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How to Set Up Announcement Banners in Confluence and Jira

· 7 min read
NGPilot
NGPilot
NGPilot

Announcement banners are the most visible communication channel in Atlassian products. They sit at the top of every page, impossible to miss. When you need to notify your entire organization about a maintenance window, a security alert, a policy change, or an upcoming event, banners guarantee visibility in a way that emails and Slack messages cannot.

Both Confluence and Jira support announcement banners, but their native implementations are limited. This guide covers how to set up banners in both platforms using built-in features and marketplace apps, with practical tips for getting the most out of them.

Confluence Announcement Banners​

Method 1: Native Confluence banner (basic)​

Confluence Cloud does not have a global announcement banner feature comparable to Jira's. Space administrators can add a banner-like element using a few workarounds:

Option A — Use a page banner macro. Some Confluence instances include a page banner or notification macro. Add it to the top of key pages to display a prominent message. The downside is that you need to add it to each page individually — there is no global banner that appears across all pages.

Option B — Use a global page template. Create a page template that includes a styled information panel at the top. Teams using this template will see the banner content on every new page created from it. This works for new pages but does not affect existing content.

Option C — Use an app. Several Confluence apps provide notification or banner functionality. These apps add a macro or panel that can display persistent messages across your Confluence space.

Method 2: Using macros for prominent notifications​

If your goal is to display a notice that stands out from regular page content, Confluence's built-in macros can help even without a dedicated banner feature:

  • Info panel macro — creates a blue highlighted panel for general information
  • Warning panel macro — creates a red highlighted panel for urgent notices
  • Note panel macro — creates a yellow highlighted panel for important reminders

These macros work on individual pages. For organization-wide announcements, you would need to add them to the most-visited pages manually.

Best practices for Confluence banners​

  • Create a dedicated "Announcements" page in each space and link to it from the space sidebar. Pin important announcements at the top.
  • Use page restrictions to control who can edit announcement pages, preventing accidental changes.
  • Include dates in every announcement so readers know whether the information is current.
  • Archive old announcements to a separate page to keep the active announcement page clean.

Jira Announcement Banners​

Method 1: Native Jira banner​

Jira has a built-in announcement banner that appears at the top of every Jira page. Here is how to set it up:

For Jira Cloud:

  1. Go to Settings (gear icon) > System
  2. Navigate to User management > Announcement banner
  3. Enter your banner text in the message field
  4. Choose visibility: Public (all users) or Private (logged-in users only)
  5. Click Set Banner to activate

The native banner supports plain text only. You cannot add formatting, links, images, or colors.

For Jira Data Center:

  1. Go to Administration > System
  2. Select Announcement Banner from the left sidebar
  3. Enter the announcement text
  4. Choose the visibility level
  5. Click Update to save

Limitations of the native Jira banner​

The native Jira announcement banner has several constraints that make it difficult to manage for teams with frequent announcements:

  • Plain text only — no rich text formatting, no links, no images
  • One banner at a time — you can only have a single active announcement
  • No scheduling — banners must be manually enabled and disabled
  • No dismissal — users cannot dismiss a banner they have already seen
  • No saved templates — every new banner requires retyping the message
  • Global only — the same banner appears to every user on the instance

Modern Announcement Banner for Jira extends Jira's native banner with features that make it practical for ongoing use. Here is how to set it up:

Step 1 — Install the app

Go to the Atlassian Marketplace and search for Modern Announcement Banner for Jira. Click Get App and follow the installation prompts. The app supports Jira Cloud.

Step 2 — Create your first announcement

After installation, go to the app configuration in your Jira administration panel. Click Add Announcement and enter:

  • Message text — the announcement content (plain text with emoji support)
  • Visibility — Public (all users) or Private (follows Jira privacy settings)
  • Dismissible — whether users can dismiss the banner after reading it

Step 3 — Enable the banner

Click Enable to activate the announcement. It appears at the top of every Jira page for all users (or restricted users, depending on your visibility setting).

Step 4 — Manage your announcement library

Unlike the native banner, Modern Announcement Banner lets you save multiple announcements. This is useful for:

  • Maintenance windows — prepare the announcement in advance, enable it when the window starts
  • Recurring events — save announcements for standing meetings or scheduled downtimes and reuse them
  • Emergency responses — keep pre-written security alert templates ready for quick activation

Only one banner can be active at a time, but switching between saved announcements takes one click.

Key features comparison​

FeatureNative Jira BannerModern Announcement Banner
Rich text formattingNo (plain text only)No (plain text with emojis)
Multiple saved bannersNo (one at a time)Yes (library of saved announcements)
Dismissible by usersNoYes
Public/private visibilityYesYes
One-click switchingNoYes (switch between saved banners)
Banner historyNoSaved in your announcement library
Setup time1 minute2 minutes (first time), 1 click after that
CostFree (built-in)Paid with free trial

Best Practices for Announcement Banners​

Keep messages short and actionable​

A banner that contains a wall of text gets ignored. Write banners that answer three questions in under 200 characters:

  • What is happening?
  • When is it happening?
  • What should users do?

Bad: "Please be advised that the engineering team will be performing scheduled maintenance on the Jira and Confluence infrastructure this weekend. During this time, you may experience intermittent connectivity issues. We apologize for any inconvenience."

Good: "Scheduled maintenance: Sat May 24, 2-6 AM UTC. Jira and Confluence may be unavailable. Save your work before 2 AM."

Disable banners promptly​

An announcement banner that stays live for weeks after the event has passed trains users to ignore banners entirely. Set a calendar reminder to disable the banner when the announcement is no longer relevant.

With Modern Announcement Banner, you can prepare the "disable" action in advance by saving a blank announcement that you enable when the event passes.

Use dismissible banners for non-critical notices​

If an announcement is important but not critical (for example, "New feature available in the reporting dashboard"), make it dismissible. Users who have already seen it can dismiss it, reducing banner fatigue. Reserve non-dismissible banners for critical events like security incidents or mandatory policy changes.

Reserve banners for truly important information​

Announcement banners are a high-visibility, limited-use channel. If you use them for every minor update, users start treating them as visual noise. Use banners for:

  • Maintenance windows and outages
  • Security alerts and policy changes
  • Mandatory actions (password resets, compliance training)
  • Company-wide events

Use other channels (Slack, email, Confluence pages) for everything else.

Coordinate across platforms​

If you are announcing a maintenance window that affects both Jira and Confluence, post banners in both platforms. A user who only sees the Jira banner might assume Confluence is unaffected.