Hierarchical topics with Smart Questions and Answers for Confluence Cloud

Owned by Andreas Purde
Last updated: Nov 06, 2021
3 min read

Scope and basic understanding

This page explains how to set up a hierarchical topic tree with Smart Questions and Answers like the following example:

  • Development questions

    • Hardware related questions

    • Software related questions

      • Java questions

      • C# questions

Development questions is the parent topic the child topics Hardware related questions and Software related questions. Software related questions again has two child topics.

We think a hierarchical topic should be characterized as follows:

  • A user on the topic page Development questions should see all development questions. A user on the topic page Software related questions should see all software related questions and a user on the topic page Java questions should only see the Java related questions.

  • When a user creates a new question on the topic page Development questions he/she must select any of the lowest level topics, in our example: Hardware related questions, Java questions or C# questions. A higher level topic should not host any questions directly.

In case this matches your understanding keep on reading.

Setup of a hierarchical topic tree

The setup of a hierarchical topic tree is quite simple. Just setup the Confluence page structure like your tree and embed the Smart QA Overview macro on each topic page. In the example above you would need to create 5 pages all holding the Smart QA Overview macro.

Examples of the look and feel

a hierarchical topic is shown as follows:

The topic to which a question belongs to is indicated like a label but with light blue background (here C# questions):

 

In case you raise a question on a parent (ancestor) topic you have to select a topic which will host the question (here Java questions):

 

Other things to know

Notification channels

All notification channels defined on the topic holding the question itself and all notification channels on ancestors topics are applied. In our example this would mean that for a question raised in Java questions the notification channels of Java questions, Software related questions and Development questions are triggered. However only the message templates of the holding topic are used - in our example the templates defined in the Smart QA Overview macro on the page Java questions.

Please note that only the “General notification by mail” of the topic holding the question are used.