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Can anyone help me figure out how to auto-convert Live Docs to Pages?

Zachary Howard

As more of our users get into Loom and start using it to create Meeting Note pages in Confluence I have found that we really need some way to "auto-convert" these Live Docs to Pages after a set period of inactivity. This would allow us to better preserve the meeting notes for archival purposes while preventing accidental edits to historical meeting notes.

I understand why meeting note pages should be Live Docs before, during, and shortly after the meeting but forever keeping them as Live Docs will lead to accidental edits when we should have a bit more control over these things.

From my research I have found that there is no public API endpoint that we can use for this, and of course there are no Confluence automation actions that can convert pages and Live Docs.

That being said, thanks to @Darryl Lee and his amazing session during the last Builder's Summit, I was able to determine that the "hidden/unofficial" endpoint for this is:

https://<your-domain>.atlassian.net/cgraphql?q=usePublishUpdatePageMutation

It seems like the payload for this is a GraphQL mutation named usePublishUpdatePageMutation with variables including:

contentId
contentType
content (the page body in Atlassian's doc format)
spaceKey, title, version, etc.

BUT..... It appears that the request is made with the user's browser session/cookies and CSRF tokens. Meaning you cannot call this endpoint with a standard API token or from automation rules...

However, I am relatively new to these things, and would love if anyone in the community here might be able to think of workarounds to this (or just tell me that I am wrong and you totally CAN use API tokens for this).

Accepted answers

Darryl Lee

So, I have some good news, and some bad news.

Good news: You can convert a Live Doc to a Published Page using an API Token!

And... yeah, you just need to give the endpoint the variables you found.

Bad news:

Getting the data for those variables (content, version), is proving harder than expected. At least not without making ANOTHER Web Request to the REST APIs, which I was really hoping to avoid, and I even made some progress, as documented in CONFCLOUD-83388 - Add a smart value to retrieve the full body/content of a Confluence page in Automation

So... yeah, still some work to do, but in the meantime...

How I figured this out:

As I shared at Builder's Summit, DevTools are your friend. And also curl.

So once I get my curl command, I put it in a text editor add my username/token:

-u myemail@whereever.com:mytoken \

And then start deleting stuff, and seeing if the curl command works to convert OTHER test Live Docs, which means changing the contentId:

--data-raw $'[{"operationName":"usePublishUpdatePageMutation","variables":{"contentId":"1979514881"

Then I copy-paste what's left and see if it works. There was definitely some trial and error, like when I didn't update the Title, I got this error:

[{"data":{"confluence_updatePage":{"success":false,"content":null,"errors":[{"message":"A page with this title already exists","extensions":[],"__typename":"MutationError"}],"__typename":"ConfluenceUpdatePagePayload"}}}]

Or when I didn't increment the version:

[{"data":{"confluence_updatePage":{"success":false,"content":null,"errors":[{"message":"Version must be incremented on update. Current version is: 1","extensions":[],"__typename":"MutationError"}],"__typename":"ConfluenceUpdatePagePayload"}}}]

But as you can see, the vast majority of the headers are NOT required.

So yeah, I just changing Title, and Version would let me "convert" any Live Doc to a published page, but unless I also copied the Content, it would be writing over it with the Content of my test page. So not "really" a conversion (unlike the endpoint that lets you convert a page to a Live Doc - so easy.)

Anyways, we're getting there, but I really don't want to have to make an that extra Web Request just to get Content and Version that is already there.

All comments

Darryl Lee

Heyyyy, @Zachary Howard !

Yeah, it seems that it uses browser cookies, but a hidden secret about Atlassian is that if the endpoint is YOURHOST.atlassian.net, there's a pretty good chance a regular API token will work. You just need to try it!

Which... I did, back in November:

How can I use Automation to convert a page into a live doc?

(Ok this is going the other direction, but it's very likely your endpoint will also work.)

ALSO, when somebody else followed-up and had problems, I went and tested my test rule again, and... it still works!

Looking what you found, ugh, that would kind of suck if you have to include Title and Content and everything else. Let me take a look.

Arkadiusz Wroblewski

Hello @Zachary Howard

I think you’ve already reached the key conclusion: there does not seem to be a supported way to auto-convert Live Docs to Pages today using standard Confluence automation or a public API.

@Darryl Lee suggestion is still worth testing though. As he noted, some Atlassian endpoints that look browser-based do sometimes still work with a normal API token, so it may be possible to experiment with this in a non-production environment first.

