Set up your brand
The single highest-value thing an administrator can do here is set the brand guidelines once. Every macro's colour control then starts from your colours rather than ours.
It is also the cheapest way to stop pages looking like six people built them, because it works by default rather than by instruction.
#Where to set it
As a Confluence site administrator, open the app from Apps in the Confluence top bar and choose Global settings under Manage in the sidebar. The Brand guidelines tab holds your themes. The same settings are also on the Formatting tab of Capable's settings in Confluence administration.
#What to set
Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
Brand colours | The five colour roles every macro's colour control offers |
Corners | How rounded macro corners are, everywhere |
Shadow | The default shadow depth |
Spacing | Default padding inside macros |
Alignment | The default alignment |
Allow colour picker | Whether authors can pick freeform colours or only your brand roles. In the settings this switch is labelled Allow custom colours. |
#The five colour roles
Colours are chosen by role rather than by value, which is what lets one choice work across macros that look nothing alike.
Background: the surface a macro sits on.
Text on background: what must stay readable against it.
Surface: a raised area inside a macro, such as a card.
Text: what must stay readable on that surface.
Accent: the emphasis colour, used for buttons, progress fills and highlights.
Turning off the colour picker is a real decision. It stops authors choosing freeform colours, which enforces consistency and will annoy anybody who wanted a one-off. Decide it deliberately.
#Then add presets
Once the brand is right, save macro presets for the configurations your teams use repeatedly. You can save up to ten per macro, across twenty supported macros, and you build each one in the same form you use to set up the macro itself.
If your teams use the Status badge macro, add your organisation's status sets on the Status badges tab too, so everyone picks from the same statuses.
#A few things worth knowing
Brand guidelines are per theme, so check both light and dark before you call it done.
Changing the brand later updates macros that use brand roles, and leaves freeform colours alone.
This is site-wide and needs a Confluence site administrator. Space administrators do not see Global settings.
The tab shows a loading placeholder until it has read the latest settings, so you never edit on top of another administrator's older copy. If it says Could not load macro branding., click Retry.
#Related
Twenty minutes. Every page benefits.
