Matthew Joslin_AppFox_ Insider

Yes, your auditor's requirement (a mandatory comment tied to every published version) is exactly what Workflows for Confluence by AppFox is built to enforce. For an ISO 27001 ISMS specifically, the relevant features are: * Mandatory comments on transitions — you can require a justification before a page moves from Draft →…

You've laid out a sensible flow, and most of it can be done with a combination of Confluence Automation & page statuses. The parts that tend to break are a) selecting an approver cleanly without a user-picker, b) tracking which page version was approved, and c) keeping the audit trail consistent across spaces. If you're…

Out of the box, Confluence doesn't really offer a true sign-off action. You've got page restrictions, page status, and version history, but none of those produce the audit evidence most internal or external auditors will accept. If you want to keep things native for low stakes cases, the closest pattern is: page status…

Great breakdown, Adrian! As the team behind Workflows for Confluence, we built our app specifically to solve this 'Draft vs. Live' gap. We found that most users just want a native confluence review before publish flow that hides work-in-progress edits until they’re officially approved. It’s much more reliable than relying…

Such a timely article! We were sweating the 700-field limit in the run up to its release. Terrifying to delete a field and then find out it was critical to an old workflow validator or a hidden screen somewhere. We ended up building Custom Field Merging and a new Projects Nearing Field Limit health check into our Optimizer…

This is a fantastic setup for ISO 27001. Keeping track of where people are accidentally pasting sensitive data (like API keys or PII) is a full-time job. To automate the 'discovery' part of compliance, we built Compliance for Confluence. It scans for sensitive info and lets you apply classification levels (Public,…

Managing the gap between 'the page is written' and 'the team has officially signed off' is always the hardest part of document management in Confluence. We tried using just mentions and comments for approvals, but it was impossible to track for our audits. If you need a more formal sign-off, we built Approvals for…

This kind of clarity makes a huge difference for teams just getting started with Confluence 👏 One gap we see a lot is when teams move from reading guides to setting up things like automations or workflows. It can still feel pretty technical or admin-dependent. We’ve found that combining templates with a no-code workflow…

Hi Aleksey Happy to be corrected on this but, to my knowledge, JCMA wouldn't cover you for a migration from a Cloud site to Atlassian Government Cloud (AGC). This would still, then, require custom processes or assistance from a consultancy partner. As for our app, Optimizer - it does support Fedramp Cloud (AGC) instances,…

Nice approach! An incredible display of how far you can push native automation for approvals using statuses and labels. That said, it also highlights the trade-off: you’re stitching together multiple rules to mimic a structured approval process, which I would argue can get hard to maintain at scale, especially if you're an…

The key thing to know is that Confluence doesn’t have a built-in approval workflow, especially for multi-step or multi-tier processes. Most teams end up stitching something together with comments, page status, or automation, but it’s not really designed for structured approvals. That’s why the answers here mostly point to…

Agree with everyone here! Quite a few teams use Confluence as a lightweight document management system but it doesn’t fully cover typical DMS or technical documentation needs out of the box (especially around lifecycle, approvals, and governance). That’s usually where the gaps show up: structured review/approval flows,…

Approval forms in Confluence are natively quite limited. It’s usually a mix of page restrictions, comments, or manual status tracking rather than a structured approval flow. Marketplace apps are generally where people look in order to formalize the process. Approvals for Confluence is one that lets you build proper…

DLP in Confluence has always been a bit of a gap compared to more security-focused platforms. Out of the box, you get permissions and some visibility, but not true data classification, policy enforcement, or real control over how sensitive content is shared and used. Guard does start to address some of this at the org…

Nice to see project cleanup getting some love in Site Optimizer. Cool to have the bulk actions and recommendations. Truly, anything that reduces the manual effort is a win, since cleaning up projects at scale is usually pretty time-consuming (!) One thing I’ve found though is that even with recommendations, the “what’s…

Really like how this breaks cleanup down into something manageable instead of a risky “big bang” delete - especially the focus on spotting red flags first. That said, the manual part you mention (JQL, bulk edits, digging through fields) is exactly where it tends to get painful at scale. This is one of the use cases we…

This is a great guide, especially the emphasis on auditing first before deleting anything. That’s usually where most of the effort (and risk!) is anyway. One thing we’ve seen help a lot in practice is using a tool to speed up that audit phase. For example, Optimizer for Jira gives you a quick view of unused fields,…

The Jira Cloud Migration Assistant is usually already built into the source site, so you won’t find it as a separate app to install on the target. That said, as people have noted above, it’s not always the best fit for single project cloud-to-cloud moves. If you go the manual route (CSV/export), you’ll might also lose some…

Thanks @Angelie Stephens ! Such a lovely community to be a part of

This topic comes up a lot in conversations with Confluence admins, especially around approvals and keeping “approved” content truly up to date. Hope to see some of you there! Looking forward to hearing questions during the Q&A.

Us too! Can't wait to get stuck into this really meaty topic!

Thank you, James! Glad to hear it was useful. We're always looking for ways to make compliance easier and more effective using the powerful tools available in Confluence so very happy to hear these resonated!

So great to have gotten the opportunity to meet everyone at Team 25! Some really interesting conversations. Already missing the California sun!

Finally got the down time to explore this tool in full and can safely say it looks like it's going to speed up a lot of my processes! Keen to keep finding new ways to implement it

Amazing! So great to see new ways in which the lovely people in the community are getting recognised. Lots of inspiration!!

Thanks so much for this useful post! A really exciting community to be a part of :) Can't wait to get stuck in!