How to create a static archive/snapshot of a Page Properties Report
Asked by Vanessa Scott:

Hi everyone,

I am using the Page Properties and Page Properties Report macro together to create a summary report of the status of our initiatives. Our leadership team will look at this report once a week.   

They are happy with the report but now they are asking for a way to see the history of this report - so for example they could look back a week or two ago and see what the status or updates of the various initiatives was then.  

I have been trying things like making a copy, exporting to other formats, manually copying the content but nothing seems to work to create a "snapshot" of the report for a week and then "archive it".  

I am probably missing something obvious here but would appreciate some help. Hopefully my use case is clear. I will write it out again to make it clearer hopefully:

1. A "report" exists in the form of a Confluence page with the Page Properties Report in a specific Space.  
2. This "report" shows "status update" tables from multiple other pages.   
3. Every Friday our Product leadership team will view this "report" to see what the updates are across various initiatives. These updates are done by the PMs on the respective initiative pages in a table that is inside of the Page Properties macro. They do not touch the "report" page.   
4. The leadership team is happy to see this "bubbled up" report but occasionally they will want to look back and see what the update was for certain initiatives a few weeks ago.   

   <br />

   My question to you experts is: How do I do number 4?   

   Thank you!


Answers:
author: Andy Gladstone
body: [@Vanessa Scott](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5105548) natively in Confluence you cannot. There may be some Marketplace Apps that provide the functionality but I am not familiar with them. The only idea that comes to mind is perhaps looking at the page history and seeing if the older version of the Page Properties Report is burned in. I have not tried it, but my gut tells me it wont be the droids we are looking for b/c Page Properties Report is a view of data and not data itself. So the history of the page is not tied to specific edits in the report, only edits of text or other elements on the same page.   

comments: author: Vanessa Scott
body: Thank you!


author: Aron Gombas _Midori_
body: [@Vanessa Scott](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5105548) A dead-simple thing that could work is creating a PDF export of the "report" page every week and saving that somewhere. You could even attach the export to the actual report page, using a timestamp in the PDF filename.

Not very elegant, but could work.

comments: author: Vanessa Scott
body: Yes thanks Aron I tested that out already (and the Word export) but because of the size of the table in the macro the content in the PDF/Word doc was truncated.   

We have figured out another option which requires one manual copy and paste step.  

Thanks!


author: Aron Gombas _Midori_
body: Have you tried to "print to PDF" using the browser's "Print" feature and select "A0" as page size? (Those pages are huge in size.)


author: Vanessa Scott
body: Oh good question - no I didn't. I used the Export to PDF feature. Good to know that the browser print would work better. I do think that we have a solution now but I can keep this in my back pocket. Thanks. :)


author: Catriona Wright
body: Hi Vanessa.

I'd like to do the same, ideally without having to pay for another feature. Would you mind sharing how you did it please?

Thanks!


author: Vanessa Scott
body: Hi Catriona! We totally moved away from this months and months ago so it is a bit hard for me to remember but our solution ended up being a manual process I am afraid.  

The PMs each were asked to manual copy and paste their status from last week into a table below/outside of the macro and then only their currently weekly status was put within the macro that was pulled into the main page.   

We deleted all of these pages so I can't even share a screenshot but hopefully this makes sense?


author: Catriona Wright
body: Thanks! That's pretty much what we've settled on too. Just wanted to check I wasn't missing anything clever! :-)


author: Mark Eskandar
body: Hi [@Vanessa Scott](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5105548),

We recently added support for the features you are asking for to [Comala Publishing](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/143/comala-publishing?hosting=cloud&tab=overview). We call the ability to capture a static version of a page 'Snapshot Publishing'. This supports the most commonly used Confluence macros, such as Jira and other dynamically generated content.

Snapshots are organized into Collections (another new feature) for ease of use. Collections support both a one-to-many and many-to-one relationship with Snapshots.

Currently, this functionality is only available for Data Center, however we are evaluating the potential for adding this to Comala Publishing Cloud as well. If you think this is something you could make use of, please let us know!

Regards,

Mark Eskandar  
Director, Product Management at Appfire


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud