We've launched an upgraded Publish New Page action in Jira Automation

[#1]

 Hi Community! Mehak from Automation Platform here with an exciting announcement on a new action component. We have launched an upgraded ‘Publish new page in Confluence' action in Jira and are replacing any existing rules that use the old ‘Create Page in Confluence’ action with the new one.

Based on customer demand, this improved action will mirror the capabilities of the 'Publish new page in Confluence' action we currently have in Confluence.

This means, like the action in Confluence, the new action in Jira will allow you to:

• Configure page content

• Pick from a wider variety of templates

• Pick a template from a different space than your created page

This increased capability will allow you to:

• Publish release notes when a Jira sprint ends

• Use a Rovo agent to publish a Confluence page

• and so much more!

What will this look like?

Just like the old action, this will be accessible as an action within rule builder however with additional fields; template, template space and page content.

Here is what it will look like:

When will it be rolled out?

We have already replaced the old action, so the new action is now accessible to all Jira Cloud Free, Standard, Premium and Enterprise customers.

What happens to the old action?

The old action will still be available on existing rules, but can no longer be added to new rules. Existing rules will still run, however you’ll see an option to switch to the new action.

Here is what the messaging on the action will look like:

As we roll out, we will switch your rules over to the new action. We will keep you posted on when this is complete. 

We hope you enjoy the new action and all the new capabilities it unlocks!

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.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Mehak Bokhari 

Thanks for this great addition to rule actions!  This may save people an additional call to the REST API to update the content of newly created pages.

On the topic of content, what will be accepted in the Page Content field: plain text, HTML, markup, the same raw content as for the REST API endpoint, etc.?

Kind regards,
Bill

[Bill Sheboy]

Greetings, community!

After no responses to my above question about what Page Content information will work with the new action, I experimented and observed the following:

• the field accepts plain text
• the field accepts bullet / list markup, such as with * a bullet here
• table markup does not work; for example:

||heading 1||heading 2||heading 3||
|col A1|col A2|col A3|
|col B1|col B2|col B3|

• HTML does not work
• using the Confluence macro / markup directly from a working page's storage, such as from a REST API response, does not work

Short answer: this feature works for basic text and if you need more extensive formatting, continue to use a direct call to the REST API endpoint to update the page's storage / content.

Thanks!

[Mehak Bokhari]

Hi @Bill Sheboy

Sorry for the delay in response and thank you for your explanation above. You are correct in the above message, this action supports plain text. 

In saying this, I would love to hear from you what other formats would be helpful and if there were any particular use cases you had in mind for these formats. This would be something the team can explore to improve the current action or similar actions.

Alternatively, if there's any other questions or feedback, feel free to book in some time here so we can chat 😃

Cheers,

Mehak

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Mehak Bokhari 

If you search community questions / posts, you will find examples where people create a page with the old action (perhaps using a template), and then call the REST API endpoint to read the content storage and use text functions to make a modification...followed by another endpoint call for the update.  Those are often experiment-based exercises to learn and modify the page macros in the raw storage.  Examples include:

• toggling task completion
• adding / modifying tasks
• managing approval workflow
• creating static page content to reflect a point-in-time report of some Jira work items
• etc.

I am honestly not clear how one could workaround that for Confluence page macros / formatting as the simple text box fields in the rule editor are not conducive to any form of non-trivial formatting.  For example, even to update the Description field of a Jira work item one must use the REST API to send the ADF format when it contains macros!

Perhaps a start would be to accept all of the basic markup syntax, translating that behind the scenes into appropriate Confluence page content: https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/WikiRendererHelpAction.jspa?section=all  Then perhaps adding the ability to update / replace the content storage using macros.

Thanks again!

[Mehak Bokhari]

Hi @Bill Sheboy

Thank you for this response. I will take this back to our team and explore these use cases provided. 

Cheers,

Mehak

[Florian Royer]

Some features are missing, still, and makes this completely pointless.

1. Why can't we select global templates ? Why the templates must be in the space ?
2. Why there is no Smart Values usable to select a template, space and parent ?

This is so limited...

[Armin Meyer _Seibert - Coderay_]

@Bill Sheboy 

I am a bit biased as I am part of the development team of AutoPage.

If people really want to create content rich pages flavored with issue content from events in Jira, there are really convinient solutions available in the marketplace that also complement Jira Automation.

This way you don't need to rely on REST API Calls.

I am aware of these apps:

• Autopage 
• Elements Publish

@Florian Royer  these apps are also dynamic in Template and target page definition

[Clara Belin-Brosseau_Elements]

Thanks @Armin Meyer _Seibert - Coderay_ for mentioning our app!

Indeed Elements Publish is a great solution to automatically insert data from Jira issues into Confluence page templates.

[Lars Sundell]

Hello

It is fine that you upgrade the system, but please do not replace an existing feature with a new that lacks features of the previous one. The change done here is not backwards compatible.

With the "Create page in Confluence" action we could select a global template.
With the "Publish new page in Confluence" that is not possible anymore. 

We now have to make a separate "template space" in confluence to avoid having to ask users to crate their own space specific templates.

This also means that instructions we have made on how to set up automations has to be updated accordingly.

[Eliel Parra]

Hi @Mehak Bokhari 

It would be great to have the option to map smart values in Jira to variables in Confluence when setting up the Publish new page in Confluence action. This way we would be able to use Confluence templates and dynamically populate them with data from Jira.

In this on your roadmap?

Thanks,

Eliel

[Bob Dalm]

Hi @Mehak Bokhari, 

Allowing me to enter content in Storage Format would be pretty amazing. 

Combine that with smart values and I'm ready to roll :) 

[Gabriel Greenbank]

I have found that While This works for Most of the Content that I want to dynamically set, Allowing to enter content in storage format would be awesome. 
I have found with the current Modules
 - I cannot Create Action Items using the markdown format "[] "
 - I also Can't Create specific Macros like the Table Of Contents Macro. 

And While The Rest API for Confluence is not terrible, I have no way to append information to pages that had been previously created without three more Rest Calls to pull the Information that was originally there, Merging And sending a Put Operation.

You would Think that Jira and Confluence would have more Integrations Native to the Jira Automation platform.  

[Ignacio Pulgar]

Nice action! :)

I agree with @Eliel Parra that supporting Template Variables when setting a Template would unleash significantly more value.

We would be able to insert data from smart values into Confluence pages! That would be very useful and powerful.

Thanks!

[Mehak Bokhari]

Thank you everyone for this feedback and your experiences using this new action. We have taken all your feedback regarding template selection back to the team. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Mehak Bokhari 

I recommend closing further comments on this thread and directing people to the new one with the latest updates:

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Automation-articles/We-ve-enabled-rich-text-editing-in-the-Publish-new-page-in/ba-p/3041023

That may help focus the conversation and feedback.  Thanks again to you and the team!

Kind regards,
Bill