How many clicks to change a Status Macro in Confluence?

[#1]

I have always been a fan of the Confluence status macro. I’m a visual person and our beloved 

has a clear and succinct message. I love putting it everywhere in our content to track progress and communicate changes. 

But, like with everything beautiful, there is a catch. The status macro is a living creature, it needs to change when – well – the status of this or that changes. And here I’m calling out the elephant in the room: it’s extremely cumbersome to change the status macro since Confluence introduced the status macro in 2004 (correct me if I’m wrong).

So Let's count the clicks and keystrokes to change 

1. “Click” : Edit page
2. “Click” : click on status macro to edit
3. “Click” : click on input field with “TODO”
4. “Click-click”: to select “TODO”
5. “Key” : ◀️ DELETE
6. “Key” : “I”
7. “Key” : “N”
8. “Key” : SPACE
9. “Key” : “P”
10. “Key” : “R”
11. “Key” : “O”
12. “Key” : “G”
13. “Key” : “R”
14. “Key” : “E”
15. “Key” : “S”
16. “Key” : “S”
17. “Click” : 🟦 – blue color selector
18. “Key” : ↩️ ENTER
19. “Click” : Publish page

Wow – are you still reading this?

So long story short, to change ONE, yes a single one status macro from todo to in progress you need 7 clicks and 13 keystrokes. You don’t realize until you count them.

Let’s imagine you have a project tracking page with 10 tasks with frequent status updates. No! Honestly, I refuse to calculate the clicks and keystrokes involved day after day, it’s boring and depressing.

So what’s the lazy content wrangler in me thinking? This is a simple {“key”:”value”} pair problem, nothing more, nothing less.

Everyone has seen these happy two-colored pills 💊 that contain horrible meds, or worse? And what if we just render them as “key” and “value” pairs, as “category” and “value” pills?

Meet “Advanced Content Status & Labels for Confluence”

We did start with a working title of “Awesome Pills for Confluence” and I like it a lot, but our Head of Marketing & Sales wouldn’t have it. OK then, let’s go with an important sounding name that people can actually find via search: “Advanced Content Status & Labels for Confluence”.

With this little awesome macro changing a status or literally any Key:Value combo takes

TWO CLICKS

Don’t edit the page!

1. “Click” on the “down” chevron

2. “Click” on “In progress”

Don’t need to publish the page!

THAT’S IT. TWO CLICKS

Now you say, that’s all very well, but not everyone wants to use this set of statuses or would want to use a completely different category.

With this nifty new macro you can create any category:[valueset] on the fly while you’re typing away. And the best thing is, everyone else can reuse your creations in any content!

You can find Advanced Status Labels for Confluence on the Atlassian Marketplace here

We would love to hear your thoughts and feedback either in the comments below or get in touch with our support channel here!

Until next time,

Sean & Ulrich from the Izymes Team

[Andy Gladstone]

Eye-opening analysis. I have some pages with over 30 status lozenges on them and never realized how much time it was taking to apply updates. You've sold me on trying the product to see how it can solve this issue.

[Dmitriy Panyukov _Stiltsoft_]

Great post and insights! The status macro has always been a fantastic tool for visualizing progress in Confluence, and it’s awesome to see how you’ve built upon it to make updates even more seamless.

At our team, we've tackled a similar challenge with Handy Macros for Confluence, which offers Handy Status - an interactive status macro that allows users to change statuses directly on the page.

Keep up the great work, and looking forward to seeing how this develops.

[Ulrich Kuhnhardt _IzymesCo_]

Hey @Andy Gladstone 

thanks for the feedback! Nothing more rewarding than someone finding an app useful. You made my day. Now, if you find anything that could be improved, drop us a comment here :)

@Sean Manwarring _Izymes_ has more goodies (err feature blog posts) lined up for the coming weeks.