But over time, things break down.

Data gets outdated, pages get duplicated, and metrics such as KPI lose consistency. Eventually, teams move their tracking back to spreadsheets.

This isn’t a team problem. It’s a tooling gap.

And it becomes especially visible as organizations try to scale Confluence KPI tracking and project management in Confluence.

The problem with native Confluence Tables

For some teams, a typical KPI table in Confluence looks like this: rows for campaigns or initiatives, columns for owners, deadlines, statuses, and metrics. It’s a reasonable starting structure. But the moment the dataset grows, the cracks appear fast.

Native Confluence tables offer limited filtering and grouping capabilities. You can’t easily filter by owner or status, group by team or priority, or dynamically sort large datasets. Updates rely entirely on people remembering to come back and edit the page.

So teams compensate in predictable ways, duplicating pages for different views, exporting to spreadsheets, and maintaining multiple versions of the same dataset just to answer simple questions.

Smart Tables: a structured layer inside Confluence

Smart Tables addresses the root limitation directly. Rather than treating Confluence pages as documents with embedded tables, Smart Tables turns those tables into interactive, structured datasets without requiring teams to leave the workspace.

The shift sounds subtle. Its effects are not.

• Filtering
  Each stakeholder sees only their slice of data, by team, status, quarter, or priority. What makes this powerful is that filters are persistent, reusable views built on top of a consistent schema, so they never break and always reflect live data. One table replaces what used to require multiple duplicated pages, each drifting out of sync.

• Grouping
  As KPI data grows, a long flat list of metrics becomes impossible to scan for different teams, statuses, and priorities all mixed together with no visual hierarchy. Grouping solves this by organizing data into meaningful categories on the fly. Group by team to see how each department is performing at a glance. Group by status to instantly separate what’s on track from what’s at risk. The data doesn’t change just how you navigate it.

• Sorting
  Without sorting, the answers to the most critical questions, which KPIs are underperforming, which campaigns are delivering, and what needs immediate attention, are buried inside the data. Sorting brings them to the surface instantly. Sort by lowest performance to identify risks before they escalate. Sort by highest impact to highlight wins worth sharing. Sort by deadline to stay ahead of what’s coming. Any field, any direction, actionable in seconds.

The foundation of effective Smart Tables tracking is a consistent data structure. Each row represents a single unit of measurement: a campaign, a sprint, or a product initiative. Each column is a defined, standardized field: metric name, owner, team, status, priority, reporting period, performance value.

When every row follows the same schema, the entire table becomes a queryable dataset; that consistency is what transforms a table from a formatted list into a system.

The Atlassian Teamwork Collection: tools becoming a system

With the Atlassian Teamwork Collection, the company is making a deliberate architectural shift: away from individual apps used side by side toward a unified system where planning, documentation, and execution are deeply connected.

This reflects something real about how work actually happens. A decision made in a Confluence page triggers a project tracked in Jira. A sprint outcome updates a KPI that lives in a doc. When tools are isolated, context is lost at every handoff. The Teamwork model is designed to close those gaps.

Even within a better-connected Atlassian ecosystem, Confluence had a specific problem: the moment documentation became operational, tracking deliverables, monitoring KPIs, and managing live project data, its tables became a liability. Static by default, prone to drift, dependent on manual exports. The Teamwork vision needed Confluence to do more.

The bigger shift: from documentation to operations

Together, Smart Tables and the Teamwork Collection represent a broader transformation in how teams manage work.

Reporting consistency, one of the most persistent pain points in project management, gets addressed at the source. KPIs are defined once in a structured format in Confluence. Every stakeholder sees the same data in the same format. Reports are generated from the live source, not assembled from exported fragments.

Just as importantly, this shift doesn’t require teams to change how they work inside Confluence.

Smart Tables works effectively with native Confluence macros and elements, including smart links, attachments, code snippets, decision macros, and user mentions. Tables remain fully integrated with the rest of the page, whether it’s linking to a Jira issue, displaying media, or exporting to PDF.

What this means in practice

A team lead filters the KPI table in Confluence to view only their team’s metrics. A manager groups data by status to spot risks, while an executive sorts by performance to identify priorities before a review. No exports, no duplicate reports, no need to search for the latest version.

This is the experience that Smart Tables enables and that the Atlassian Teamwork Collection is designed to support.

Confluence KPI tracking isn’t about adding more tools or pages. It’s about making existing data structured, consistent, and interactive, with Smart Tables providing the foundation and Atlassian delivering the system that connects it all.

We’ll walk through methodology, side-by-side results, pros/cons, use-case recommendations, and a verdict. The goal: help Confluence users and decision-makers (especially those evaluating switching or upgrades) choose wisely.

Methodology & Benchmark Criteria

To make this comparison fair and meaningful, we defined the following criteria and approach:

Test setup & process

To ensure a fair and comprehensive evaluation, we created identical test tables and converted or wrapped them within each plugin. We then performed a series of common data-management tasks such as applying multiple filters, sorting by several columns, adding formulas (SUM, IF…), building pivots, exporting to CSV and PDF, and reverting changes. Throughout the process, we recorded errors, and noted points of friction that could impact the user experience.

To validate our findings, we also cross-checked vendor documentation, user reviews, and community feedback. The results below present a detailed comparison of each tool, complete with insights, commentary, and direct links to supporting documentation.

A full comparison: Smart Tables vs Table Filter vs Aura Table Filter

Below is a comparison table summarizing feature support (✓ = supported, ✗ = not supported).

