How do I make a space a child of another space?

[Andrea Lee]

New to Confluence- 

a lot of the Confluence documentation is contradictory:

"create as many spaces as you want or need!"

"create only as many spaces are as needed"

Is it possible for me to nest space beneath a parent space?  Or can this be done only with pages?  Our company juggles multiple proposals, programs, projects at different phases in the pipeline and it's useful to aggregate them according to parent organization, municipality, business.

Hope that's enough context.

Thanks for any help-couldn't find much guidance via google.

[Scott Theus · Accepted solution]

Hi @Andrea Lee ,

Welcome to the Community! 

It is not possible to create nested SPACES in Confluence, but you can create nested pages that behave like a file tree. Here's how I manage my programs:

• Department Space
  • Program One
    • Project One
      • Files
      • Meeting notes
      • Decisions
      • Documentation
      • Etc.
    • Project Two
      • page
      • page
      • ...
  • Program two
    • Project three
    • Project four
  • Program three....
• Department Space

It's not as clean as having child spaces would be, but its as close as I've been able to get.

Hope this helps, 

-Scott

[Andrea Lee]

@Scott Theus Thank you! 

it's good to have a definitive answer on this.  

No nested spaces & no child spaces.

At least there's a workaround to follow.

Thanks again for the guidance!

[test test]

Hi Scott, we are a large company of 5000 plus employees. We are testing out Confluence before buying and would like to ask, given the "workaround" -

1. We have over 200 subspaces earmarked to move to Confluence

2. How did you set-up your Pages to behave like a Page Tree?

3. If we start with your solution, (we suspect it involves the typical Confluence answer to use Spaces and tag accordingly as Categories - if not this, please let us know) how hard will it be - in general - to move to using an add on, eg Subspaces for Confluence (Communardo)?

We suspect it will be a CMS headache and similar to moving houses, so to speak, with so many subspaces involved. Which is what our current situation is, so we would like to transition to Confluence smoothly.

Thanks for info you might be able to provide. 

[Marc Moroz]

keep in mind that space/page isn't just about hierarchy.  Some widgets/macros work on spaces and some work on pages.  You will very likely want some of the space functionality to apply to your "parent pages" and won't be able to do that.

[JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_]

@Andrea Lee 

While you cannot create a space hierarchy out of the boy, one way could be to use space categories, which allows grouping of similar topic spaces together.

Another option could be the use of addons/apps: We use the Space Admin addon, which has a function called Space Shuttle. This creates a space navigation with folders / subfolders with spaces as the elements for the navigation. This would fit for your program management.

But please keep in mind that creating a lot of spaces, creates a lot of things to manage: We create spaces only if it a completely new topic/project/department/program and/or the need for different space permissions is given.

Please ask, if you need clarification.

Best

JP  

[Andrea Lee]

@JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_  thanks so much for your insight!  I'll definitely reach out as we have more questions.  This is something that's surprisingly (and not surprisingly) polarizing in our org especially since we're using the Jira integration as well. 

[test test]

Hi JP, we are a large company of 5000 plus employees. We are testing out Confluence before buying and would like to ask, given the "workaround" -

1. We have over 200 subspaces earmarked to move to Confluence

2. How did you set-up your Pages to behave like a Page Tree?

3. If we start with your solution, (we suspect it involves the typical Confluence answer to use Spaces and tag accordingly as Categories - if not this, please let us know) how hard will it be - in general - to move to using an add on, eg Subspaces for Confluence (Communardo)?

We suspect it will be a CMS headache and similar to moving houses, so to speak, with so many subspaces involved. Which is what our current situation is, so we would like to transition to Confluence smoothly.

Thanks for info you might be able to provide.