🔔 How to Effectively Track Changes on Confluence 😸

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Ever struggled with tracking changes in Atlassian Confluence? You’re not alone. Change management in Confluence can be a daunting task. With multiple users editing and updating content, tracking these changes becomes a significant challenge. This blog post aims to address these difficulties and provide practical solutions.

Change Tracking Challenges in Confluence

Confluence does offer some native capabilities for change tracking, but they come with their own set of limitations especially when many users are working on pages in multiple spaces.

Page History and Comparison Views

Confluence tracks the history of changes to each page by creating a new version of the page each time it's modified. The Page History view shows all the versions of a page in reverse chronological order. This way, you can compare different versions of a page to see what changes have been made.  

 Here are the steps to view the Page History in Confluence: 

1. Go to the page for which you want to view the history.
2. Choose “More options” (represented by three dots in the top-right corner).
3. From the dropdown menu, select "Page History". (pro tip: if there is a page history, you can get there immediately by clicking on the “Last updated” date at the top of the page.)

When viewing a specific version of the page, you have several options:

• Current version: View the latest version of the page.
• Compare with Current: Compare the differences between the version of the page you are viewing and the current version.
• Restore this Version: Roll back the content of the page to the previous version that you are viewing.
• View Page History: Return to the list of page versions.
• << Previous and Next >>: View the previous or next version of the page.

However, this process can be cumbersome and time-consuming, especially if dealing with numerous pages. In addition, it lacks a passive tracking feature in view mode, making it difficult to immediately identify what has changed.

Last Updated View

The Last Updated view in the Confluence page tree shows you the most recent changes made to a space. This can be a quick way to see what's new in your space. However, this does not provide a granular view of changes made anywhere in the content tree.

To view the last updated content in a Confluence space, follow these steps:

1. Go to the space where you want to view the recently updated content.
2. Change the view next to Content in the sidebar to "Last updated"
3. If the space is using the Documentation theme, choose “Browse > Content” in the header, then choose “Last Updated”.
4. Pages on the sidebar should be listed by Updated date

Watch Feature

The Watch feature in Confluence allows you to get notified about changes to a page or all pages in a space. It’s a useful tool that allows you to stay updated on changes to pages, spaces, and blogs. By default, Confluence will assign you as a watcher of any page or blog you create or edit. This behavior is called 'autowatch’.

Here’s how you can use the Watch feature:

To watch a page or blog post:

1. Go to the page or blog post.
2. Select the small eye icon at the top right of the page and check “Watch page”.

To stop watching a page or blog post:

1. Go to a page or blog post you’re already watching.
2. Select the small eye icon at the top right of the page and uncheck “Watch page”.

To watch an entire space:

1. Go to any page or blog post in the space.
2. Select the small eye icon at the top right of the page and check the option to “Watch all content in this space”.

To stop watching a space:

1. Go to any page or blog post in the space.
2. Select the small eye icon at the top right of the page and uncheck the option to “Watch all content in this space”.

However, it also does come with some potential difficulties:

Volume of Notifications: When you watch a page or space, Confluence sends you an email notification for every change made. This can result in a large volume of emails, especially for active spaces, which can be overwhelming.

Lack of Granularity: The Watch feature doesn’t provide granular control over what types of changes you’re notified about. For example, you can’t choose to only be notified about major edits or new pages.

Limited Scope: The Watch feature only notifies you of changes to the content of pages, blog posts, and comments. You won’t receive notifications for changes due to the output of a macro.

Permission Requirements: You need ‘View’ permission for the page, blog post, or space to receive notifications. This means you can’t watch the content you don’t have permission to view.

Management of Watches: Managing what you’re watching can be cumbersome, especially if you’re watching a lot of pages or spaces. You have to manually stop watching any unwanted spaces or pages.

Introducing Advanced Content Navigator for Confluence

META-INF's Advanced Content Navigator for Confluence (ACNC) is a practical solution to meet the above challenges.

Advanced Content Navigator for Confluence (ACNC) is a cutting-edge Atlassian productivity app that makes your content changes easy to understand. With ACNC, you can easily untangle existing page trees and elevate your overview by creating enhanced page structures.

• Get an overview of the page trees enhanced with status, attachments, tasks, and history - all at hand without opening the pages themselves.
• Discover unread pages without drowning in email notifications.
• Preview pages quickly. Many times, it is enough when you look after something.
• Insert 1 or more macros to set up a multi-space overview dashboard

Save time by tracking changes with ease

With ACNC, you don’t have to waste time searching for unread pages, new page versions, attachments or statuses. And you no longer have to manually collect this information from the myriad of Confluence notifications. Instead of continuously receiving change notifications, ACNC follows a proactive approach - you visit the page only when you are interested in the changes. It allows you to easily navigate through the changes made to the pages since your last visit. In its intuitive interface, you can quickly see which pages you need to read or what the important updates on a page saving you from the hassle of untangling this information. 

See all new and unread pages (highlighted in purple) of your tree at a glance, and look at important data of your pages right from the Advanced Content Navigator for Confluence.

Conclusion

While Confluence's native capabilities for change tracking have their limitations, tools like META-INF's Advanced Content Navigator for Confluence offer practical and efficient solutions. ACNC can provide a more robust and user-friendly solution for tracking changes. By leveraging these tools, you can effectively manage and track changes in Confluence, enhancing your productivity and time efficiency.

Try ACNC for free.