Tables main features

Features	Smart Tables	Table Filter	Aura Table Filter
Live edit in Confluence pages
Consistent filtering
Calculations & excel like functions	Smart Tables supported functions	(Supports only 5 formulas for calculating columns and only 7 formulas for calculating rows)
Charts	(7 chart types, 4 themes, labels)	(15 chart types, Appearance, themes)	(Less configuration and customizations)
Pivot tables
SQL queries	Coming soon
Spreadsheets macro
Collaborative editing in Spreadsheet
Convert Confluence tables into spreadsheet
Sorting
Grouping
Search in the entire table
Sample table
Revert to Confluence table
Export table	(XLSX, CSV, Word, PDF)	(CSV, Word, PDF)	(CSV, Word, PDF)
Import table	(XLSX, CSV)	(CSV, JSON)
Tabs mode
Pagination
Support	(For every subscription)	(Premium support for advanced plans)	(Only for pro plan)

Native Confluence macro support

Macro/App	Smart Tables ( Creativas)	Table Filter & Spreadsheets (Stiltsoft)	Aura (Appanvil)
Support Atlassian smart links (Confluence page, Jira ticket)
Support external smart links
Table respects the Confluence page width and does not exceed it when media files are used
Display attachments and media files in the page viewer
View attached files right from the page viewer
Faithful Confluence page PDF export style		(Wide media files cause the table to be cropped)	(Does not support macros)
Support expand macro			(Macro titles and buttons are not visible)
Support quotes			(Displays only the text)
Support code snippets		(The native line numbering is removed)	(Displays only the text)
Support Decision macro
Clicking the mentioned username directs you to their profile
Interaction with Action item macro			(Cannot be selected)
Support Info panel macro		(Except the note panel)

Keynotes & observations

Each of the evaluated Confluence table apps brings its own strengths and focus areas, offering different approaches to data management and collaboration within Confluence.

• Smart Tables for Confluence delivers a modern experience with strong performance, intuitive design, and advanced features like global search, sorting, grouping, and import/export. Its seamless integration with Smart Links, Live Docs, and mentions makes it a solid choice for teams seeking a complete, collaborative solution.
• Table Filter by Stiltsoft remains a well-established and reliable tool, offering comprehensive filtering and pivot functionality. While its interface feels more traditional, it continues to serve teams that value stability and proven analytical capabilities.
• Aura Table Filter for Confluence focuses on simplicity and visual presentation. It offers core filtering and sorting options, making it a great fit for teams that prioritize page design and readability over advanced data manipulation.
• Support, documentation, and community involvement matter greatly when users bump into issues. Creativas, Stiltsoft, and Appanvil are active on the Atlassian community and provide tutorial resources.

In the end, all three tools address different needs, from analytical power to visual clarity, allowing teams to choose the solution that best aligns with their workflows and goals.

Usecase: Project Management with Confluence

A project management team maintains a quarterly performance report in Confluence. The report includes multiple tables summarizing:

• Project timelines and completion rates
• Team workloads and logged hours
• Budget vs. actual spend per department

The team needs to combine data from several pages, perform calculations, and group information by department to prepare a shareable PDF report for leadership.

However, native Confluence tables make this process time-consuming and inconsistent; formulas aren’t supported, data formatting often breaks during export, and preserving Atlassian’s macro design in exports is unreliable while using some marketplace apps for Confluence tables.

Solution with Smart Tables

Smart Tables allows users to apply advanced formulas to calculate totals, variances, or completion averages directly inside Confluence. The team can then use grouping to organize results by department, sorting to highlight projects with the largest budget gaps or lowest completion rates.

For deeper insights, users can apply filters to focus on specific quarters, departments, or project statuses, for example, isolating only “In Progress” projects or reviewing results from a single department. In addition, Smart Tables supports pivot tables, enabling teams to summarize complex datasets into clear, aggregated views. For example, this allows them to compare total spend versus planned budget across all departments or review average completion rates per quarter. When exporting to PDF, Smart Tables preserves the original Atlassian macro design and table layout, ensuring that charts, panels, and formatting appear consistently. This makes report sharing with leadership smooth, professional, and visually accurate.

Solution with Table Filter

Table Filter by Stiltsoft supports the team’s need for data analysis through its pivot and formula macros, allowing basic calculations for light comparisons. The team can filter by department or project status and generate summarized overviews using the Pivot Table macro. While it does not support inline grouping in the same way as Smart Tables, grouping can be simulated through pivot configuration. PDF export works reliably for table data but may not fully preserve Atlassian macro styling or complex visual layouts, sometimes requiring post-editing. Overall, it enables solid analytical reporting within Confluence but demands slightly more setup and macro configuration.

Solution with Aura Table Filter

Aura Table Filter helps the team display their quarterly report in a clean, visually structured format. It supports basic sorting, grouping and filtering, allowing managers to quickly narrow down data by department, project status, or timeframe. However, it does not support adding formulas for calculations, which limits its analytical capabilities. Additionally, Aura Table Filter is not fully compatible with most native Confluence macros, which can affect how the layout and styling are preserved during PDF export. As a result, exported pages may not fully match the original design. Aura remains a solid choice for teams that value presentation and visual clarity over in-depth data processing.

