We've enabled rich text editing in the 'Publish new page in Confluence' action

[#1]

Hi Community! Mehak from Automation Platform here, announcing that we have enabled rich text formatting to a few of our automation actions. These actions include:

• Publish new page in Confluence

• Edit page

• Add comment to page

This means you can now format your work with rich text elements, including:

• Headings

• Paragraphs

• Marks (boldening, italics, underlining)

• Colours

• Tables

• Links

• Checkboxes

• Code snippets

• And more!

These added capabilities allow you to make your Confluence pages look more visually appealing with colour and highlighting. You can also create action items with checkboxes, format your content into tables and start mentioning people with @ mentions.

Where can I find rich text support?

This rich text formatting will be available in the ‘Publish new page in Confluence’ action in Jira and Confluence Automation. It'll also be available in the ‘Edit page’ action and ‘Add comment’ action in Confluence Automation.

These actions are available for all Confluence Cloud customers. They’re also available for Jira Cloud Free, Standard, Premium and Enterprise customers. While we have started roll out, all customers can expect to see this new feature on July 1st 2025.

Switching existing rules from plain text to rich text

Whilst all new rules you create with this action will have rich text editing available, any existing rules with this action will remain in plain text, with the option to start using rich text formatting. There’ll be a button titled ‘Switch to rich text editing’, which will allow you to opt in, plus a warning message indicating that you won’t be able to switch back to plain text.

Your existing content will convert over to rich text formatting, however, it’ll be transferred via a code snippet. This is to ensure your data is transferred over and all smart values that are being converted will still work as intended. Although all your content will be in a code snippet, the output of your rule will not be in a code snippet.

Using smart values with rich text support

In rich text formatting, smart values must be wrapped in either inline code or code snippets to work correctly.

To use inline code: Use ⌘⇧M or type {{ on either side of the smart value to insert it into inline code. You can also use a / comment to select specific smart values that will appear within a {{}} format

To use code snippets: Use triple backticks ``` to wrap smart values in code snippets, or search for them by opening the command menu /. Once the code snippet is inserted, select Smart Values as the language from the floating toolbar dropdown.

Backwards compatibility with markdown

Markdown continues to be supported in rich text, but requires content to be inside the new smart value code snippets.

For example, in Jira, we can use JQL to search for work items. We can then use any of these methods to generate different outputs in Confluence pages:

Type	Code snippet	Confluence page output
Tables
Numbered lists
Bulleted lists

These can be used in combination with all the new rich text editing features that are now available.

At the moment, rich text formatting is only available in these automation actions - but we hope to enable this feature across all automation components that contain content fields or page fields.

We want to hear from you!

Have any questions or feedback? We’d love to hear from you, so please don’t hesitate to schedule time with us directly or leave a comment on this post.

In the meantime, happy automating!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Mehak Bokhari 

Thanks to you and the team for this update.  This is awesome!

You have also snuck in another apparent improvement: the {{index}} iteration counter can now be used with functions.  In the past, the only way to do this was wrapping that dynamic smart value within a math expression, or first storing it in a Created Variable for later parsing / updating.

Perhaps with this change as a trailblazer, the same ability to use markup and macros can be added for the Jira work item actions (rather than resorting to the REST API and the ADF syntax).

Kind regards,
Bill

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Mehak Bokhari -- When are these changes rolling out?  I do not see them noted in the weekly release blog or in the rule editor yet.  Thanks!

[Mehak Bokhari]

Hi @Bill SheboyThank you for your initial feedback! We have started roll out and it is expected to be accessible to all customers by July 1st. We'll make sure it's featured in the weekly release blog at that time :) 

[Rune Rasmussen]

This sounds like something that will make a lot of our automations a lot simpler.
So far we've using the Send web request action and the REST API to create and update pages with content pulled from either Work Items or Assets Objects,.
Updating these automations with redesigns of the page to be published/updated by editing the (or grabbing a new) storage format version of the page has been quite time consuming.

I'm hoping these changes will make that whole process a lot easier for us.

[Mélanie Liguet]

Hello,
I need the information panel and 2-column layout features.
This doesn't seem to be possible with rich text.

Is it possible to create a new rule using code, without rich text?

[Mehak Bokhari]

Hi @Mélanie Liguet

Thank you for this feedback. I've passed on your request for informational panels and the 2 column layout features to the team. 

In regards to your question about using code in new rules, all new rules will only support rich text editing however you should be able to use code within code snippets and it will function the same way. Hope this helps! 

Regards,

Mehak