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Key: CONF-1031
Type: Improvement Improvement
Status: Resolved Resolved
Resolution: Fixed
Priority: Critical Critical
Assignee: Unassigned
Reporter: Irakli Nadareishvili
Votes: 174
Watchers: 86
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Confluence

Page ordering

Created: 24/Mar/04 01:12 PM   Updated: 16/Apr/08 10:18 PM
Component/s: Page Ordering
Affects Version/s: 1.0.1
Fix Version/s: 2.8

Time Tracking:
Not Specified

Issue Links:
Blocker
 
Duplicate
 
Reference

Participants: Aaron Powers, Adnan Chowdhury [Atlassian], Anders Sveen, Anthony Dyson, Aristedes Maniatis, Billy Newport, Chad Williams, Charles Miller [old account, do not assign issues], Dan Carver, Daniel Ostermeier, David Dembo, David Ruddock, Don Willis [Atlassian], Geert Van Bastelaere, Greg Miller, Guy Fraser [Adaptavist.com], Hans Noemmer, hernan g, Igor Minar, Irakli Nadareishvili, Jason Pouflis, Jeremy Higgs, Jim Naguib, John Hayter, Jon Hertzig, Martin Skopp, Matthew Jensen [Atlassian], Milt Taylor, Nick Waanders, Owen Rogers, Per Fragemann [Atlassian], Pete Miller, Rab Tait, Richard Edwards, Ruben Miranda, Sean Kennedy, Sean Semone, Stefan Baader, Steve Lane, Thomas Van de Velde, Tibor Hegyi, Ville Valtasaari, Volker Kleinschmidt and Wolfram Richter
Since last comment: 19 weeks ago
Internal Complexity: 7
Resolution Date: 10/Apr/08 12:28 AM
Support reference count: 5
Internal Value: 6
Labels:


 Description  « Hide
Confluence is missing one very important feature: there's no way to set the order of the pages. When I create a document, pages are kidnof chapters in that document and chapters must be ordered in a specific order, not alphabetically, as confluence does now.

I tried to hack it a little bit, and would create special prefixed names for the chaptes:
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3

even though it really sucks (as if you want to insert a page you need to go and rename all the pages after the position you are inserting at, manually) it worked to give some ordering to the All Pages list and helped avoiding the creation of manual index page.

But it still does not work. When I export to PDF, the page names are exported as a PDF index (very handy) but I can not figure out what is the ordering used. It is not even alphabetical, and definitely not anything I can set So my hack failed there.

I think a lot of Confluence users will agree that it is crucial to have ability of setting page ordering in some comfortable way. I also use JIRA and there ordering (of say, issue report fields) is implemented in a very comfortable, user-friendly way. Introducing a feature like that, in Confluence, for pages, would be very much appreciated.

Also, the {index} macro is giving an overly complicated thing. Getting a simple index (alternative tag?) that would just list pages by order - would help.

thanks



 All   Comments   Work Log   Change History      Sort Order: Ascending order - Click to sort in descending order
Wolfram Richter added a comment - 08/Feb/05 08:29 AM
The current ordering is in fact based on the time of the last update, which is indeed not to useful.

Ruben Miranda added a comment - 11/May/05 04:19 PM
I just just reordering my browser bookmarks (using drag-and-drop) when I realized something: how come I couldn't reorder my Confluence pages with drag-and-drop too?

Ajax is already being used to play with drag-and-drop functionality in the tasklist macro...seems like a logical extension for moving content around.


Daniel Ostermeier added a comment - 14/Jul/05 07:53 PM
Scheduling bug fix for 1.4.3 release.

Thomas Van de Velde added a comment - 17/Aug/05 08:44 PM
+1

Owen Rogers added a comment - 14/Nov/05 12:05 AM
+1 – it would be really nice to be able to sort child nodes ({children}) in ascending/descending order. right now my sorted list of releases appears with the oldest release first.

Sean Semone added a comment - 17/Nov/05 07:41 PM
This was scheduled for 1.4.3, I dont see where it was fixed. Did it make it to 2.0?

Daniel Ostermeier added a comment - 17/Nov/05 08:03 PM
Sean, what was fixed was CONF-3575.

Regards,
-Daniel


Thomas Van de Velde added a comment - 10/Jan/06 06:49 AM
Can we get an update on the status of this feature request? Are there any plans to support this in the near future?

Jeremy Higgs added a comment - 11/Jan/06 11:17 PM
Guys,

Just so we're clear here... are you looking to control the order of pages in a space, or in the PDF export? Ordering pages in a space doesn't really make sense, as we provide alphabetical view, recently updated and a page tree. From what I've gathered with the comments, most people are referring to PDF export.

What sort of ordering would be necessary?

Alphabetical (within hierarchy)
Modification Date
Creation Date

Any others?


Thomas Van de Velde added a comment - 12/Jan/06 12:57 AM
Ordering is not just important for PDF but also for wiki pages. When I have a book page with several chapter pages underneath, I want to list those chapters in a fixed order when I print them with the {children} macro on the book page. There are many other usecases where this is important:

{scrollbar}, {pagetree}. We use the {pagetree} macro to add navigation on the left side. However, we cannot control the order of the navigation items (unless you do ugly prefixing, which as explained previously has serious drawbacks). If you use {scrollbar} for a tutorial, you want to make sure that the order of your pages is correct, again avoiding the prefix hack.

I believe the fix should be generic enough so that it applies to both PDF, spaces and html export.


Sean Semone added a comment - 14/Jan/06 12:23 PM
I'd really like to be able order pages in a arbitrary order with an up arrow / down arrow next to each page, or maybe something a la the method I used to order my netflix.com queue, where I have a listing of all the objets and a int filed next to each in which I enter a number as to the order I want them to appear.

Anders Sveen added a comment - 24/Apr/06 06:35 AM
Manual ordering is what I'm looking for. If you're producing documentation you need to order it by the logical flow, not some sort of attribute.

I'm also missing some options that could be toggled for PDF export like:

  • Show last change
  • Show "Document created" info
  • Number headings and documents

And probably heaps of other stuff I havn't thought of yet.


Jason Pouflis added a comment - 21/Jun/06 05:58 AM
My internal clients want to be able to list child pages in a specific order, to make readability easier.
I want to leverage existing macros such as child and pagetree to reduce the cost of maintenance.

For example, using pagetree in a left navigation bar, but with section in the order as per client's desire.
Besides the numeric prefix hack listed above, another workaround is to use pagetree sorted by modified date.

{pagetree:sort=modified}

This is useful when migrating content manually in order.

The sequence specified should applicable to child, pagetree, and exported pdfs.

The following Use Cases assume that the relationship between pages is heirarchical,
in that each page has only one parent. It is assumed that a sequence number, starting
from 1, is stored against each child page (whether implemented in the parent or child).
I haven't looked at the internals of implementation.

Use Cases

  • Adding a page
    A new page is added as the child of a parent.
    If the parent has no other children, it is given the sequence number 1.
    If the parent has other children, it is listed at the end of child pages,
    it is given the sequence number equal to the highest sequence number + 1.
  • Removing a page
    A page is moved to the trash.
    Other children of the parent page with a higher sequence number,
    have their sequence number reduced by 1.
    The pages sequence number is forgotten.
  • Restoring a page
    A page is restored from the trash. (which is not an undo operation)
    Same as for Adding a page.
  • Moving a page to another parent
    This is similar to a combination of the steps for removing and adding a page.
    Other children of the losing parent page with a higher sequence number,
    have their sequence number reduced by 1.
    If the gaining parent has no other children, it is given the sequence number 1.
    If the gaining parent has other children, it is listed at the end of child pages,
    it is given the sequence number equal to the highest sequence number + 1.
  • Reordering a page
    A page with an old sequence number,
    is given a new sequence number between 1 and the count of its parent's child pages.

If the old sequence number is less than the new sequence number,
pages with a sequence number higher than the old sequence number
and equal to the new sequence number are are decreased by 1.

If the new sequence number is less than the old sequence number,
pages with a sequence number higher than this new sequence number
and equal to the new sequence number are are increased by 1.

! Other Advantages
If stored against each page, this sequence number could be exposed,
allowing plug ins to optionally show this number, which would be useful
in circumstances where you want to show the sequence number of the current page,
and perhaps even the sequence number of the parent page. Examples are,
printed matter, on line tutorials and guides.

Hope this helps !


Anthony Dyson added a comment - 28/Jun/06 09:34 AM
I wish to support this request. Jason Pouflis's comment (above) describes the requirements I have perfectly.

For those wanting to use Confluence primarily as a documentation tool, i.e. to build a structured documentation system, manual, electronic book, or similar, this requirement is a must-have. It simply must be possible to define the order of the "chapters" arbitrarily, whilst retaining automatic generation of table of contents, and without having to resort to manually defined chapter or section numbers.

Anthony Dyson

PS Hey site administrators, how about removing the mail cascade currently occupying most of this comments block?!


Ville Valtasaari added a comment - 29/Aug/06 07:39 AM
This issue may prove to be a showstopper for my organisation.

It would be a good thing to have it assigned and scheduled.

Ville Valtasaari


Sean Kennedy added a comment - 21/Sep/06 09:48 AM
Our space home pages almost always have a children macro as a table of contents. I support this issue because I'd like to be able to order how the children are displayed.