In 2025, Smart Tables for Confluence offers one of the most substantial balances of interactivity, formula power, usability, and flexibility, particularly for teams that want to work inside Confluence rather than hopping to Excel. Meanwhile, Table Filter & Spreadsheets remains a compelling, macro-rich option for advanced users building dashboards, merging data, or needing deep macro integration. The Aura table filter still may serve in simpler environments where ease and minimality are priorities.

A fresh look for a better experience

The first thing you’ll notice is the redesigned interface. We’ve given Smart Tables a modern, streamlined look with clearer layouts, improved navigation, and editing experience. For teams handling long lists of tasks, budgets, or survey data, the updated design makes it easier to scan and work with information without feeling overwhelmed. It’s a small change with a big impact: instead of wrestling with clutter, you can focus on your data.

Global search: Finding the needle in the haystack

When your table has hundreds of rows, finding one specific piece of information can be frustrating. That’s why we’ve added Global Search. It allows you to search across every column in seconds, with options for case sensitivity and even regular expressions (regex) for advanced filtering. For example, a project manager can instantly find all tasks marked as High Priority, or a team lead can filter rows assigned to a specific colleague.

Grouping and sorting: Organize data the way you want

Tables often aren’t just about storing information; they’re about spotting patterns and drawing insights. With the new Sorting and Grouping features, Smart Tables lets you arrange data in a way that makes the most sense. A project manager can sort tasks by priority to focus on what matters most, while HR teams can group employees by department to review progress at a glance. Instead of exporting data into Excel just to reorganize it, you can now do everything directly in Confluence.

It’s essential to note that sorting and grouping are mutually exclusive options: you can either sort a table or group it, but not both simultaneously.

Import and Export with ease

We know your data doesn’t live in one place. Sometimes it starts in a spreadsheet; sometimes it needs to be shared outside of Confluence. Smart Tables now bridges that gap with easy Import and Export options. You can bring in data from Excel or CSV files in just a few clicks, so your existing spreadsheets are instantly usable inside Confluence. And when it’s time to share, you can export tables to Excel, CSV, Word, or PDF, which is perfect for reports, client updates, or advanced analysis. This flexibility saves hours of copy-pasting and keeps your workflow smooth.

Get started with a Sample Table

You’ll now see a Smart Tables icon in the page byline, right under the page title. From there, you can quickly convert an existing Confluence table into a Smart Table, import data from Excel or CSV, or add a brand-new sample table.

For teams just getting started, the Quick Start option makes it effortless: with one click, you can insert a ready-to-use Smart Table and begin exploring features immediately. Whether you’re testing the app for the first time or setting up a new project, you can get hands-on in seconds.

Enhanced table content

This release also introduces several enhancements that make working with Smart Tables smoother and more collaborative.

You can now use Smart Links to display cleaner, contextual links within your tables.
Even better, both Smart Tables and Live Spreadsheets can now be embedded inside a Live Doc. Collaboration becomes easier with mention macro support, letting you tag teammates directly within tables, while expand macros help keep pages organized by tucking large datasets into collapsible sections.

Built on Forge, built for the future

This release isn’t just about adding new features; it’s about laying a foundation for what’s next. By making Smart Tables fully Forge native, we’ve boosted performance, scalability, and stability. That means faster tables today and more room for innovation tomorrow.

Why it matters

This release transforms Smart Tables from a simple table add-on into a real productivity tool. You’ll spend less time searching, reorganizing, and reformatting and more time analyzing, sharing, and acting on your data. Whether you’re managing projects, running HR processes, or preparing reports for leadership, Smart Tables now adapts to your workflow and removes the friction from working with tables in Confluence.

Stay tuned for the upcoming release!

In this blog, we’ll explore why teams need spreadsheets for monday.com , identify who benefits most from it, and review the top options available in the marketplace.

Why do teams need a Spreadsheet for monday.com?

monday.com is designed to help teams plan, execute, and track work in a highly visual and collaborative environment. But when it comes to advanced data operations, like multi-variable calculations, budget modeling, or cross-team data rollups, many teams still rely on traditional spreadsheet tools outside the platform.

Spreadsheets are deeply ingrained in how teams work. They provide flexibility for custom calculations, enable centralized views of data from multiple sources, and support complex filtering, sorting, and reporting that may go beyond the native column features in monday.com . Finance, operations, HR, and project managers all benefit from the ability to manipulate large datasets with precision and control.

However, switching back and forth between spreadsheets and monday.com introduces challenges: version mismatches, manual updates, and fragmented collaboration. That’s why the ability to work with spreadsheet for monday.com is more important than ever.

Rather than replacing spreadsheets, the goal is to bring their core strengths calculations, structure, and flexibility into the same space where your workflows already live. That’s where Live Spreadsheets for monday.com steps in. It’s not just another spreadsheet tool; it’s a collaborative data environment built to work with your monday.com boards in real time.

What can Live Spreadsheets for monday.com do?

Live Spreadsheets combines the flexibility of monday.com with the familiar power of Excel, offering a fully integrated experience for teams that manage and analyze data regularly. Instead of switching between external tools and your monday boards, Live Spreadsheets for monday.com lets you bring your work into one space where collaboration, analysis, and updates happen together.

What sets Live Spreadsheets for monday.com apart is its ability to import specific board groups. Rather than pulling in an entire board or dealing with cluttered data, you can select the exact groups you want to work with. This means more relevant spreadsheets, cleaner views, and a setup that reflects how your team actually operates across boards and departments.

