News
- Kresimir Nikolic (Unlicensed)
- Marin Varvodic
The News module in Pulse is built to elevate internal communication by transforming standard Confluence blogs into visually engaging and structured news overviews. Recognizing the importance of blogs as a key channel for sharing updates, the module enhances their visibility and impact across the organization.
By presenting content in a clean and appealing format, the News module ensures important information are easy to find and hard to miss, making it simpler for teams to stay informed and connected.
Insert News
To add a News module to a Confluence page, follow these steps:
Open the desired page or create a new one.
Enter edit mode and click the "+" icon in the toolbar, or press "/" on the keyboard to open the module menu.
Type "Pulse" or "Blogs" in the search bar and select the "Pulse" module from the list to open the configuration dialog.
In the configuration dialog, select the module from the overview screen and adjust settings in the configuration drawer as needed.
Clicking "Cancel" will exit the setup without inserting the module.
Configuration
When the News module dialog opens, a live preview displays the latest blogs from the Confluence instance, ready to be customized to fit the intended use case.
News background image
For each news item displayed, the background image is automatically set to the page's header image, ensuring a cohesive and relevant visual experience.
On pages where a specific page lacks a header image, the app selects and displays a random image from Unsplash. This fallback mechanism guarantees that every news card remains visually attractive and engaging, enhancing the overall user experience by maintaining a consistent and appealing aesthetic across all news content.
Layout
The Layout tab defines how news is presented, offering options to choose the view type and control how all news items will appear within the module.
Display Options
The display settings allow selection from several views to best match the desired presentation style. Available options include Magazine, Grid, Card, Highlight, List, Short List, and Compact List. Each offering a distinct layout for showcasing news content.
In Grid and Card views, the layout can be further customized by choosing the number of columns, with support for up to 4 columns. This flexibility helps tailor the visual arrangement to suit different preferences or content volumes.
Sorting options include Title, Creation Date, and Modification Date, with Creation Date set as the default.
Flexible display elements
News module can be customized by enabling or disabling elements such as Author, Space, Date, Label, Comments, Likes, and Description. This allows flexible presentation of news content, adapting the appearance to various communication goals or visual styles.
The availability of these elements depends on the selected news view. All displayed information is sourced directly from Confluence and cannot be modified within the module.
Styling
Styling options include corner rounding and label color.
Pagination
The News module offers customizable pagination settings to manage content display and improve performance. It is possible to choose between three pagination types: Show More, Previous/Next, and Inactive (no pagination).
Two key settings are available:
Items per Page: Defines how many news items are initially loaded on the first page.
Max Number of Items: Sets the maximum number of news items displayed within the module.
These options help control content volume, particularly useful in environments with thousands of blog posts, ensuring both performance and a smooth user experience.
Content
The Content tab defines the source of the news and controls which content is displayed. Content can be configured in two ways: Dynamic or Manual.
Dynamic
By applying filters, the widget automatically updates to display newly published content that matches the defined criteria. This ensures the news feed stays current without requiring manual updates. Content can be filtered by labels, spaces, and creators, allowing precise control over what is shown.
Manual
This method enables manual selection of specific blog posts for display. It offers greater control over the content shown but requires manual updates to include new posts, making it a more curated and less automated approach.
Group News in tabs
Tabs in the News module help organize related content in a clean, structured layout within a single module. Instead of creating multiple separate News modules for different topics, tabs allow grouping them together, making content easier to manage and navigate.
The Layout settings applies globally to all tabs within the News module, ensuring a consistent visual style across each section. The Content, however, is configured separately for each individual tab. This means that content, whether set manually or dynamically, must be defined per tab, allowing each one to display different sources or filtering rules as needed.
Personalized content
View permissions can be managed globally for the entire module or individually per tab when tabs are enabled. Using user collections from Cosmos, it's possible to define exactly who can see specific content. This enables personalized experiences, where different tabs are visible to different audiences, each showing tailored information based on user groups.
The personalization feature, powered by Cosmos – the Intranet for Confluence, enhances this even further. With tabs, each section can reflect a unique theme or target group. Without tabs, the entire module can be focused on a specific audience, creating a unified and purposeful display.