CLOSED: Join Pratima Arora, Atlassian's Head of Product for Confluence Cloud, an AMA on Oct. 15.

Closing remarks -

Thanks for taking the time to give us your feedback on Confluence cloud. We recognize that you are passionate about this topic and have experienced challenges as we've transitioned from the legacy editor to the new one. While we're closing this AMA, it won't be the last!

We also don't want this to be the end of the conversation. We're planning on reaching out to a number of you for a focus group in the next several weeks so we can continue to have a productive dialogue on these changes and take your feedback into account for the future.

THANK YOU!

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Update-
Thanks for your participation everyone! Give us a week to continue answering your questions. Our product team plans to experiment with new public formats for getting your feedback and answering your questions over the next several months. If you want to see what we're planning next for Confluence Cloud, be sure to check out our roadmap: Roadmap And if you want to learn about the latest features we've launched in Confluence Cloud, watch our recent webinar on New Features in Confluence Cloud for Improved Team Productivity here: Webinar

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Hi everyone,

This is Pratima Arora, the Head of Product for Confluence Cloud. I’m going to host an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session right here in the Community on Oct. 15 at 8:30 am PT. You are all invited!

I’m eager to get your feedback on recent improvements we’ve launched in Confluence. I’m also excited to answer your questions about Confluence’s product vision and roadmaps. I’ll share your top questions and feedback with our entire team so we can apply it to future releases. I hope you’ll join me.

Here's how it works:

Before the session, create or log into your account on Atlassian Community.
Add your questions here any time before or during the Q&A session. You can also up-vote other people's questions.
At 8:30 am PT on Tues. Oct. 15, I’ll start answering your most popular questions. Watch the page and be ready to add follow-up questions and discuss further with other Community members.
I’ll end the event at 9:30 am PT, but don't worry: any remaining questions will be answered later that week.

Pratima

42 comments

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Thanks for offering this forum for Q&A @Pratima

As an Atlassian Consultant, I work exclusively with Atlassian customers and Search has been a pain point so we greatly appreciate the team's efforts to improve in this area.

My question is whether there are plans to be able to search and find key words within pdf, doc and other file attachments, and also within comments.

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Thanks Trevan for the question. With the new Advanced Search, you can use the Type filter to search for titles or content within pages, comments, attachments, etc. Screen Shot 2019-10-15 at 8.31.21 AM.png

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I guess that getting a like from you own employee is important for the first response. I apologize if I sound "snippy", but this AMA session was very hard to follow, let alone believe.

When I posted this comment Jessica Taylor was the only "Like" to Pratima's response.

Like • Andy - PTC Redundant likes this

I was reviewing this new search feature earlier today and really like what i'm seeing so far. I have always been a casual Confluence user. It did what I needed it to but always felt like it needed some new exciting features. I'm optimistic with what I'm seeing of late. Thanks!

Like • Jessica Taylor likes this

I'd prefer to use Cloud for the products we currently have on-prem (especially with the current upgrade process), but at the moment we can't due to data in support tickets. Is there something on the roadmap to change the stance that Atlassian is unwilling to sign a BAA for customers with HIPAA data?

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Good Question. HIPAA is a huge blocker for those involved in Healthcare trying to use Atlassian Cloud

HIPAA is definitely a concern for our customers, and we acknowledge that different customers have different requirements with regard to compliance. Not on our immediate roadmap, but we are in the process of gathering that information and once we finish the research, we will have a better sense of which ones we are implementing and when.

Like • Jessica Taylor likes this

I would at least recommend having marketing lay off of the "Go to the cloud!" promotions at their customers that would like to, but are frustrated because per Atlassian policy, they can't.

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Is it possible get an easier way to create pages from Jira? It is very easy create a issue from confluece- It can be improved by adding some types of attributes such as combined combos, but it is quite useful- the link to a created page it is easy too. The problem is to create from Jira. Thank you, Regards

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Good news! There's a new Pages section that's been added to Jira's navigation.

If you connect a Confluence Space to a Jira Project, you can use linked pages. You can read more about it here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloudkb/the-new-pages-feature-in-jira-software-project-958770525.html

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really glad to see this tighter/easier/cleaner integration w/ Jira.

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Thanks for creating the Confluence Editor Roadmap, How are the nested macros working if we move our content from Server into Cloud? Is there a conversion process there or just an error. And then, how close to release is this feature in your "Short Term Backlog"

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Hiya Fabian. I'm glad you found the updated roadmap useful. When the ability to convert pages is ready for you, there will be a page that details what happens to page elements. You'll have the ability to preview a page before it's converted so that you know what you are going to get.

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Great question! Some nested macros are considered unsupported content that won't be able to be converted, yet. We're in the process of finalizing a very detailed breakdown of what will happen to all page elements and their complex combinations when converting a page from the legacy editor to the new one.
We'll be adding it to the roadmap page to make it easy to find with one central place to cover all changes; this page should be live very soon.

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Please link it to all associated Jira tasks, so that we can see what is going on!

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Hi Pratima,

Greetings!

Want to check couple of things

1st: In the Gadgets it would be good if we have "CFD" (Cumulative Flow Diagram) as right now this isn't available. This shows for the Scrum board which typically/ideally is three buckets

Open | To-Do |Done

When in To-Do to see the list of incoming and the this shows how many are pouring in and how many are getting addressed this helps in better understanding of the "Little's Law"

2nd: In the dashboard there is provision to add the Biweekly right now it has daily,weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly

It will be better if "Biweekly" is there that way for a timeboxed sprint of "2 weeks" will be able to pull the report for the team(s)

3rd: when pulling a report for the .xls if it has more than 1000 records right now in jira there is limitaton, and it will be advisable if we have this provision of pulling more than 1000 records one of the query which I made had 2498 records and if the provision is made for pulling all the records > 1000 records

Thanks,

+91-513496417 (Mobile)

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Hi Vijay - Thanks for the question. We can get back to you on this, but it looks like you may have have questions about Jira's Cumulative Flow Diagram. Here are some pages that may be helpful:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/cumulative-flow-diagram-777002689.html

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/cumulative-flow-diagram-next-gen-975029954.html

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Next-gen-articles/Introducing-our-first-Kanban-report-for-next-gen-projects/ba-p/1152420

Like • Jessica Taylor likes this

Hi Pratima,

We exclusively use Confluence( Cloud) for documentation. Will the features like anchor,sections etc.. which are not currently enabled in the newly existing pages. It displays a higher level of limitations without these features.

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Second this.

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Layouts are the new editor's replacement of sections or columns in the legacy editor. Try out and let us know what you think.

The linkable headers feature is rolling out gradually and should become available to your site very soon as well to replace the anchor macro. https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=945107733#ConfluenceEditingImprovements-Linkableheadings

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How soon? We've been told "soon" for a while now. They were touted as being part of the October release. They are listed as being available. But they still aren't there, and we're still being told "soon".

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Regarding Pratima's suggestion that people try out the new 'layouts replacement for 'sections or columns', I have two observations: 1. People have been trying it out and have provided their feedback on the 'Try out the new editing experience' page. It doesn't seem to be popular and I thought that during the recent webinar Avinoam actually said they were reinstating some of the old functionality in this regard or at least renaming something. Does anyone remember what he said?

There are so many issues discussed on the page https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-discussions/Try-out-the-new-editing-experience/td-p/1000813 that the comments are up to page 7. When will these issues be recognized by Atlassian and dealt with?

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We monitor this page, and all other pages, very closely and take everything that's said there very seriously - even if we're unable to respond to each comment. We want to use this time to also thank you for being so engaged and providing this feedback as it's helped us make some very big decisions and push us to improve things for example like our public facing roadmap, adding full width, more layout types, and much more.

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Monitoring is one thing. Providing feedback shows us that this actually matters. We cannot tell that you monitored anything!

Like • Andy - PTC Redundant likes this

@Bob Sovers : Yeah... got a point there. When was the last time you got to speak with a Product Manager about this face2face....?? My last session was September 2018 when I got to say my peace....! Not sure much really got taken onboard though... so I've requested another meeting.
Have you had the opportunity to meet with anyone?!
I like what you've said / highlighted here today - you need to take it further! 👍
Within the Community Events, a lot of users are repeating what you've said here!! #You'reNotAlone

Like • Dara likes this

@Pratima --- I think that the biggest fallacy about your appearance of transparency is the fact that you have a public-facing Jira project of issues and bugs that your customers (or former customers) have requested/suggested/found that are NOT what the development staff are actually working off of. They must be working off of a hidden/internal-only Jira project that is actually used to manage their workload.

YOU must work harder at getting YOUR EMPLOYEES to better reflect their actual work on the public-facing pages. Otherwise you are going to continue to SCAM us with your ILLUSION of transparency.

All of the queries of the https://jira.atlassian.com/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20CONFCLOUD project that I posted previously prove this point.

Most of these Jira tasks link to your internal Jira tasks such as https://pug.jira-dev.com/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4296515058 on the public-facing issue https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67823 , but require authentication to reach the REAL work tasks, so it is OBVIOUS what is going on.

Current Bugs and Issues just with the new editor -- JIRA Query project = CONFCLOUD AND component = "Editor - Fabric" AND resolution = Unresolved

This query shows 302 currently unresolved issues or bugs. Do you have some place where your paying customers can see how these are prioritized for development or fixing, or are they just going to languish or get "resolved" as Won't Fix?

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We've recently put a lot of effort into updating our public roadmap to being more detailed and transparent here https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html.

In addition, we are still in the process of adding relevant tickets and will be added in next couple of weeks.

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Transparency is good. But Atlassian currently appears to ignore its customers. You need people to update the "In process", etc. Jira tasks, so that progress is evident.

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It is great that we (your paying customers) are given access to pages like https://jira.atlassian.com, but when queries like

project = CONFCLOUD AND votes>100 AND resolution = Unresolved ORDER BY Created ASC

show over 100 jira tasks with more than 100 votes, some with creation dates as far back as 2003

How are we to believe that Atlassian actually cares about these issues? The status "Gathering Interest" no longer holds any water, when nothing appears to be happening. What is the required "level of interest", and how can WE, your paying customers, show this interest.

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We acknowledge that there are a lot of unresolved suggestions/feedbacks that have been submitted by our users over the course of the year. We admit it has been hard for us to keep up with those given the sheer volume of such tickets.

Having said that, we assure you that we hear your feedback through various channels like in-product feedback, support tickets, community posts, survey comments, and in some cases interviews with you! Please continue sending feedback our way.

We assure you it is being read and internalized, however, not everything can make it to the backlog.

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It would just be helpful if you made logical arguments as to why some things are worked on, some are left for the backlog, and some just cancelled as "Won't Do", etc.

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Another disappointing query of https://jira.atlassian.com

project = CONFCLOUD and status in ("In Development", "In Preview", "In Progress", "In Refinement", "In Review") AND resolution = Unresolved ORDER BY Updated ASC

Shows 58 items, some of which have not been updated since 2017....

How can this be "In Progress"????

(NOTE: Please do not just remove our access to https://jira.atlassian.com, to deal with our questions. We are active customers/users/developers/participants in your process, and really do want to help!)

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Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We're going to review these issues and make sure they are updated. I'll work with the team to make sure that the statuses of these issues reflect reality.

I also live in the world of software development, and realize that these issues are in various stages of the dev process. I (am many others here) just want to learn the truth about what is really being worked on, what will never be worked on, and what is still on the backlog.

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Wow... I just searched

project = CONFCLOUD AND resolution = Unresolved and type = Bug ORDER BY created ASC

And there are 2570 bugs, with some created as early as 2006-01-24!

I hope that some of these have already been resolved, just not updated in Jira...

(yes I am sometimes overly optimistic!)

Is this just proof that this is the public-facing Jira task database, or is Atlassian that bad at handling bugs?

Like • Andy - PTC Redundant likes this

The Atlassian web site has https://www.atlassian.com/company/values

So why do so many of your customer's concerns/comments/bug reports/Issues... seem to fall on DEAF ears.

The Confluence Cloud Editor Roadmap (aka https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html )

This page shows over 60 comparison categories, of which 16 are either in the short-term or long-term backlog. Yet 11 of the 16 have no linked work to item (jira task) to allow us to actually see progress or attempt to up-vote and comment for potentially faster resolution. How can we be sure that Atlassian is really working on these? (I've actually found the Jira task for 7 of the 11, but it seems like you and your people are ignoring us when they can't do a similar search.)

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Hi Bob,

This is Sunny from the Confluence team. I appreciate your feedback on the Confluence Cloud Editor Roadmap that we put together about a week ago. We are in process of adding Jira tickets into the the currently empty "Track the backlog fields," as decided to release the page earlier rather than later to provide visibility to Confluence users on what's different in the new editor. I will add in those Jira tickets later today or tomorrow.

Best,

Sunny

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+1 to Sunny's comment. Thank you Sunny.

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This is what I posted to https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-discussions/Try-out-the-new-editing-experience/td-p/1000813/page/7

...associated JIRA tasks for items in the roadmap...

Alt text -- https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-23547 --- But appears to be CLOSED

Background color -- https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-64708

Copy paste / move layouts -- counld be: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67648

Drag and drop columns and rows of tables -- https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-25847

Image is a link -- https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-58925

Link to a placeholder -- https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67129

Media annotations -- https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-2584

Like • Andy - PTC Redundant likes this

Why don't your documentation pages like https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html

Allow open comments, only hidden "feedback"?

Or, more simply... Why don't your Confluence documentation pages appear to be using Confluence?

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@Bob Sovers for documentation They are using Confluence and K15t ViewPort app.

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Hi Bob. It's a keen eye that can tell that those pages don't look like the average Confluence page. As Fabian mentioned, we use Confluence plus the K15t Viewport app. Why did we make that choice? Atlassian uses Confluence to create and collaborate on our product documentation and a Scroll Viewport app to allow us to customize the look of Confluence.

Regarding your mention of open comments, we made the decision to turn those off four years ago because comments on documentation pages were being used as a channel for requests and feedback that were outside the control of the content team; we already have channels for those things. If you are looking to read questions submitted by others and submit your own, the Atlassian Community is the way to go.

(If you are curious about that viewport app, you can click the Scroll Viewport link at the bottom of any Confluence documentation page.)

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Talk about low-hanging fruit... I trust that these questions being answered here mean Bob's more serious questions are going to be addressed in this webinar?

And - and please correct me if I'm wrong here - to elaborate on your answer with a few details you missed out, Scroll Viewport is a Server-only app. I looked heavily into this when investigating new documentation tools. As soon as I realised I couldn't use most of the K15t documentation apps in the Cloud version, I retracted my support for it. My company went ahead and got it anyway, and here we are now I guess.

So, really, Bob's question still stands - why are you not using Confluence Cloud for your documentation? The answer is because to successfully use Confluence for documentation, you really need externally created apps, and the developers creating them aren't interested in making them for Cloud. Unless things have changed in the past few months, of course.

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I think you know the answer Tom, because they're not ready for production.

Like • _Fabian A. Lopez likes this

If you are not going to allow comments on the documentation page, then the feedback link should go to a page where all of the comments are shown, just like they would have been at the bottom of a confluence page. With just the feedback dialog, it allows Atlassian to sweep issues under the rug and forget about them. With a full and open comment stream (even if not shown on the doc page), Atlassian shows full transparency on the issue. As it is now, you just appear to dodge or ignore the issue.

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while i like all of the feedback that exists on this thread I would not vote for opening up documentation to comments as it would clutter things (IMO). But would love to have a feedback link.

Like • Stephanie Grice likes this

Will there be any focus on using Confluence Cloud sites for public use? All of the "improvements" seem to be for internal teams. I would love for Confluence to play nice with Google Analytics. I feel a lot has been dumbed down/taken away with the new editor. I am still using the old editor. I want to be able to add a border to an image and resize it by ending a pixel #. Also, the mobile experience needs to be improved. We can't expect our 30,000 users to download the Confluence app to access our knowledge base.

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I also require the ability to resize an image to a specific size in pixels, and add a border or effect, for the purpose of technical documentation for external users.

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Great question. Most of the use cases for Confluence are focused today on internal use; however, all of the changes to the new editor also apply to pubic facing sites as well. We'd love to learn more about what you feel the gaps are for public vs internal sites!

The new editor is indeed different that the legacy editor in different ways. This difference was intentional based on feedback over the years about the legacy editor being hard to learn and use. We've been putting a lot of effort into maintaining as much power as possible while keeping the barrier to entry lower to allow for all teams to get on the same page using Confluence. In this public facing roadmap https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html, we've added a comparison chart for features in the legacy vs. new editor linked to public tickets. We'd love for you to add your feedback as it helps us monitor it and prioritize down the road. We also recently rolled out a completely new editing experience on mobile that's more intuitive and feature rich than the previous version. We also have a mobile web version that works if the app isn't wanted or needed.

Like • Jessica Taylor likes this

Helen - Thank you for your comment. We are in the process of adding a ticket to the editor roadmap page where we can collect this kind of information, and you can come back and track the progress of request as we gather feedback.

Like • Jessica Taylor likes this

I don't mean to sound cynical here, but with all these requests for feedback we risk having more feedback pages than features. The problem a lot of users have here is that they don't believe you're doing anything about the feedback. You say you "internalise" it. Great. But you need to "externalise" what you decide to do with it.

I'm getting lost amongst all the pages I've left feedback on, and it doesn't seem to have done anything.

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@Pratima

I have already provided this feedback in several other channels and spent a lot of time doing so.

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Since the road map is on one of the documentation pages, there is no way to see our direct feedback (ie, comments, etc.) Everything on that page should link to an active Jira task, that people can vote for, watch, comment on, etc.

Just prove to us that you value our feedback!

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@Pratima

@Bob Sovers is correct. There's no way to provide feedback on the roadmap. Where is the best place to provide this feedback?

I have no need to edit on mobile. My users are the ones who need a better experience on mobile.

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Hello Pratima,

Is there any possible way for advanced admins (who are arguably the biggest Atlassian evangelists) to opt in or out of major changes for Confluence Cloud/On-Demand? Has there been any consideration to make the new fabric editor a branched version of Cloud and offer both products separately. I can see the appeal of some of the new features being geared for mobile. However, the value I provide to my employer, especially without DIV and STYLE macros, has dramatically decreased with this new roll out.

Best regards,

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I have a suggestion for this.... If possible, introduce new functionality as a free add-on. This will allow your customers to opt-in, test it in there own system, and either accept it or reject it. I am also sure that you will get feedback of what works and what doesn't, without imposing the change on us (your customers) without regard for our current processes.

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That is a great point and question which we've debated on a lot internally. Let's start with what we offer today.

1. You can opt-in to the editor via support if you want early access.
2. For upcoming big launches, we'll have both opt-in and opt-out options available to customers for a period of time.

For the editor specifically, there are technical reasons we aren't able to offer an Opt-in / Opt-out toggle due to bi-directional content migrations. This is why we roll out the new editor in a gradual manner over the course of several weeks to first let some sites try it out, and then use it as the default while still having access to the legacy editor before we remove the legacy editor from your site. Even after removing the legacy editor, we're leaving existing pages created using the legacy editor available to edit in the legacy editor. Over the next few months, we'll be providing tools to decide which pages you want to migrate from the legacy editor to the new one.

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Hello,

As a new user of confluence I was exposed to the "new and improved" editor early on. However there still seems like there are far too many things that cannot be done in the new editor.

I find it very irksome that frivolous things like emoji uploads are available , yet I cant set something basic like an anchor in a page.

You guys need to focus on functionality not frivolity.

When will the new editor have parity with the legacy editor?

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I have just learned that I am unable to "continue numbering" of numbered list! There appears to be comments back 7 years (!) looking for this feature. It is getting harder and harder to justify the work required to build and maintain our confluence documentations site.

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I also would be happy about "simple editing tasks" like text indentation, paste content from elsewhere as plain text (we use insert markup for that), links to a file system (or at least the possibility to insert HTML snippets, links to attachments etc.

Or at least, text colors that make sense.

We do not need all that fancy stuff, we need a stable platform for process and documentation tasks.

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We are definitely interested in finding out if we need true parity between the editors. Keep an eye on our editor roadmap page as we'll be adding more public facing tickets where we can track user interest and gather feedback.

The linkable headers feature is rolling out gradually and should become available to your site in the next couple of weeks as well to replace the anchor macro. https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=945107733#ConfluenceEditingImprovements-Linkableheadings

Like • Jessica Taylor likes this

Hi Pratima

My question relates to a request to reinstate the ability to add an attachment from another Confluence page (i.e, the function that we used to achieve via CMD + M).

The use case for this is content management, eg, in a technical documentation site where best practice is to use images and snippets libraries - i.e., house images in an image library and insert them onto the desired page using Insert > File and 'Search on other pages.' As Atlassian's documentation says, this makes it easy for an administrator to update, maintain and control images that may appear on multiple pages via the attachments system.

The excerpt etc tools are great for their purpose but almost useless for this use case and are not a workaround.

Can you provide any word on whether this will be re-introduced?

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@Helen Gosper this is a good one. I use the same approach with my graphics library. Common navigation artifacts, icons, etc are stored there and then use the same steps that you describe.

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Yes it is a common practice for anyone in charge of content management. It's kind of irrelevant for an internal collaboration wiki but absolutely essential for customer-facing technical documentation.

I also have a 'snippets' library, with a list of 'excerpt' pages for reusable content - luckily this functionality hasn't changed :) ; however, my image library (images, annotated screenshots, icons, etc) is by far the bigger of the two.

The ability to replace images in the attachments library and have them automatically update on other pages was one of the reasons we went with Confluence in the first place several years ago.

I'm hoping Pratima can give us an idea of when this functionality will be re-introduced.

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The use case you mentioned is not off of our radar! We have a public facing ticket that is being used to gather interest in this feature.
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-65302

Like • Jessica Taylor likes this

What level of interest is required for Atlassian to work on something? And setting the status to "Gathering Interest" for a BUG is just insulting! It is hard enough to get Atlassian to admit that something is a bug, but one you do, it is disheartening to see that there appears to need more up-votes before you actually FIX IT!

Like • JoAnna Black likes this

Pratima, I'm not sure that ticket relates to the same issue. Please re-read my question and let me know if I am wrong. I am requesting the reinstatement of the ability to add an attachment from another Confluence page (i.e, the function that we used to achieve via CMD + M). This I believe is different to the issue you point to in the JIRA ticket.

If I am correct, this is an important oversight, Please confirm.

@Pratima : I think @Helen Gosper is correct, it sounds like she is talking about the ability to insert and display an image or other file that is attached to another page -- thus allowing us to upload that image or file once to a file list in a central library, and reuse it across many pages.

The issue you referenced is related to the ability to link to an attachment on another page, not display/insert it.

Here's an image of the interface that a user sees in the legacy editor with CMD + M, where they can insert a file or image that is attached to another page:

Screen Shot 2019-10-15 at 7.46.33 PM.png

Right now the closest workaround seems to be creating a library space with one new page per image or content snippet, and using the Include Page or Excerpt and Excerpt Include macros. This is a lot more overhead to set up and maintain.

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Thanks @Sharon Helms that's correct. I'll add (although I feel as though I've now explained this is about four different places) that f you're managing a technical doco site wth thousands of images, the suggested workaround isn't a viable alternative at all.

A better, although riskier, workaround is to use 'old' pages, ie., retain your 'old' image library as your source pages and, for the destination page, copy an 'old' page and strip put the content (I keep an empty one handy as a de facto 'template'). The functionality still works. I have asked if it will continue to work, but have not seen an answer.

OH NO!!!! I hadn't seen that this will be no longer possible! I have HUNDREDS of images on designated image pages. WHY WHY WHY has this been taken away?!!?!?!?!

EVERY release I get more and more fed up of this product...

Like • Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California) likes this

Helen & Helen -- I found that issue that you are asking for.

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-6594

Title: Improve Rich editor to allow to Insert/Edit Link to attachments in different pages and spaces, not just the current page.

Vote for this issue, and add comments so that Atlassian knows how important this is

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Thank you @Bob Sovers - done... (Although I'm not quite sure why. I've voted for a LOT of these in the past 5+ years and I think only one has ever been done...)

Like • JoAnna Black likes this

Ugh separate pages with images and doing a page includes or excerpts is a total nightmare. On top of that it makes all of us (Content Managers / Knowledge Managers / Technical Writers / etc) look like we're incompetent.

If the DIV macro wasn't also axed, it could be used as an easier work around referencing the original image. That would also allow images to function as links which is another issue entirely.

We're hoping to hear from you what kind of work is being done to ensure that Confluence content is accessible to users of all abilities.

We have had to hold off on upgrading to the new editor due to accessibility concerns, particularly the removal of alternative text for images. Removing that feature from the new editor gave the impression that accessibility was not a top priority for Atlassian teams from the start, but something to be added later.

Related to accessibility, we hope to hear from you how Confluence developers are working to ensure Confluence product features are compatible with other Atlassian products, in particular with Jira Service Desk, which we use hand in hand to serve content to our customers.

One example is the automatic link-to-button conversion behavior in Confluence, which doesn't work when the page is displayed in Jira Service Desk Help Centers. Another example is the very basic Table of Contents macro, which fails in Jira Service Desk view as well.

Confluence content creators must do extra work to ensure their content is available to end users -- continually testing how pages (features and macros) will perform in the Help Center view, since we can't depend on them working across products.

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@Sharon Helms very good point. We develop software for healthcare ans accessibility is key factor for us. In USA we need to be sure our delivered software is 508 Compliant. (What is 508 Compliance? Section 508, an amendment to the United States Workforce Rehabilitation Act of 1973, is a federal law mandating that all electronic and information technology developed, procured, maintained, or used by the federal government be accessible to people with disabilities.).