Another major advantage is instant synchronization. When something changes on your connected board a status update, a number edit, or a new task, you can instantly sync it and it’s automatically reflected in the spreadsheet. You don’t need to reimport anything. Your data stays current and consistent, reducing manual work and ensuring everyone is working with the latest information at all times.

Live collaboration is also built right in. Your team can work on the same spreadsheet at the same time, updating numbers, formulas, or comments together.

It also supports over 400 Excel-style functions, giving you the power to perform anything from simple calculations to advanced reporting logic. Whether you’re building project budgets, tracking KPIs, or analyzing performance metrics, the tools you need are already there.

You can also import data from Excel to get started quickly, or export your spreadsheet if you need to share it outside the platform. This makes it easy to connect your workflows with external stakeholders or save records for future use.

For teams that value clarity and insight, Live Spreadsheets for monday.com includes advanced formatting, pivot tables, and data visualizations like charts and graphs that help transform raw information into actionable insights. These tools help teams quickly interpret data and make smarter decisions without needing third-party solutions.

And if you prefer a more comfortable viewing experience, Live Spreadsheets offers Dark Mode, making it easier on the eyes during long work sessions.

In short, Live Spreadsheets for monday.com is more than just a table, it’s a collaborative, connected workspace built for data-driven teams. With features like board group import, real-time sync, and multi-user editing, it brings structure and flexibility to your monday.com workflows, helping your team stay aligned, efficient, and always in control of the data that matters most.

Who Should Use Live Spreadsheets for monday.com?

Live Spreadsheets for monday is designed for any team that works with data inside monday.com, whether it’s tracking performance, managing operations, or collaborating across departments. By enhancing native monday.com boards, dashboards, and items with advanced spreadsheet functionality, it empowers teams to do more without leaving their workspace.

• Operations Teams rely heavily on dashboards and cross-board reporting to align KPIs, monitor resources, and coordinate workflows. Live Spreadsheets acts as a flexible layer on top of their boards, enabling deeper data manipulation, bulk edits, advanced filtering, and calculations while keeping everything connected to their operational system of record.

• Project Managers often use boards to track deliverables, timelines, dependencies, and ownership across multiple teams. With Live Spreadsheets, they can pull in group-specific data from project boards, apply custom calculations for progress tracking or effort estimates, and instantly reflect updates from their boards.

• Finance Teams use dashboards and items to monitor budgets, expenses, and forecasts. Live Spreadsheets allows them to apply formulas, run multi-variable models, and build pivot tables perfect for month-end closing, variance analysis, or tracking spend across departments.

• Sales & Marketing Teams manage pipelines, campaigns, and CRM data using monday items, automations, and dashboards. By importing specific board groups into Live Spreadsheets, they can analyze performance, sort and filter leads, and visualize conversion metrics in real time without manual syncing or exporting to Excel.

• HR Teams typically track onboarding, hiring pipelines, and training progress using item-level status updates, forms, and timelines. Live Spreadsheets helps them consolidate multiple group views, calculate onboarding time, track compliance training, and spot trends across departments using dynamic formulas all while collaborating live with other stakeholders.

While Confluence offers a strong structural foundation, it falls short when delivering interactive training, terminology management, and real-time performance tracking all are essential for a successful onboarding program.

Effective onboarding isn’t just about giving new hires access to information it’s about delivering structured learning, ensuring consistent understanding, and measuring progress along the way. That’s where the limitations of static documentation become clear.

• Training matters because employees need to understand not just what to do, but how and why, through engaging, structured experiences.
• Glossaries matter because internal language and acronyms can confuse new hires and slow their integration.
• Data tracking matters because HR teams need to monitor onboarding effectiveness, identify bottlenecks, and report on results.

To address these challenges without leaving Confluence, we created an integrated solution:

• Smart Courses: Build and deliver interactive training modules with quizzes, capsules, and progress tracking.
• Smart Terms: Maintain a dynamic glossary that automatically highlights terminology across Confluence.
• Smart Tables: Track onboarding progress and metrics with live data visualizations and advanced spreadsheets.

Together, these apps transform Confluence into a powerful, all-in-one platform that supports your entire onboarding journey, from the first login to full productivity.

In the sections below, we’ll walk through how this works in practice using a real-world use case: onboarding new employees across departments.

Use case: new employee onboarding program

An HR manager must ensure that every new hire understands the company’s processes, culture, and expectations and becomes productive as quickly as possible. However, achieving this is not easy.

Why does training matter?

Structured training gives new hires the knowledge and confidence they need to succeed. Without it, onboarding becomes inconsistent and slow. Interactive, trackable courses ensure everyone follows the same learning path at their own pace.

1. Smart Courses for Confluence for onboarding training

1.1 Featured Courses

With the Featured Courses option, HR teams can now highlight the most important or time-sensitive training modules directly within the course catalog. By marking a course as “featured” in the catalog configuration, it automatically appears at the top, ensuring that new hires can easily find and access critical content, such as compliance training, company culture introductions, or mandatory onboarding sessions.

1.2 Course editor and learning capsules

Using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, you can create interactive learning capsules that combine videos, quizzes, documents, and even existing Confluence pages, transforming static content into dynamic onboarding experiences. These capsules support various learning styles while reinforcing knowledge retention through built-in quizzes and assessments. Whether you’re onboarding new hires or delivering compliance training, Smart Courses makes it easy to design structured, multimedia-rich courses that keep learners engaged and on track.

