Inside EUMETSAT: How Meteorological Satellite Experts Use Handy Macros

EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, plays a vital role in monitoring weather, climate, and the environment. Operating a fleet of meteorological satellites and coordinating a network of observation sites across Europe, they work closely with international partners such as NASA and national meteorological agencies. To manage the vast amount of technical data, operational updates, and collaborative projects required for their mission, EUMETSAT has relied on Confluence for over seven years, making it an indispensable tool in their daily operations.

Extensive use of Confluence at EUMETSAT

Having utilized Confluence for almost a decade, EUMETSAT relies on it for a multitude of tasks:

• Activity and progress tracking
• IT knowledge base management
• Documentation and technical data tables
• Satellite and inventory management
• Change proposals and idea tracking
• Event planning and extracurricular activities

With more than 1,000 readers and contributors, Confluence is integral to daily tasks at EUMETSAT.

​Why Confluence moved to the Cloud

Atlassian sees Cloud as the future of Confluence, and many teams are making the switch. With automatic updates, teams always have the latest features and security patches—no more manual upgrades or server maintenance. Cloud also makes it easy to scale on demand, whether you’re adding a handful of users or thousands. For distributed teams, Confluence Cloud enables real-time collaboration from anywhere, with tighter integrations across Jira, Trello, and other Atlassian tools. Plus, Atlassian takes care of security and compliance, giving companies peace of mind without heavy IT overhead.

In short, Cloud delivers:

• Automatic updates
• Lower infrastructure overhead
• Enhanced collaboration
• Better integrations
• Flexibility and scalability
• Improved security and compliance

Challenges with the Cloud migration

Despite Confluence's significance, Cloud migration pathway has its pitfalls. Issues include:

• User dissatisfaction with the new editor
• Lack of flexibility and support for nested macros
• Cloud platform performance and caching issues

The migration has complicated user and license management due to the frequently changing admin section and constant updates. Users, especially less tech-savvy ones, may struggle to adapt to new interfaces. It also poses challenges for support officers, who must navigate complex sequences and select settings for each use case.

​Going from Server to Cloud version has also caused difficulties, such as the loss of useful functionalities and custom macros from the app. Compared to the Server hosting, the Cloud version delivers noticeably slower performance, evident in longer page load times and the distracting ‘jumping’ that can occur as content loads. The decay in expected functionality has been a significant concern.

Our solution: starting from June 2025, Handy Macros is available for Forge, which means faster performance, improved stability, and seamless compatibility with Atlassian’s latest Cloud architecture in the near future.

Handy Macros implementation and experiences

​For years, EUMETSAT managed workflows in Confluence using only native statuses. Because there was no central place to manage statuses, the team had to manually copy each new status. Editing was slow, especially in large tables, even small changes could become tedious, repetitive tasks.

That changed during research of another app, when a responsible employee stumbled across Handy Status. It promised a faster, easier way to keep statuses under control. EUMETSAT went straight to pilot Handy Macros for Confluence — and it turned out to be a perfect fit.

Getting started was smooth — users rated onboarding 8/10 thanks to the clear, intuitive interface. There was no additional training, as users were able to begin working with the macro correctly right away. Today, EUMETSAT embeds Handy Status so seamlessly into pages that many Confluence users treat it as a native feature.

The team uses it for anything that requires a predefined list, often paired with Page Properties and Page Properties Reports to organize and display data. Other Handy Macros, like Handy Cards, help make pages more visual and engaging.

Two features quickly became favorites:

• Switching statuses without edit mode – making updates in a single click in a page view mode.
• Status history tracking – essential for approval workflows, helps to see exactly when something was reviewed or approved.

Growth potential and development plans

Of course, no tool is without its wishlist. EUMETSAT would love to see faster performance with large numbers of statuses, better search and organization for status sets, and admin tools like usage statistics. The Cloud migration was also bumpy — it didn’t preserve status history, and it merged all sets into a single level, which made cleanup challenging. Luckily, Handy Macros offers a workaround — administrators can apply filtering in the settings to make the cleanup process much easier. This improvement was implemented after valuable feedback and a feature request from EUMETSAT's technical officer.

Still, Handy Macros has become an everyday part of EUMETSAT’s Confluence life. They even pair it with Table Filter, Charts & Spreadsheets for Confluence to make managing and visualizing information more efficient. As for discovering new tools, EUMETSAT keeps an eye on the Atlassian Marketplace. The ideas often come from users or the technical team before being reviewed and approved.

For a team that manages complex workflows every day, Handy Macros has transformed status management from a time-consuming chore into something quick, clear, and effortless.

Another case study: learn how THN uses Handy Macros in their workflow here.