Introducing edit space key! (all editions)

[#1]

Hi Admins 👋, John from the Confluence team here again.

We're excited to announce that the ability to edit a space key has now been rolled out to all customers (excluding those on release tracks)! 

How it works

The technical approach that we are using will leverage two different keys: an internally generated ID plus an additional, separate key that is what will be shown to your users. 

This approach is represented in the UI as:

• System space key = internally generated ID 
• Space key = the visible alias that's seen by your users

A notable facet of this approach is that places where space key is being used today (ex: A4C rules) will NOT be impacted if a key is renamed since they will be based on the system space key (internally generated ID).

How to use it

Product admins can edit a space's key within the Space Details page of the desired space (space settings > space details > edit space key > save):

Usability items of note

• A space CAN go back and re-use a previous key used on that same space
• A space CANNOT re-use a previous key that had already been used on a different space unless that space is deleted and purged
• During a S2C migration, we will prevent duplicate keys from being used when new spaces are being created
• Only users with product admin access to Confluence are able to change a space key 
• There is currently a limit of 10 changes to a key per space (note: please leave a comment here or contact our support team if this becomes an issue)

FAQs

Which editions of Confluence Cloud is this available to?

Customers on all Confluence editions will be able to edit space keys

Are more capabilities coming to this feature?

Yes! Upcoming plans include:

• View historical keys per space
• Delete historical keys (so that they can be used on another space)
• Toggle to grant your space admins the ability to edit a space key

When can I start using this update?

As mentioned above, we will be rolling this feature out from late September through late October

---

As always, please let us know if you have any questions or feedback with comments here or by scheduling time to chat with me here

[Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_]

Great news!

One question that I've raised also before - any insights on when space keys will be able to contain upper-case characters/capital letters? Having URLs and space keys in lowercase looks a bit inconsistent with what we had before and what we have in Jira.

[Peter R_]

Very nice! Right on the 20th birthday of the original request! Well timed, sir!

[Miriam Hopton]

This is great! A long wait coming and now it is live. Thanks, Atlassian, excited for this.

I agree with Tomislav’s point about renaming only being possible in lowercase. Hopefully, this feature will be upgraded in the next release. Having the ability to use uppercase letters would be very beneficial for consistency, especially in environments like ours where it’s standard practice. It also helps maintain a cleaner look.

[Marc Vivas]

What would happen with pages that are referenced either from Atlassian or from outside, that had the old space key in it? Would they be redirected automatically? Would they fail to load?

[Steve Rhodes]

This is great. Thanks John.

Also great that the feedback I gave has been adhered to, namely that this feature should not be available to space admins, but product admins (and org admins?). And available on all editions of Confluence too.

[Anne]

Awesome,  I assume you mean those who are not on cloud? Are you going to make it available to the non cloud folks?

[John Hooper]

Thanks all!

@Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_ @Miriam Hopton - yes, confirming that we are planning to allow for upper case keys in an upcoming update

@Marc Vivas - confirming that links to pages with an old key (ex: a bookmarked link) will be automatically redirected to the page with the updated key

[Shreeja J]

Hello @John Hooper 

Thanks for adding the option to edit a space key! If a space uses plugins that refer to the current key, will changing the key affect those plugins? Any advice would be helpful.

[Avin Singhal]

Much needed, Enhancement, we made some automation script for this activity.

Recently we migrated some 400 spaces and renamed space key for 25 + spaces , Good for our future migrations