1.3 Course catalog and configuration

Once created, courses are listed in a searchable course catalog, making it easy for new employees to self-enroll in required training. The catalog includes filters and tags to facilitate navigation, enabling users to quickly locate courses relevant to their role, team, or onboarding stage. This ensures a personalized and efficient learning experience.

1.4 Assign Courses and Continuous Assignment

Smart Courses enables automated course assignments, enrolling users as soon as they join specific Confluence groups. With Continuous Assignment, you can set due dates, send reminders on custom schedules, and personalize notification messages, ensuring timely, hands-off delivery of onboarding training.

1.5 Insights and reporting

With Smart Courses, you don’t have to guess how training is going you get real-time insights right within Confluence.
See who’s enrolled, who’s completed what, and how each person performed in quizzes, all from a built-in dashboard.

This helps you quickly identify drop-offs, pinpoint knowledge gaps, and continually improve your content. Whether you’re onboarding 5 or 50 people, you’re always in control and fully informed.

1.6 Multi language

Smart Courses’ muti-language feature empowers global teams by delivering training in over 24 languages, ensuring inclusivity and consistency across diverse workforces. Administrators can set a default language and add additional languages to courses, with the option to utilize the AI Engine for bulk translations of course content.

Why a glossary matters

Every company has its own different cultural and language backgrounds. Without clear definitions, new hires get confused or disengaged. A built-in glossary ensures consistent and accessible terminology across all onboarding materials.

2. Consistent terminology with Smart Terms for Confluence

2.1 Term highlighting

As learners navigate Confluence pages, Smart Terms highlights defined terminology in context, linking directly to glossary entries so users can quickly reference definitions without leaving the course content.

2.2 Multi-language glossary

Even with diverse backgrounds, cultures, and languages, Smart Terms simplifies communication by offering a multi-language glossary. It allows you to create and manage glossaries in over 24 languages, ensuring that each user sees terms in their preferred language, enhancing clarity and inclusivity across your Confluence workspace.

Tracking progress

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Tracking progress, quiz scores, and completion rates helps identify knowledge gaps and optimize onboarding. Filters and charts make it easy to monitor performance by role or department.

3. Real-Time data and visualization with Smart Tables

3.1 Live Spreadsheet macro

Embed fully interactive spreadsheets into Confluence using the Live Spreadsheet macro, allowing HR and managers to update onboarding checklists, forecasts, and training schedules collaboratively.

3.2 Table filters and charts

Apply advanced table filters to slice and dice onboarding data, such as filtering by department or hire date, and generate table charts to visualize completion rates, average time-to-competency, and other key performance indicators (KPIs).

3.3 Pivot tables and supported functions

Use pivot tables to summarize performance metrics across dimensions (e.g., role, location). Leverage Smart Tables’ extensive library of supported functions for calculations SUM, AVERAGE, IF, and more to build dynamic reports that update as source data changes.

Bringing It All Together: One platform for all

Switching between tools wastes time and breaks focus. Keeping training, terminology, and tracking inside Confluence ensures a smoother, distraction-free onboarding experience for both HR teams and new employees.

By combining Smart Courses (LMS) for structured training, Smart Terms for consistent terminology, and Smart Tables for live data visualization, your onboarding program becomes a self-contained ecosystem within Confluence. New hires engage with interactive courses and instantly access glossary definitions. You gain actionable insights through real-time dashboards, ultimately accelerating time-to-productivity and ensuring knowledge retention.

Whether you’re launching a global compliance initiative or scaling technical training, Creativas’ suite of Confluence apps empowers your team to deliver, manage, and measure learning with unprecedented efficiency.

Ready to transform your onboarding experience? Explore our apps from the Atlassian Marketplace:

Where does your HR team currently track employee goals, feedback, and performance updates? If you’re using Confluence, you’re already heading in the right direction. If not, now’s the perfect time to rethink how your team collaborates.

The benefits of using Confluence for centralized HR performance management

Confluence isn’t just a corporate wiki; it’s a powerful hub for HR teams to centralize documentation, streamline feedback, and build a culture of transparency.

From structured data to rich text collaboration, Confluence provides an intuitive workspace where performance conversations are easily documented, updated, and shared across departments.

And here’s where it gets even more powerful: Confluence transforms into a dynamic, data driven HR performance platform when you add Smart Tables into the mix. You can filter, calculate, and visualize performance data all without leaving the page.

With Smart Tables for Confluence, tracking employee performance becomes real-time, automated, and collaborative.

How to track employee performance in real-time using Confluence & Smart Tables

HR teams handle multiple tasks, from recruitment to performance reviews to goal tracking. Smart Tables for Confluence simplify performance management by creating dynamic, real-time tables that track progress, update scores, and centralize feedback all within the same platform.

With Smart Tables for Confluence, HR managers can:

• Centralized performance data: Keep everything in one place, easily accessible to managers and employees.

• Track KPIs in real-time: No more outdated reports; performance data is always current.
• Automate calculations: One click to apply formulas for your table

• Enhance collaboration: Team leads, HR managers, and department Leads can instantly access and update performance data.

Excel-Like Calculations

Performance tracking often requires complex calculations. Instead of using external spreadsheets, Smart Tables bring Excel-like functions (SUM, AVERAGE, IF, COUNTIF) directly into Confluence. HR teams can instantly calculate performance scores, bonus eligibility, and goal achievements, making decisions faster and easier.

