Cloud Migration Success Story: How Align Technology Navigated Their Cloud Migration

[#1]

Hey Atlassian community! 👋 I'm Elena from Elevatic.

We recently worked with one of our customers, Align Technology, through their move from Confluence Data Center to Cloud, and I wanted to share their story here in case it's useful for anyone going through a similar migration.

---

TL;DR

Align Technology migrated from Confluence Data Center to Confluence Cloud in November 2025, relying on Navitabs as their key navigation layer across multiple teams and spaces. Key challenges included Confluence indexing delays, the deprecation of Child Tabs macros, post-migration navigation rebuilds using Tab Wizard, and a Chrome third-party cookie issue. Elevatic support provided fast responses and actionable workarounds throughout. Align rates Navitabs 10 out of 10 and plans to continue using it for their current contract period.

---

The Challenge

When Align Technology's support engineering team began planning their move from Confluence Data Center to Confluence Cloud in 2025, they faced a challenge that went beyond a standard plugin migration. Navitabs - Navigation Macros for Confluence is a key navigation layer for tab-based documentation across multiple teams and spaces, and keeping that navigation intact throughout the move was a top priority.

The Migration

The team's journey had three distinct phases, each with its own lessons.

Before the move, the main challenge was distinguishing Navitabs issues from Confluence platform issues. When child tabs stopped showing pages, the instinct was to blame the macro, but the real culprit was often Confluence's indexing queue. "When tabs do not show pages, check indexing first," became a standing rule for the team.

During planning, a macro deprecation notice arrived. In May 2025, Navitabs deprecated Child Tabs for new use. Existing macros still worked, but editors could no longer create new ones. Tab Wizard — specifically the "Define Parent Page" option — became the forward path.

After the November 2025 migration, two major incidents tested the team. First, several teams reported missing tabs and asked if content had been lost. The diagnosis: the content had migrated successfully, but the navigation shell hadn't carried over in the same way due to the deprecated Child Tabs behavior. The fix was to rebuild navigation with Tab Wizard — not content recovery, but navigation reconstruction. Once that framing was communicated, it significantly reduced panic. Second, performance issues on legacy Child Tabs pages prompted the team to migrate to Tab Wizard rather than wait.

A Chrome-specific issue, where the Confluence Cloud interface refused to connect due to third-party cookie blocking, also reinforced a key lesson: "At migration time, everything gets blamed on the migration." Checking browser settings early is now part of their playbook.

The Results

Navitabs is deeply embedded in how several of Align's teams navigate documentation. Replacing it would be a significant effort, so they plan to continue using it through their current contract period.

Throughout the migration, Navitabs preserved the navigation model teams already understood, with no need to retrain staff on a completely new documentation structure on day one of cloud migration. User feedback confirmed that tab-based navigation makes information consumption meaningfully faster, with tabbed content on a single page removing the need to navigate between multiple child pages.