How to implement Comala workflow state transition due change in a table included by Excerpt Include'

Question

On a Confluence Page titled "Report" I have used Excerpt Include Macros and Table transformer to import and combine some content from other confluence pages (titled "P1" and "P2") in the same project space.

The content imported is in the form of tables. The Table has a column "status" which displays the dynamic status of the item.

The problem:

On the Confluence page "Report" i have implemented Comala workflow. Consider the current state is "Published". State transition is defined as

transition from "Published" state to "Draft" if the document is edited.

this works fine if I edit the Confluence page "Report"

But if I don't edit Confluence page "Report" and instead make the changes to tables of Page "P1" and "P2" , these changes reflect in the confluence page "Report" but there is no change in state  from "Published" state to "Draft".

IMHO, Considering that because the "excerpt include" had changed it should be considered as a change to confluence page "Report" and its confluence versions should also get increment along with the comala transition from "Published" state to "Draft".

Is there a way to achieve thsi

Stiltsoft support · Answer

Hi @Ayush Gupta ,

Yes, you've got me right. If the real content on the "Report" page wasn't changed, then the page is not considered to be edited (updated).

The changes in the virtual data in the view mode coming from macros that grab and consolidate info from other pages/systems (our Table Excerpt Include macro, standard Excerpt Include, Page Properties Report, Jira Issues, etc.) are not considered as page edits.

Ayush Gupta · Answer

Hello @Stiltsoft support

I agree that the macro itself was not added/deleted and the Macro settings remain the same. But the content of the virtual copy taken from other pages were changed due to editing done on "P1" and "P2". 
So basically the page and the MACRO settings were not changed/updated but the content of the virtual copy changed. The confluence page "Report" is not the same....

So, what you are trying to say is that confluence does not support this? 
Is there a way where we can maintain different confluence versions due to changes in the content of virtual copy? 
Cause if you are using this Report as a consolidated Report it will never be accurate.

A change is source  ("P1" and "P2") also leads to a change in the virtual copy and will have an impact on the "Report".

Consider different use cases where lets say we create a Tutorial confluence document which gets its content for other confluence source pages. If the source pages delete the content the user will never be able to discover when and why the Tutorial document got changed. There are several other use cases.

The intention of my post is to find a solution to achieve the above mentioned desired functionality in confluence and not to highlight it as a bug.

Stiltsoft support · Answer

Hi @Ayush Gupta ,

The Table Transformer and Table Excerpt/Table Excerpt Include macros are provided by the app that we develop - Table Filter, Charts & Spreadsheets for Confluence.

Seems that you describe an expected behavior: when you edit "P1" and "P2" pages (add content, macros, etc.), their statuses are updated.

But the "Report" page is not edited: the content displayed by the Table Excerpt Include macro is a virtual copy taken from other pages. The macro itself was not added/deleted, the macro settings and/or other content on the page were not updated and remain as they were. So, there is no any trigger for the page status to be changed.