.
Rules always end with an action component. Actions are what you want the rule to do, that is, what you want to happen if it executes successfully.
When a Confluence automation rule runs successfully, that is, it performs one or more actions as intended, it counts as an execution. Usage is important to monitor if your plan is limited to a certain number of rule executions per month.
Confluence Enterprise has an unlimited number of executions.
Confluence Premium is limited each month to a pooled sum that’s equivalent to 1,000 rule executions for every user.
Learn more by reading the Usage section of What is Confluence automation?
Confluence actions
These actions are specific to automation for Confluence and can be used to automate spaces (Space automation) and sites (Global automation).
Pages and blogs
Comment on page or blog
This action adds a page comment to the bottom of a page or blog post, as defined by the trigger.
Type your comment in the text field.
Publish new page
This action publishes a new page in a designated location.
Select (or type) which space to publish new pages in and a parent page for them to nest under. You have the option to update the default page title and/or add a page template. (Without a template, the published page will be a blank page with a title.)
The title of each published page must be unique. A sequential number will be added to the end of the title each time this action publishes a page.
Alternatively, you can use a smart value to make each title unique. For example, you could add a date variable so that the page title is always modified by the date and time it is published:
Meeting minutes {{now}}
Archive page
This action removes a page from the page tree (as defined by the trigger) and stores it in the archive.
Copy page
This action publishes a copy of an existing page in a designated location. The rule's trigger defines the page that gets copied. (So, for example, if the trigger is “when a page is edited”, the edited page is the page that gets copied.)
Select (or type) which space to publish the copies in and a parent page for them to nest under. You have the option to update the default page title, but the smart values ensure it is always unique.
When a page is copied, its labels and view/edit restrictions are copied as well, unless you uncheck the boxes. Comments (both page and inline) and attachments, however, can’t be copied.
The title of each page copy must be unique. The default adds a date variable smart value – so that the page title is always modified by the Month/Day/Year it is published.
If you remove the smart values that make the title unique, a sequential number will be added to the title each time this action publishes a copy.
Add label
This action adds one or more labels to a page or blog post, as defined by the trigger.
Select (or type) which labels to add.
Remove label
This action removes one or more labels from a page or blog post, as defined by the trigger.
Select (or type) which labels to remove.
Manage watchers
This action adds or removes specific people or groups as watchers on a page or blog post, as defined by the trigger.
Select (or type) which watchers to add or which ones to remove.
General actions
If you’ve used automation for Jira, you’ll recognize some of the same general actions. You’ll configure them in the same way, but they won’t currently function across products. This is on our roadmap.
Notifications
Send email
This action sends an automated email message to designated recipients.
To configure the email component:
Enter one or more recipients in the To: field.
Select Cc or Bcc to add additional fields and recipients as needed.
Type your Subject line and message content in the text fields.
Select More options to edit sender information.
The Reply to: field is limited to one email address. If more than one address is added, replies will only be sent to the first one in the list.
There are limits around how many emails this action can send.
Send Microsoft Teams message
This action sends a Microsoft Teams message to a channel.
To configure the Microsoft Teams component:
Create an incoming webhook for Microsoft Teams
Paste the URL in the appropriate field.
Type your automated message title and content in the text fields.
(Optional) Select More options to add an image to the message.
Learn more about using automation with Microsoft Teams.
Send Slack message
This action sends a Slack message to a channel or individual.
To configure the Slack component:
Create an incoming webhook for Slack
Paste the URL in the appropriate field.
Type your automated message in the text field.
(Optional) Uncheck Sender if you don’t want the message to come from you.
(Optional) Enter a new channel or user to override the webhook default.
Learn more about using automation with Slack.
Send Twilio (SMS) message
This action sends an SMS message using the Twilio service.
This action is useful for service teams that rely on SMS for on-call scenarios.
Twilio messaging rates will apply. See Twilio’s SMS pricing page for more information.
Enter your Twilio account information in the appropriate fields, including a valid Twilio phone number. Add one or more recipients in the To: field. Type your automated message in the text field.
Send web request
This action sends an outgoing web request to notify another system when a rule is run. You can set this action to return response data that can then be used in a subsequent action.
You can leave the web request body as Empty or enter a custom data format.
Advanced
Create variable
Define your own smart value, which can be used in other actions and conditions in the same rule. The smart value you define can consist of other smart values, as well as math functions.
Log action
This action logs a value to the audit log.
The log action is useful when debugging rules.
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