Global Navigation Menu (Cross-Space Access)
System
Confluence Cloud
Short description
Enable all employees to access knowledge scattered across different Confluence spaces within the same company instance through a single, centrally managed global navigation menu, without requiring them to know which space holds the information they need.
Challenge
Large organizations have many Confluence spaces like IT, Legal, HR, Finance, Operations, and Product. Employees often don't know which space contains the needed info, leading to wasted time, duplicate knowledge, and reliance on colleagues to find things.
Confluence navigation is space-focused, requiring users to know which space to access. Without a unified company-wide navigation, cross-department knowledge discovery is slow and inconsistent.
Actors
-
🌐 Taylor – IT Admin
-
📋 Ingrid – Operations Manager
-
🧑💼 Daniel – New Employee (Onboarding)
Actors Goals
-
Taylor wants to build and maintain a centralized, company-wide navigation menu that any employee can use to find relevant content regardless of which space it lives in, without restructuring existing spaces.
-
Ingrid needs to quickly locate company policies, process documentation, and cross-departmental guidelines without having to browse through dozens of spaces.
-
Daniel wants a simple, structured starting point to understand the company's knowledge landscape and find onboarding resources across HR, IT, and Finance spaces from day one.
Use Case Scenario (step-by-step)
-
The company uses multiple Confluence spaces, each owned by a different team with its own page structure.
-
Taylor installs SubSpace Navigation for Confluence Cloud from the Atlassian Marketplace and accesses the configuration settings via the Confluence administration panel.
-
Taylor creates a Global Navigation Menu that serves as the company-wide entry point, organizing top-level items such as: Company Policies, IT & Tools, People & HR, Finance & Legal, and Corporate News.
-
Ingrid opens Confluence and immediately sees the global navigation bar. She clicks "People & HR" and navigates directly to the Leave Policy page in the HR space.
-
Daniel, as a new employee, uses the global menu's "Company Policies" and "IT & Tools" folders to access IT setup guides, HR welcome materials, and Finance expense policies — all in one structured place.
Outcome
-
All employees gain a single, intuitive entry point to company knowledge — no more "which space is this in?" friction.
-
Taylor maintains navigation centrally without restructuring any existing Confluence space.
-
Ingrid and other operational staff find cross-departmental documentation more quickly, reducing reliance on colleagues.
-
Daniel's onboarding experience improves significantly: structured knowledge discovery from day one.
-
Space ownership remains with individual teams while the global navigation provides a unified company-wide lens.
Implementation Details
-
Install SubSpace Navigation for Confluence Cloud from the Atlassian Marketplace.
-
Access Menu Configuration via Confluence Admin Settings → SubSpace Navigation.
-
Create a new Menu and define top-level folder items that reflect the company’s knowledge domains.
-
Add Internal Link items pointing to key pages across multiple spaces; add Space items with space logos for major departments.