Creating Sub space within a Parent Space
Asked by TJ Shanahan:

Hi All,

I'm trying to create a parent space then within that space we would have 5-10 other sub spaces. I'm not sure if that is possible from what I was reading on conflunce but wanted to see.

Basically how the structure would work is we would have 5 Parent spaces (IT, Marketing, Sales, Corp..ect) Then within IT it would be (IT groups like 5 other groups) and within Marketing would be marketing groups.

Our goal is just to organize our Confluence page.

I was wondering if that was possible and if not is there an App we would be able to use? Becuase right now we have 70 spaces and it is just a lot of spaces to look through.

Thanks,

TJ


Answers:
author: Branno
body: Howdy TJ!

In addition to the SubSpace Plugin linked by Davin, you could also consider [Using Labels to Categorize Spaces](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Using+Labels+to+Categorise+Spaces). This will allow you to have individual spaces, but to have a larger grouping of those spaces. We use something very similar to this for our [knowledge base](http://confluence.atlassian.com).

Cheers,

Stephen Brannen \| Confluence Support


author: Davin Studer
body: Why do you want to have spaces within spaces? Is there are reason you cannot just Have for instance and IT space and then the separate groups in IT would have top level navigation pages for them with view restrictions set to limit them to only the people in those groups?

comments: author: Davin Studer
body: There is the [SupSpace Plugin](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/de.communardo.confluence.plugins.subspace) in the marketplace. Not sure if this is what you are trying to accomplish.


author: Ritu Sachdeva
body: Reviving this discussion. We are using Confluence Cloud.

We are creating a spacce and within that 3 forums of content. I want to set up "watch" notifications for only one forum and not the others.

Therefore, one solution is to create one overall space and each forum can be a sub space in it. That way, I can control what I get email notifications for.

Any other way to watch just one forum and get updates on any topics added to it?

comments: author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: As above, Confluence does not do this natively, you'll need to look at add-ons such as Sub Space and Advanced notifications


author: Marino
body: pretty bad that something so simple has to be bought for a monthly fee from another vendor. This should be totally implemented by Atlassian and it should be native to confluence


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Most people don't need or want it, so it's not going to go into the core product.


author: Marino
body: That is such a vague excuse. Thank goodness not everybody develops software like that, otherwise the industry would be doomed


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Well, successful developers certainly develop that way. If you don't, you end up wasting time building things people don't need or want, and hence don't buy.

There are a handful of requests for sub-spaces in Atlassian's Jira. Assuming I'm reading the right ones, they've been closed with "not going to do this, due to lack of interest"


author: Marino
body: Successful companies develop with their client base in mind. If there is a need and the cost to develop is low, let's do it.

The reason why there is a handful of request, maybe it is because when people search for it, they see that since 2016 they had no interest in doing it.

If the demand was low, there would be no business case for a third party to develop a paid plugin to it.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Yes, correct, that's what I said. I'm not sure what you are not understanding - they looked at the interest in it, and decided it was too low to be worth doing.

To be fair, there are other factors - the general direction and usefulness of Confluence in the product owners eyes may have helped push it down the list, and the swathes of other requests that have massively more people interested in them will tend to take a priority. But the core answer is the same - there's not enough interest to make it worth their time.


author: Pratik
body: Okay so now in Sept 2019, do we have sub-spaces present or not?


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: No change, still no significant number of clients asking for them.


author: Pratik
body: Okay, thanks !


author: Glynis Bost
body: My reason for needing subspaces is because each subspace limits search results to the content in that subspace only. I have a space with a specific knowledge base for staff, and this is further broken up into a dozen subspaces, each of which has content specific to a product range. Agents supporting customers cannot see search results that span the entire top-level space as this would create confusion, irrelevant search results, potentially incorrect messaging, and time delays.  

Someone said labelling would achieve the same result, but subspaces just seem like a safer bet imo -- everything is more visible to admins, and easier to maintain. It also helps with access permissions, because everything can be managed at space level.


author: Eric Henderson
body: I need subspaces!!!


author: Davin Studer
body: [@Glynis Bost](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2011596) A better way to do the search instead of labeling would be to use the "Page Tree Search" macro. Place one of those on each parent page in your space. That search box will only search pages that are descendants (children, grand-children, etc.) of the page the macro is on. This is much more efficient than doing it with labels.


Tags: subspace