How to Create A Product Requirements Template In Confluence

  • Last Updated: December 7, 2021
Product Guy
Product Guy
Held senior product management and technology positions across a range of companies and industries. Have the scars to prove it.
Create A Product Requirements Template In Confluence
Create A Product Requirements Template In Confluence

While previously we’ve shown you how to create a template in Confluence, we thought knowing how to create a product requirements template in Confluence might serve you you well.

You might decide to do this if you find that the existing product roadmap blueprint in Confluence doesn’t serve your needs or you are attempting to get out of doing work for an afternoon.  Motivations aside, we are going to step through the process together.

Step 1: Where Do I Go To Create A Template In Confluence

Confluence Product Requirements
What you see when you dive into Confluence. Click the create button to set Confluence up for product requirements gathering.
Click the create new template button
Click the "Create New Template Button".

Step 2: Work Da Template Editor

Following the two steps above brings you to what should be the template editor.  Your view should be similar to the screen below.

Create product requirements template Confluence - a step by step guide
The Confluence template editor in all of its glory!
First up, let’s add some page properties to the template. This is where we can track some basic information related to the requirements document. Do this by hitting the dropdown highlighted by the red box below and typing the phrase “page properties” into the search box that appears.
how to create a template in Confluence
Add page properties to your product requirements document template.

Next up, add some space to capture key details, by adding a 2 column table to the Page Properties area.  The image below shows the Table menu item in the red box.  Make sure the cursor is in the Page Properties area when you click on this.

how to create a template in Confluence
Click the Table icon in the menu to insert a table into the page properties.

Now that you have inserted the table, let’s edit it so the user can capture some key details for the product requirements document.  Notice we are making use of the placeholder text functionality to add instructions to the document user.

product requirement template creation
Remember to use placeholder text so people know what to make of your document creation brilliance.

Notice in the image below, we have flushed out some details for this for the top section and added a section title “Details”.   I also have a habit of saving my work as I progress through it (although it probably autosaves) by clicking the “Save” button (red box).

The purpose of this section is to capture key high level details at the top of the page for easy reference.

template creation
Made use of a lot of placeholder text.
Next up, I am going to add an “Objectives” section to the product requirements document with a combination of tables and placeholder text. The objectives section give you a chance to add color/context to your requirement. I make the first column of the table gray by making use of the header column option you see in the screenshot below.
Creating a product template
Shade the header row or column using table options.
Product requirement document template - objectives
Added objectives to the document template

Now lets finish the process to create a product requirements template on Confluence by adding the following sections

  • Release
  • Features: List out your user stories, along with description, that drive your feature development.
  • Not doing
  • User flow and design
  • Analytics:  Remember everything we told you about product management and user metrics.
  • Future work
  • Questions: As the team progresses in their understanding of the problem to solve, questions arise. Create a table to track these items

Step 3: Use The Confluence Product Requirements Template You Just Made

As we have discussed elsewhere, there are two ways to deploy a document template, either via the “Create” button or the “Templates” menu item.  In the next few screenshots, we will show you how it looks when we use our Confluence product requirements template as the basis of a document.

product requirement template
Use the template browser to find our Super Duper Product requirements template.
preview product requirement template
Use the preview functionality to view what our document will look like.
Create A Product Requirements Template In Confluence
When you create a document from the product requirements template, you will notice the placeholder text remains visible.
template
When you publish the document, the placeholder text is not visible to the readers.

So now you know how to make your own product requirements template in Confluence. The reality is that it should probably take you about 1/5 as long as it took me, unless of course you insist on documenting all of your steps and then posting it on your blog 😉

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