That said, since this appears to rely on an undocumented internal endpoint and may require sending the full page payload, I’d treat it as fragile rather than a long-term solution.

If Atlassian doesn’t add official support for this, it really sounds like a good feature request for Live Doc lifecycle / archival control.

Darryl Lee

So, I have some good news, and some bad news.

Good news: You can convert a Live Doc to a Published Page using an API Token!

And... yeah, you just need to give the endpoint the variables you found.

Bad news:

So... yeah, still some work to do, but in the meantime...

How I figured this out:

As I shared at Builder's Summit, DevTools are your friend. And also curl.

So once I get my curl command, I put it in a text editor add my username/token:

-u myemail@whereever.com:mytoken \

And then start deleting stuff, and seeing if the curl command works to convert OTHER test Live Docs, which means changing the contentId:

--data-raw $'[{"operationName":"usePublishUpdatePageMutation","variables":{"contentId":"1979514881"

Then I copy-paste what's left and see if it works. There was definitely some trial and error, like when I didn't update the Title, I got this error:

[{"data":{"confluence_updatePage":{"success":false,"content":null,"errors":[{"message":"A page with this title already exists","extensions":[],"__typename":"MutationError"}],"__typename":"ConfluenceUpdatePagePayload"}}}]

Or when I didn't increment the version:

[{"data":{"confluence_updatePage":{"success":false,"content":null,"errors":[{"message":"Version must be incremented on update. Current version is: 1","extensions":[],"__typename":"MutationError"}],"__typename":"ConfluenceUpdatePagePayload"}}}]

But as you can see, the vast majority of the headers are NOT required.

Anyways, we're getting there, but I really don't want to have to make an that extra Web Request just to get Content and Version that is already there.

Darryl Lee

Well, crap.

I figured out how to get Content and Version, but for the life of me I cannot get Automation to send a Web Request that the cgraphql endpoint will accept.

I've literally copied the payload from the curl example (which WORKS!) and also used a webhook.site to confirm that the payload from curl looks exactly like what Automation is sending.

So MAYBE Atlassian is "cracking down" on these kinds of shenanigans?

I'm doubtful, since you could still "convert" a page from Live Doc to Pages with a curl command.

It must be some weird bug in Automation Web Requests that I haven't run into, or maybe Atlassian specifically blocks the "Automation for Jira AC" user-agent? Again, that would be really odd.

Hum. I probably need to sleep on it. Or stay up late and watch this webinar with @Nikola Perisic and @Caterina Curti !

From Python Scripts to Forge Apps: An Atlassian Engineer’s Journey

Zachary Howard

@Darryl Lee yeah I was trying to get Rovo to help me do this via Confluence Automations (which don't have an Automation user-agent) and the Send Web Request action, but Rovo insisted that the cgraphql endpoint could only accept browser authentication. I tried a few different authentication methods in the automation action as well but none of them work for me.

Darryl Lee

So, unsurprisingly, Rovo's wrong. :-}

But double dang-it. I tested my previously working cgraphql hackery from

How can I use Automation to convert a page into a live doc?

And can confirm: Automation (or specifically Automation's IP address range) is BLOCKED from making calls to cgraphql endpoints, whereas making the exact same calls from my Mac with curl works perfectly fine using an API token (take that Rovo!)

So, the craptastic news is: You could write some kind of external service that:

Searches for pages with Meeting Notes that are Live Docs that are > X number of days old
Gets the content and version of those Live Docs
Runs the cgraphql operation to convert the Live Docs to real page
...
Profit

But yeah, Atlassian apparently WON'T let you do such hackery from Automation, which honestly just feels a little mean. (And also from a security standpoint, crappy, because at least all your hackery would be self-contained.)

Ugh.

Atlassian: if you're not going to create Automation Actions or API endpoints (!!!) to "Convert to Live Docs" or "Convert to Pages", why are you blocking your internal endpoints from Automation/Atlassian IPs but NOT external IPs?

[I don't believe they are blocking based on User-Agent. I used

--user-agent 'Automation for Jira AC app/1.0;05cc2b96-1a54-4171-b86e-cd351665fe68'

And the curl still worked. Don't know what that ID is at the end. It's what a Automation Web Request sent to my fake test endpoint. Doesn't match my Cloud SiteID, nor the Rule...]

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