What is a Space?

Spaces are Confluence's way of organizing content into meaningful categories. You can think of each Space as an individual collaboration site for you and your team. In some cases, you might want individual spaces for certain projects or committees within a team, and in other cases you might need just one large space for your entire team, department, or even your school. There are many ways to organize content in Confluence, so you will want to make sure you understand these concepts as we work with you to create spaces to fit your specific needs.

Spaces come in two main varieties:

Site spaces – These spaces are found in the Space Directory and are the areas where you create content and collaborate with others. They are sometimes called global spaces. Site Spaces are created by the Academic Services team and can be administered by a group of users specified by the person requesting the Space.
Personal spaces – Every Confluence user can set up a personal space which they can keep private or make public so others can view and edit. Personal spaces are listed in the People Directory and found under your personal profile. To create a Personal Space, you can click the Personal Settings icon in the top right of your screen and select "Create Personal Space". Once you've created your Personal Space, you can access it by clicking the Personal Settings icon and selecting "Personal Space".

How do I use a Space?

Some examples of how spaces are used:

Team spaces – Give each team (QA, HR, Engineering, Support, ...) their own space so they can focus and make their information easier for everyone to find.
Project spaces – Put all the information related to your project in one place. This allows everyone to work together in Confluence instead of emailing back and forth.
Personal space – Store everything you're working on individually, keep your to-do lists, and polish any content before you move it into another shared space.

Confluence content structure

Stay up to date with spaces

Administer spaces

If you have admin permissions for a space you can:

Space Permissions

Some things we should make clear about space admin permissions:

The person who creates a space automatically has admin permissions for that space.
Space admins can grant admin permissions to others.
Space admins don't have to be Confluence admins and can have special permissions for a single space. For example, you are the admin for your personal space, no matter what kind of access you have anywhere else.

Search Confluence Documentation

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How Spaces are Arranged

Think of a space as the container that holds all the important stuff a team, group, or project needs to work. These are autonomous – that means that each space has its own pages, blogs, files, comments and RSS feeds.

Each space is automatically created with a homepage - the first page you'll see when you navigate to the space. You can edit your homepage and your sidebar to help people navigate their way around your space.

Spaces can't be nested – you can't have a space within a space – but you can Use Labels to Categorize Spaces. Spaces with the same label will appear together in the the space directory and in the recent activity area of the dashboard.

Inside the space, you can nest your pages, and you can create as many levels of hierarchy as you need. Each space also has its own blog, which lets you share news and make announcements. Blog posts are a great way to keep people involved in what's going on in your team or project.

You can set different levels of access for each space, and the pages and blogs within it, using Space Permissions.

View all spaces in Confluence

There are two main ways to view spaces in Confluence:

The space directory – choose Spaces > Space directory in the Confluence header for a list of all the site and personal spaces you have permission to see. Filter the list of spaces by selecting from the categories on the left of the space directory.
The dashboard – you can make your most useful spaces appear under My spaces on the dashboard. Choose the star icon in the space sidebar or space directory to add a space to My spaces.

The spaces menu in the header also displays a list of your recently viewed spaces, allowing you to quickly navigate to the things you view most often.

The Spaces List Macro allows you to display a list of spaces on a Confluence page, and lets you filter them by category.

Understanding Spaces