With Smart Tables for Confluence, HR managers can perform:

• Performance score calculations: Use SUM, AVERAGE, IF, and COUNTIF to automate employee ratings.
• Bonus & salary adjustments: Instantly calculate bonus eligibility based on performance metrics.
• Team productivity trends: Track and compare performance over time within Confluence.

No need to export data to Excel, Smart Tables allow HR teams to calculate everything inside Confluence, saving hours of work each week.

Advanced filtering

Large organizations generate vast amounts of HR data.

Smart Tables’ advanced filtering helps HR teams drill down into specific metrics by department, role, or performance criteria.

This enables quick identification of top performers, areas for improvement, and emerging trends, ensuring accurate data always backs HR decisions.
HR teams deal with massive amounts of employee performance data. Finding relevant insights in this sea of numbers can be overwhelming.

Smart Tables simplify this by allowing advanced filtering, so HR teams can quickly:

• Filter by department: View performance only for specific teams.
• Sort by time period: Track improvements over months or years.
• Identify top & low performers: Instantly see who’s excelling and who needs coaching.

Instead of digging through endless spreadsheets, HR managers can pinpoint key insights in seconds, leading to faster and more accurate decision-making.

Visualizing employee performance with charts and graphs

Data visualization is crucial for presenting complex performance metrics.

Smart Tables allow HR teams to create automated charts and graphs, bar charts for team performance, line graphs for individual progress, and pie charts for KPI distributions.

These visual insights make trends easy to understand and communicate to leadership.

With Smart Tables for Confluence, HR teams can:

• Create bar charts: Compare performance scores across teams.
• Use line graphs: Track employee progress over time.
• Generate pie charts: Break down performance distribution at a glance.

These visual tools make HR reports more engaging and help leadership make data-driven decisions faster.

Transform HR performance tracking with Smart Tables for Confluence

HR teams need smarter, faster, and more collaborative ways to track performance. Smart Tables and Confluence provide the perfect solution, offering:

• Real-time performance tracking
• Automated calculations & data filtering
• Interactive charts & visual reports
• Seamless collaboration across HR teams

By converting Confluence tables into dynamic Smart Tables, HR managers can save time, eliminate errors, and make performance tracking effortless.

This is where Smart Tables for Confluence comes in! It is a fantastic solution that brings Excel-like functionalities directly into Confluence, enabling teams to efficiently manage projects and generate reports without switching between multiple tools or apps.

Confluence provides a powerful foundation for knowledge sharing and collaboration, and its flexibility allows Atlassian Marketplace partners to develop innovative tools that enhance the experience: expanding table calculations, improving data visualization, and adding even more functionality!

Transforming Confluence into a project management and reporting hub

Confluence built-in project management features

Confluence provides a set of features that allows users to enhance project planning and execution, such as :

Despite these strengths, project managers often need enhanced table functionalities to track progress, analyze data, and generate reports within Confluence.

Confluence for project management made easy with Smart Tables

Many project managers use tables and spreadsheets to track progress, analyze budgets, and manage resources. These traditional spreadsheets require switching between applications, leading to certain inefficiencies and version control issues.

Incorporating Smart Tables eliminates the need for external tools by simplifying processes and maintaining data security and consistency.

Smart Tables for Confluence removes this gap by offering :

A centralized project dashboard within the same Confluence space is crucial for mentoring deadlines, responsibilities, and overall progress. With Smart Tables, teams can:

Step 3: Real-time collaboration within :

live SpreadSheet

Live Spreadsheet makes sure that anyone can edit, review, and analyze data in real time at the same time, live, without the need for live calls or meetings.

Smart Tables

With concurrent editing, teams can collaborate simultaneously, while managers can monitor changes as they are made, preventing unnecessary edits.

Step 4: Data visualization

With built-in chart tools, teams can transform tables into interactive visual reports, making it easier to track trends, KPIs…

Why choose Smart Tables over external Spreadsheets?

• security risks: sensitive data leaks
• manager’s confusion: missed the updates, buried in threads

Using Excel alongside Confluence can create several inefficiencies, such as frequent tool switching, which slows down workflows, version control might lead to outdated or even duplicated data, and scattered files make collaboration difficult

How to start in 5 minutes

1. Install the Smart Tables From Atlassian Marketplace
2. Convert existing tables to Smart Tables
3. Add formulas, chart or pivot tables

Smart Tables isn’t about replacing Excel; it’s about making Confluence the reference your team needs. Fewer tabs, fewer mistakes, faster decisions.

As a marketer, tracking your numbers is essential. It’s how you decide what to do and when to do it. Data is what separates guesswork from strategy, and without it, marketing efforts risk falling flat. The good news? You don’t need to start from scratch or hunt for fancy tools. If your team already uses Confluence, you’ve got a solid foundation to build on. With its ability to centralize information and foster collaboration, Confluence is a great place to start consolidating your data and setting the stage for smarter decisions.

In this blog, we’re diving into why data analysis is a non-negotiable part of modern marketing and how Smart Tables for Confluence can help marketers analyze and collaborate on data.

Why marketing data analysis matters

Marketing has come a long way from the old days of flashy and pushy tactics, especially digital marketing. Remember pop-up ads and mass email blasts sent to anyone and everyone? Back then, the strategy was more like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. This means that marketers used to work on reaching as many people as possible so some would notice the product and buy it. Therefore, the wider the audience you reach, the higher your chances of selling are.

However, today, the game has changed entirely. Marketing is now about precision, personalization, and making meaningful connections. This means that the more precise your aim is, the higher your chances of selling are. Marketing now thrives on careful segmentation and automation. Drip campaigns triggered by user actions are a great example of ensuring every message feels relevant and well-timed, boosting engagement and driving results.

With better access to customer data, marketers can craft campaigns that resonate deeply with specific audience segments. It’s no longer about the volume but about delivering quality content that connects. This focus on personalization isn’t just more effective; it also creates a better customer experience, fostering trust and loyalty and more sales eventually.

To sum it all up, today, every decision relies on numbers. Marketing data analysis is crucial for many reasons, especially to:

• Justify budgets and strategies: Clear, quantifiable results make it easier to pitch ideas or secure funding for campaigns.
• Measure campaign performance: Track which channels deliver the best ROI, from social media ads to email marketing.
• Understand your audience: Analytics reveals what your audience responds to and helps you tailor your messaging.

How Smart Tables for Confluence makes marketing data analysis easier

Honestly, we know words like analytics, data, and precision can sound intimidating. You might picture something straight out of a sci-fi movie: multiple screens, endless rows of numbers, and a sea of complex charts. But here’s the good thing: it doesn’t have to be that overwhelming. You can start simple. In fact, you can start with tools your team is already using, like Confluence, where you’re probably already collaborating on reports and other projects.

Confluence tables are already helpful for tracking numbers, but they can do so much more with a small yet powerful upgrade. Smart Tables for Confluence turns your basic tables into dynamic workspaces. It adds features like filtering, Excel functions, and reporting tools, all smoothly integrated into Confluence. This means you can skip juggling multiple platforms or exporting data back and forth. Everything happens right where your team is already working, making it easier to dive into analysis.

For marketing teams, using Smart Tables for Confluence can simplify the way campaign metrics, web traffic data, or ad performance numbers are managed. Need to filter your data to focus on key metrics? Done. Want to calculate conversion rates or engagement percentages without leaving the page? Easy. Prefer visuals? Create charts or pivot tables to present your findings in a way that stands out.

And it’s not just about the marketing team. Collaboration is key in marketing, and Smart Tables makes it effortless. Your team can edit, analyze, and update data together in real time. So, no more messy version control or freaking-out “Did anyone save the latest file?” emails.

Analyzing campaign performance with Smart Tables

Let’s say your team just wrapped up a social media campaign across multiple platforms. Now it’s time to report, figure out which posts did best, and define where to focus your ad dollars for the next round.

On your Confluence page, add a table with all your important metrics, like reach, impressions, clicks, and conversions, directly into a Smart Table in Confluence. And if you forgot to insert the Smart Tables macro from the beginning and have already started filling out your Confluence table, you can easily convert it to Smart Tables from the page view. To further smooth your operations, you now have the option to enable the tab mode and have all items belonging to one table arranged in different tabs that you can switch between. The tabs contain the Smart Table alongside any charts and pivot tables that were created based on its data.

Next, let the numbers do the talking. Apply formulas to calculate key performance indicators (KPIs) like click-through rates (CTR), engagement rates, or cost per conversion. No manual math, no hassle, and all on the same page as your report.

Now, this is the most important part: figure out the story your data is telling. Turn your results into visually engaging charts or pivot tables that would help you spotlight trends, like which platforms had the highest engagement or where your ads performed best.

Since confluence and collaboration go hand in hand, share the table and insights with your team right there. Everyone can contribute feedback, suggest tweaks, or discuss the next steps without juggling multiple file versions.
And there you go. No more scrambling to piece together numbers or worrying about errors slipping through the cracks. Instead, you and your team can focus on what really matters: refining your strategy, investing in the right platforms, and driving better results next time.

Smart Tables is a versatile tool that every team in the company can use, from the marketing team to the sales team, the support team, and anyone who needs to crunch some numbers. So, by integrating it into your Confluence workflow, you can make data analysis approachable, efficient, and impactful.

Learn more about our other Smart Apps for marketing teams and how they can elevate your Confluence experience. Do you still have any questions regarding Smart Tables for Confluence? Book a demo and let us get to know you and answer your questions!

Without the right tools, you can’t expect your team to be highly responsive and efficient. Providing good tools allows your support team to resolve support tickets efficiently and provide insights that drive product improvement. It might not be an issue for you if you already have an extensive support team managing customers’ queries. But if you have just launched your product and started growing your team, getting an excellent tool for your team doesn’t have to drain your account.

In fact, Jira Service Management (JSM) is excellent at helping your support team track ticket resolution, especially in the software development industry. Integrating Confluence with JSM allows you to organize all the documentation, content, and files your team needs to deliver high-quality service every time.

But it doesn’t stop there. Adding Smart Tables to your Confluence pages will elevate your team’s experience, streamline their process, and, hence, increase their productivity.

So, if you’re managing a small support team or thinking about starting a support team, this article is for you. We will discuss some of the best practices of using Confluence and Smart Tables for Confluence, discover a few of the cool features of Atlassian Intelligence, and, last but not least, share our favorite reporting tips using Smart Tables.

Understanding customer support and ticket volume

Let’s start by understanding a few related concepts. First, we have customer support. It is one of the most crucial teams, whether your product has recently been launched or has already reached maturity. Customer support teams are the people who help customers when they encounter trouble with a company’s products or services. Their ultimate goal is to ensure that customers successfully solve any issues they face with the company’s product and that they continue to happily use your product to solve the main issue they chose it for, aka the job the product was hired for in the first place.