Dan Carver added a comment - 20/Nov/06 03:10 PM
Everyone here who spends any time working with Confluence has requested this feature. It would make self - assembling documents a slam dunk. A simple move it up / move it down interface would do just fine here.

Volker Kleinschmidt added a comment - 05/Dec/06 11:41 AM
Indeed, specifying an ordering for child pages is crucial in any sort of documentation work, be it for print or just for navigable online documentation. Not everyone reads online documents by jumping around via hyprelinks, for many readers the structure we provide via page organization is a crucial help to finding content and reading it in a logical and natural order. A Wiki that allows for structure in addition to the unsorted ocean of keywords and the confusing mesh of links has a big usability advantage.

Bump. bump. bump.


Aristedes Maniatis added a comment - 01/Feb/07 04:20 AM
Another me too. This is pretty important and can be done easily enough: assign a weight to each page. Pages are then sorted first by weight (heavier pages sink to the bottom) and then alphabetically if two pages have the same weight. This might be easier to implement then numbering each page with a unique sort order: inserting a page in the middle would then require lots of renumbering.

Billy Newport added a comment - 06/Feb/07 03:36 PM
When is this going to get fixed. This is a major issue with the product and basically makes it unusable for documentation.

Sean Semone added a comment - 06/Feb/07 03:55 PM
I'm still rooting for this, too. FWIW I do note that it is #4 on the list of most popular issue. It isn't though yet on the roadmap, but at least it is filtering to the top.

Greg Miller added a comment - 22/Mar/07 01:36 AM
Being able to order how the Children are displayed is critical! I was trying to figure out how to change the default order from alphabetical and couldn't believe the sort order can't be change. We need to be able to set a "logical order" for our pages - not just ordered alphabetically. PLEASE FIX THIS.

Milt Taylor added a comment - 27/Mar/07 03:46 AM
Am currently looking into Confluence ... using another wiki right now. This issue is one of the major things missing from this product in order for us to jump ship. (Not that our current wiki can do this, but I don't have a good enough reason to change yet,).

Martin Skopp added a comment - 28/Mar/07 04:01 AM
Milt Taylor wrote:
> This issue [..] are the major things missing from this product in order for us to jump ship

Hey Atlassian, with other words, this feature will be paid at least partially since you gain a new customer

Milt, there is a {toc} (table of content) macro (at least as a plugin) available plus another which lists a child-document-tree. So TOC should not be a problem.


Rab Tait added a comment - 28/Mar/07 09:06 AM
Was hoping to use Confluence for collaborative authoring of documentation set, exporting the space to HTML and then converting that to .chm in a Help Development Kit. Absolutely out of the question until I can order and insert pages at will within a level. My appraisal of Confluence stops here. Pity.

Aaron Powers added a comment - 04/Apr/07 08:53 AM
I agree – this would be incredibly useful.
I very nearly persuaded our company to buy Confluence based around the MS Word import tool and being able to re-export back to PDF – but the PDF export is not useful for a printed manual because it's completely out of order.
If the reordering of pages work, this can become a substitute for manual writing... Is there any estimate of when we might have it?

Hans Noemmer added a comment - 10/Apr/07 07:24 AM
My company bought a confluence license to use it as a documentation wiki. The pdf export was one of the key issues to decide for this product. Unfortunately, because of the missing page ordering, we cannot use it to create documentation pdf files. We really need this feature.

Pete Miller added a comment - 10/Apr/07 06:33 PM
This issue is over 3 years old. It is a frequently requested feature. It is over a year since any comment by Atlassian, and that was off the mark. Could we have some commentary here on why this is difficult? Or, if it's not, then why it has not been implemented yet? It would be nice to just have some feedback.

Chad Williams added a comment - 18/Apr/07 01:50 AM
Also evaluating Confluence - this request is really important for my criteria too. What is more concerning is the lack of response from Atlassian...

Charles Miller [old account, do not assign issues] added a comment - 18/Apr/07 03:06 AM
In general, if an issue has a lot of votes, has not been closed as "won't fix" or "invalid", and doesn't have a comment from someone at Atlassian explaining why we don't want to do it, you can assume that it's something we are interested in implementing at some stage.

We generally don't comment on our feature schedule beyond the next few releases because historically our roadmap has been so volatile, we'd annoy far more people by promising one thing and delivering another than we do right now by not promising anything. There's a reasonably accurate screed about how we choose what to implement, and how to influence the process here:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DEV/Implementation+of+New+Features+and+Improvements

Ordering pages is a reasonably non-trivial feature. Between the issues of interaction with exporting, various macros, and having a user interface for re-ordering pages that isn't painful to use, there's a fair chunk of work involved. As such, the feature has to compete with a lot of other frequently requested but non-trivial features for developer time.

All I can say now is that we're currently focusing development on highly voted-for features.