The News module in Optics improves internal communication by turning standard Confluence blogs into structured, visually engaging news overviews. It helps increase the visibility and impact of updates across the organization.

This module works only with Confluence blog posts. It is not compatible with standard Confluence pages.

By presenting content in a clean and appealing format, the News module ensures important information are easy to find and hard to miss, making it simpler for teams to stay informed and connected.

Insert News

Follow these steps to insert a News module to your Confluence page:

Open the page you want to edit, or create a new one.
In edit mode, click the ‘+' icon in the toolbar or press '/' on your keyboard to open the module menu.
Type "News" or "Optics" in the search bar and select "Cards (by Optics)" or "Optics" from the list to open a configuration dialogue.
In the configuration dialog, choose a News template and customize it using the live preview. The available customization options depend on the template you choose.
Once you're happy with the setup, click Add to page to insert the module. To cancel, simply click Cancel, and the module won’t be added.

Configuration

When the News module dialog opens, a live preview displays the latest blogs from the Confluence instance, ready to be customized to fit the intended use case.

Start with templates

Creating News start with choosing a template: Magazine, Card, List and Short List. Each one is crafted by our design experts to help you build outstanding, consistent content in Confluence. We’re continuously adding new templates to keep your pages fresh and visually engaging.

News background image

For each news item displayed, the background image is automatically set to the page's header image, ensuring a cohesive and relevant visual experience.

On pages where a specific page lacks a header image, the app selects and displays a random image from Unsplash. This fallback mechanism guarantees that every news card remains visually attractive and engaging, enhancing the overall user experience by maintaining a consistent and appealing aesthetic across all news content.

Layout

The Layout tab defines how news is presented, offering options to control how all news items appear within the module. Available options may vary depending on the selected template.

Display Options

In the Display section, there is an option to configure pagination. Available pagination types include Show More, Previous/Next, and None. The Per Page setting is available for all templates except Magazine, which does not support this option.

Flexible display elements

News module can be customized by enabling or disabling elements such as Author, Space, Date, Label, and Description. This allows flexible presentation of news content, adapting the appearance to various communication goals or visual styles.

Styling

Styling options include corner radius and label color. Available styling options are defined in the Optics Style Guide to maintain consistency across all formatting modules.

Content

The Content tab defines the source of the news and controls which content is displayed. Content can be configured in two ways: Dynamic or Manual.

Dynamic

By applying filters, the widget automatically updates to display newly published content that matches the defined criteria. This ensures the news feed stays current without requiring manual updates. Content can be filtered by labels, spaces, and creators, allowing precise control over what is shown.

Manual

This method enables manual selection of specific blog posts for display. It offers greater control over the content shown but requires manual updates to include new posts, making it a more curated and less automated approach.

Group News in tabs

Tabs in the News module help organize related content in a clean, structured layout within a single module. Instead of creating multiple separate News modules for different topics, tabs allow grouping them together, making content easier to manage and navigate.

The Layout settings applies globally to all tabs within the News module, ensuring a consistent visual style across each section. The Content, however, is configured separately for each individual tab. This means that content, whether set manually or dynamically, must be defined per tab, allowing each one to display different sources or filtering rules as needed.

Personalized content

View permissions can be managed globally for the entire module or individually per tab when tabs are enabled. Using Collections from Cosmos, it's possible to define exactly who can see specific content. This enables personalized experiences, where different tabs are visible to different audiences, each showing tailored information based on user groups.

The personalization feature, powered by Cosmos – Intranet for Confluence, enhances this even further. With tabs, each section can reflect a unique theme or target group. Without tabs, the entire module can be focused on a specific audience, creating a unified and purposeful display. To learn more about content personalization, check the Personalization powered by Cosmos page.