Edit Documents in place

Question

In Confluence 5.8.6 our users could edit documents in place rather than always download, update, upload again.  They tell me that more involved process is painful.

We upgraded to 6.13.0 last week and this functionality is missing.

Our instance is hosted behind a firewall and doesn't connect to the internet for Marketplace etc so all installs of plugins etc are manual.

In order to get this working for our users, do they need special software on each of their client/laptops?

I see mention of:  Atlassian Companion app

Do you know if there was a free plugin that allowed this to work on 5.8.6?  Or was it a built-in feature?

seank33f3 · Answer

What if we don't want to have to force our users to have to install another piece of software on their machines?  As others have stated, getting software approved to be installed on the general population's desktops isn't a quick process.  At my company, it can be even longer due to miles and miles of red tape.  Can the original functionality be restored somehow?  This seems like a backwards move to me.  We just upgraded to 6.15.6 and there is absolutely no way to edit from Confluence now despite the documentation stating that you can still edit from the attachments menu.  So should I just tell my users they'll have to download, edit then re-upload manually in the meantime?  And if we're not able to get this extra piece of software approved, then I guess they're all stuck doing it the painful way?

Jeff Kell · Answer

Hi, thanks for the feedback.  It takes our company a while to approve using downloaded software.  I finally am able to try the Atlassian Companion.exe file usage along with Confluence 6.13.0 and it seems ok in Chrome Browser.

I've attempted with both Edge and IE and they always want me to download Atlassian Companion again...rather than say "Edit with Excel 2016" or whatever upon previewing the document.  This is even after installing the .exe on 2 different PCs.  Only Chrome for me seems to work.  I suspect most of our users use Edge or IE instead.  Any ideas what the difference is here?   I did try a restart on one PC to see if that helps Edge and IE and it does not.  I see Atlassian Companion startup at boot time but those 2 browsers don't seem to want to interact with it.  Any thoughts?

Josh Steckler · Answer

That's a shame - I'm not sure how the old one worked exactly, but I think the new one has the advantage of working with more file formats than just MS Office as well.