Manage Global Metadata (v 3.3)

For the following steps you need Confluence Administrator permissions.

Create Global Metadata

In order to create global metadata, you need to be a Confluence Administrator. Global metadata will be available in all Confluence spaces and helps maintain consistent metadata systemwide. To create global metadata, you first have to create at least one global metadata field and then add the field(s) to a global metadata set. Finally, you can assign your new set(s) to existing pages.

Create a Global Metadata Field

As a Confluence administrator, go into the General Configuration and look for "Metadata Plugin" on the left sidebar. Click the entry "Metadata fields". You will now see the following overview:

Image 1: General Administration - Global Metadata Overview (click to enlarge)

Click "Add Metadata Field" on the right. This will lead you to the configuration screen for global metadata fields.

Image 2: General Administration - Add Global Metadata Field (click to enlarge)

You can now enter a title, choose a field type and enter a description for the field. The title is mandatory.

Best Practice

We recommend using only letters and numbers in field titles as well as multi select/single select options. Special characters like ], [, &, /, : and ? are known to conflict with CQL filters. CQL filters may be used for Confluence search and in Metadata Overview macros.
Do not start field names or space names with a number however, there is a bug in the CQL search which leads to an error when searching/with the macros otherwise.
Before creating a new multi select/single select field, make sure that you'll want to use the available field values long term. If you rename the values after creation, you will need to update any metadata macro where the changed value has been set manually.
For space metadata: Make sure you're using distinct field names upon creation. If you don't want to work with the distinct name, you can rename the field afterwards. Example: You need a field "Project". The title is generic, so it's likely this name has been or will be reused in a different space at some point. Solution: Create the field as "Project SPACEKEY", thereby generating a distinct field key. Afterwards you can rename the field to "Project" if you prefer the short title. The field key will stay the same. This avoids trouble with the CQL search and therefore, the Metadata macros. We're already tracking this as a feature of a future release: METADATA-676 - Getting issue details... STATUS

Fields can have the following type:

Multi Select
Date
Single Select (Dropdown)
Group
Link (add one or more links)
Single Select (Radio Buttons)
Text
User

If User Profiles for Confluence >= 2.1 is installed, you can add existing single- and multi-select user profile elements for metadata fields. Please find more details here: User Profiles and Metadata Integration

Field Type User

SINCE VERSION 3.2.0

You you choose between two modes: Multiple users and One user. The mode determines how many users can be entered into the user field.

User fields that existed prior to version 3.2.0 will be understood as Multiple user fields. If the mode "Multiple users" is selected, it cannot be changed to "One user". This is to prevent data loss.

Field Type Link

When choosing the field type "link", you can restrict which internal links can be selected by the users with the help of a filter. Filters are defined according to the Lucene search syntax. Find further help on advanced Confluence searching here and here.

Image 3: Restrict Internal Links (click to enlarge)

Add Global Metadata Fields to a Global Metadata Set

The entry "Metadata sets" can also be found in the "Metadata Plugin" section on the left sidebar. On the page, click "Add metadata set" on the right to create a new set.

Image 4: General Administration - Add Global Metadata Set (click to enlarge)

Check section Add Metadata Fields to a Metadata Set in Manage Metadata in Spaces (v 3.0) to see how metadata fields will be added to metadata sets. These steps will also work for global metadata.

On the space and page level, you can add global metadata via templates and on the page, as described in the section Add Metadata to one or more Pages.

Bulk Changes will not work for global metadata sets. You can however perform bulk changes on global metadata fields once these fields have been added to a space metadata set.

You can also add default values to your global metadata. Please refer to section Define Default Values here to find out how to add default values and variables to a Metadata set.

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Advanced Options

As a global administrator you can decide who can add Metadata sets to a page. The default option will remain that only administrators and space administrators can add a metadata set to a page. The option "users can add Metadata" makes it possible to decide that all users with the right to "Add Pages" in a space can add Metadata sets to pages.

Image 5: Advanced options - decide which users can add Metadata sets to a page (click to enlarge)