This is how you administer the Navigation Menu Editor
The Navigation Menu Editor configuration contains three tabs: "Settings", "Structure" and "Help".
Settings
Display options
Activate the option Display navigation in header to integrate your menu automatically below the Confluence application header.
In addition to a classic dropdown layout you can display the navigation in a multi-column flyout style. Menu items under second-level categories will then show up on a large panel like Amazon's or eBay's navigation.
You can choose to show the menu to not logged in users if your Confluence instance is accessible by anonymous users.
Attributes for user restriction
Choose up to three user profile fields to create a menu based on a user's profile. Click on the Assign menu button to assign field values to any menu entries. If you allow anonymous users to view the menu, they will only be shown menu items without assigned field values.
Using our Custom User Profile, you can greatly extend the range of available profile fields (including fields that are maintained in a LDAP/AD).
Menu editors
Configure which users or user groups are allowed to edit the menu structure. They will be shown a configuration "gear wheel" link at the right side of the menu.
Unlock menu
If a user starts editing the navigation structure, nobody else can access this view. It gets locked the editor logs out nor his session expired (Please be aware that if your admin session expires, you are not able to save your menu. The Confluence default admin session expire time is set to 10 minutes). Confluence administrators can always unlock the editor view, but they should keep in mind that unlocking the navigation edit view might cause the loss of changes made by an currently active editor.
Structure
Entry types
- Category item: To separate a simple menu item list with a specific wrapper you can use a category item.
- (Main) Menu item: Normal menu entries which will be displayed as list entries with a link to the target page or URL. You can leave the link field blank to create a 'dummy' item. (See Adding Confluence links and external ones)
- Separator item: To separate groups of different menu items you can use a separator line.
Moving menu entries
Move the menu items by Drag'n'Drop or use the buttons in each row to change the order or depth.
Open link in a new window
You can configure if a link is opened in a new window by checking the box.
Display navigation entries based on user values (Assign menu)
If you have configured filtering attributes in the settings view, you can switch to the "Assign menu" tab and define profile field values for each menu item. The item will only be shown to users when their profile matches the entered values.
To preview the menu structure for certain attributes, you can enter arbitrary values under "Filter menu by defined attributes" as described above. The menu structure will get updated as you type. For ease of use, the input fields offer auto-completion for any values you have already entered in the menu structure.
Use the wildcards and logical operators to create even more complex filters based on Confluence user values (See Wildcards and logical operators).
Filter menu by defined attributes
You can set up filters on the right panel to hide navigation items you are not interested at the moment. These filters only affect the edit structure view.
Please note our filter constraints
Preview your navigation structure
To see a preview of your navigation structure simply click on the preview button in the right panel. You can also use the filter boxes to simulate a Confluence user's profile values to see how your navigation structure would be displayed for this user.
The preview only works for the most recently saved navigation structure, not necessarily for the one you currently see. To see an up-to-date preview, you have to save the menu structure (you don't need to publish it).
Drafting vs. Publishing
By clicking on "Save changes" a draft version of the menu is saved for further editing or publishing. Drafts are not visible to end users until they are published. By clicking on "Publish menu" the current menu is saved to a new version and is visible to end users. By clicking "Cancel editing" no saving takes place and the menu will be reset to the last saved version. All these three buttons are only clickable when any changes were done on the menu.
If an unpublished manu draft exists any other editor opening the menu structure screen will see a warning message that there are unpublished changes. In this message the last user who saved the draft is mentioned along with the saving date and time.
All published versions are marked in the history with a small icon.
History
See Backup of menus
Help
Provides further Information about the usage of the Navigation Menu Editor.
Others
Adding Confluence links and external ones
The field for adding links has an auto completion for confluence spaces and pages. Permission will be respected, so if a user has no permission to view a page, the link won't be shown. If you paste a confluence link by hand, the plugin will resolve this link and build a readable entry as if you added it by auto completion. This only works, if your configured base URL matches the pasted URL. Please be aware, that this is necessary for checking content permissions for the user!
You can also add external links, which will not be checked by the Navigation Menu Editor. So make sure they work and are available from your Confluence.
Filter constraints
Due to the "Wildcards and logical operators" it is not possible to use key words in filter attributes. As a workaround, replace the key words with the same number of "?" signs.
These keys are case sensitive, so "And" or "and" would not match.
| Filter Attribute | Workaround | Keyword |
|---|---|---|
| New York (State) | New York ?State? | ( ) |
| HR AND QS | HR ??? QS | AND |
| NOT for everybody | ??? for everybody | NOT |
| This OR That | This ?? That | OR |
Wildcards and logical operators
In the past, you have already been able to assign menu items to specific profile field values. Now you can also use wildcards in addition to exact values. Using logical operators (AND, OR, NOT) you can also create more complex filters, e.g., to show a menu item to all users that don't have selected English as their Confluence language ("NOT en*").
| Wildcard / Operator | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| blank | matches any value | |
| ? | matches a single character | C?O matches CEO and CTO , but not C3PO |
| * | matches 0 or more characters | en* matches en , en_GB , en_US, but not de_DE or men |
| OR | Logical 'or' operator | en_GB OR fr_FR matches en_GB and fr_FR , but not de_DE |
| AND | Logical 'and' operator | en* AND *GB matches all values that start with en and end with GB |
| NOT | Logical 'not' operator | en* AND NOT en_US matches all values that start with en except en_US |
Backup of menus
The Navigation Menu Editor offers a backup functionality to track saved versions and restore any older version. Every time you save a menu structure, a backup will be created. You can list all created backups by clicking on the history button on the controls panel. Click on any history entry to restore a specific backup to the edit form. Please note that you still need to save the restored backup.
The history has a limit to reduce database usage. When the number of backups reaches 100, a pruning mechanism is triggered that will keep at most 100 published backups as well as all unpublished drafts since the second to last published version.
Insert menu
Add the menu macro at the desired position (e.g., after the page header) as shown in the following code snippet:
$helper.renderConfluenceMacro("{display-menu}")
In the newer Confluence versions the usage of this snippet will lead to warning logs from the velocity templates. These logs can be ignored because the rendering still works fine. But to be prepared for removal of the old confluence wiki markup you have to implement a custom helper, which has to render the macro in the following new storage format:
<ac:macro ac:name="display-menu"/>
Displayed entries
- the target is an external URL or
- the target Confluence page exists.
Installation
The Navigation Menu Editor can be installed via the Atlassian Marketplace (Administration > Find new add-ons).
Please make sure you've also got the LinchpinConnector in version 1.1.2 or newer after the installation.