Next, let’s look into customer support tickets and customer support ticket volume. Customer support tickets are raised by customers who have a query or problem related to the product or service they are using. These problems can be classified to:

• Technical Issues
• Billing and Payments
• Product Inquiries
• Complaints and Feedback
• Account Management
• Policy Questions
• Other categories, depending on product specifications

Customer support ticket volume is the number of tickets or queries received by a customer support team from the customers. Tickets can come through different channels, such as:

• Emails
• Phone calls
• Social media messages
• Live chat queries

However, ticket volume is volatile. It can change with product complexity, number of customers, or even seasonal demand. Ticket volume may give information on how many issues or requests customers raise, but it doesn’t always show the support quality.
A high number of tickets means customers are engaged and your product is in demand, but it might also point to problems with the product or communication. The real focus should be not only on handling the volume but also on understanding the types of issues and solving them effectively to keep support quality high. For that, you need organized documentation that is easily accessible to the support team for effective problem-solving.

Efficient documents with Smart Tables

To ensure every customer gets the best support, you need consistent messaging across all platforms. This means all customers should get a message that matches the brand’s voice at every touch point. Also, one issue should be explained and solved the same way every time and with every customer. Businesses must consistently deliver the same value, messaging, quality, and services to customers from the first interaction to the post-purchase support to ensure they will stick around.

However, that is easier said than done. You can’t expect consistency and productivity from your support team if you don’t provide the right tools and guidelines. Confluence can be your team’s go-to wiki. It is the perfect tool to create your knowledge base, centralize potential customer issues, and share best practices. This way, you can guarantee your customers get an excellent, consistent experience and have their issues fixed faster. And, of course, you also guarantee that your team’s working process is seamless.

Stating information in big blocks of words is difficult for readers to navigate, but having it in a table form makes it easier and faster to find the correct information. But not just any table can do that; you need a Smart Table that adds filtering, Excel functions, and reporting features to native Confluence Tables.

It’s simple. Here is how it works: Once you have enabled your Smart Tables for Confluence, you can insert a Smart Table macro from the macro list or through the shortcut “/ Smart Table”.

And if you forgot to start with that and have already started writing your documentation on a native Confluence table, you can easily convert it to Smart Tables from the page view.

Once the table is set up and documentation pages are published, your support team can use the Smart Tables filtering option directly from the Confluence page view by selecting only the needed categories. This will help them quickly identify the specific issue the customer is facing and how to solve it.

You can include in your table as many details as you want to help them filter between the different options faster.

Atlassian Intelligence to summarize your Confluence page and more

We have seen the importance of well-detailed and organized documentation in supporting your team. But let’s be honest: no one likes to read a long document if they don’t really need it. So why not do your team one more favor and generate AI summaries using “Summarize writing” by Atlassian Intelligence to include a page summary that will help your team quickly find any needed details and save time, which they will surely appreciate.

This is not the only feature that Atlassian Intelligence provides; you can basically use it as your personal writing assistant to help you create the content you need. Find out all about it here.

Support tickets: your wealth of hidden insights

Finding efficient ways to manage support tickets is a challenge all businesses face. As previously mentioned, simply responding to customer inquiries and managing ticket volume will not give you a competitive advantage. In fact, along with ticket resolution, continuous team training, and performance monitoring, you should also analyze tickets to find valuable and relevant business insights brought to you directly by customers. Therefore, customer support tickets are not just routine tasks; they actually can enhance your approach to customer satisfaction and product improvement. Hence driving your company’s growth. And don’t worry; we’re not scaring you off from going through the adventure of building your digital product; we’re just giving you a heads-up.

So, let’s take an example for our case: a few-year-old tech startup providing a digital product. This startup is having moderate growth with an increasing adoption of its solution. Therefore, this company is likely in the scaling phase. It is seeing steady growth in sales and installs but is also dealing with some challenges, such as user churn, support issues, and product improvement.

Here, we have a sample of historical data from a one-year period of support tickets and some key metrics such as sales, app installs, uninstalls, and support costs.

Once you convert your native Confluence table to a Smart Table, you can add different Excel functions to perform any necessary calculations.

Another cool thing about the Smart Tables app is that it is also very practical for data visualization. Because we sure know that well-represented information helps any decision-maker see the bigger picture when making strategic decisions.

In this example, various charts were created to analyze business performance and find correlations between the different metrics. Those charts helped to highlight business trends and drive insights into customer behaviors and opportunities for improvement. In fact, when comparing the trends of support tickets and sales, we can find that a peak in support tickets corresponds with lower sales in the same month. This could indicate that unresolved technical problems impacted the customer journey, reduced conversions, or caused potential customers to churn. In addition, we observe during another month that sales increase corresponds with high product inquiries, which could suggest that there is a growing number of users interested in learning about the product.

Another helpful feature in Smart Tables for Confluence is choosing what data to represent by selecting and unselecting the data range from the chart legend. You can also customize the chart type based on your needs and what best fits your data. Hence, you can focus your analysis only on relevant elements for your decision-making.

Of course, the correlations between all metrics will differ from one business to another and will also depend on your industry or niche. However, your business can’t achieve sustainable growth unless you understand how all its aspects are connected and affect each other.

If you found these different Smart Tables features interesting, check out how you can also use Smart Tables for Confluence to revolutionize sales tracking and help you create data reporting all in one place.

Do you still have any questions regarding Smart Tables for Confluence? Book a demo and let us get to know you and answer your questions!