Confluence and Jira Service Desk work together, so this particular feature is very important if we use Confluence as KB for JSD.

Like • _Fabian A. Lopez likes this

How can you say that you are 508 compliant if the use of your product does not allow alt text/captions on images?

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@Bob Sovers I am not an Atlassian employee, I am just another user (server), so I was talking about considering 508 if US federal government users need to access to that particular feature in confluence. (e.g. Confluence KB supporting Jira Service Desk). When I mentioned software development I was referring to our own products and having accessibility is important for the tools in use as well.

I agree this is a great point! Maybe it's time to review ADA guidelines. Two articles I came across last week regarding website accessibility lawsuits:

Atlassian seems to be developing Confluence for internal use, but some of us are using Confluence Cloud as public-facing sites.

This is a great question, and thank you for bringing this important topic up!

Specifically related to alt-text this is something that from Confluence's perspective is on our mid-term roadmap right after some of the more pressing feature gaps we've set out to complete such as layouts, full width, anchor heading, table sorting, etc.

We've also made sure to get some key customers that are deeply engaged on this topic with folks from our accessibility team to learn more how we can make sure the new editor is best equipped to make all of our users successful. If you interested, let us know, and we are more than happy to connect and work with you.

To echo earlier comments, please see the feedback pages to find out more granular detail about the features that have been discontinued and abandoned, and then please create a more detailed roadmap with estimated dates when you plan on working on the ones that are actually really useful. But please do this in written form.

Please spend time talking about why this was done in complete ignorance of customer wishes, while pretending it was to improve things.
Please explain why you removed useful features under the pretence that too many people were breaking their instances with them (CSS, HTML, etc.).
Please explain why it has been rolled out incomplete.
Please explain why any critical questions appear to be ignored, and your team only answer the easy or 'nice' questions.
Please explain why you seem to view us all as children who can't be trusted with more features.

I know you're developing a new something on the back end, and so it's not a case of removing features from existing software, but not adding them into new software. I understand that. I just want to know how you decided that you could remove them.

You seem to be taking the 'less is more' approach. That doesn't work here. Less functionality can only lead to fewer customers. And fewer customers are definitely not more customers.

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I hope they can address key server features on cloud, if not we will need to keep using server version.

Like • Tom Crespi likes this

totally agree

Hi @Pratima, this question wasn't answered even though it got more likes and was asked earlier than many other questions that were answered.

Is it because I suggested that your team only answers the easy questions?

Part of me just wants someone from Atlassian to admit that the whole process surrounding the new editor, from research to rollout, was poorly done. It just wants you to acknowledge that. Because until you acknowledge that, you're going to keep doing it this way.

The rest of me wants several bits of old functionality back.

Like • Dara likes this

But, I suppose if you want an easy question like 'when will x be available', when will we be able to nest admonition panels (Note, Tip, Warning, etc.) in lists (like you could in the old editor)?

There is a Jira ticket for it somewhere, but I can't find it.

Like • _Fabian A. Lopez likes this

The ability to next panels in the new editor isn't something that's on our current roadmap. Would love to know more about your use cases for this!

Do the thing
NOTE: Doing the thing might cause another thing to happen. If it does, then do this thing too.
Do the next thing.
TIP: You can also do this thing in this way.
Do the third thing.
WARNING: Make sure you do this thing correctly, otherwise it might delete some other thing.
Do something else.
INFO: This thing is only available in version x.
Click Save.
ERROR: If you see a "Cannot save the thing" error, check that you did this thing properly.

Like • Helen Griffith likes this

My use cases are that it's incredibly helpful to be able to nest panels in lists. You had it in the old editor. Whoever I spoke to from Support was surprised that it was not available in the new editor. It's pretty basic functionality.

Just because you don't use it in your own documentation doesn't mean it isn't helpful.

Incidentally, you do nest tables in lists in your own documentations. We can't do that in the new editor.

And I know Confluence Cloud isn't a dedicated documentation tool, which is why you use Confluence Server with various plugins, but you still advertise it as a tool you can use to create technical documentation.

Like • Helen Griffith likes this

Ultimately, it probably doesn't matter what my use cases are. If it's not on the roadmap now, the chances are I'll be using a different tool by the time you get around to "internalising" it, and I'll probably never know the outcome.

Are these replies even being read now that the AMA is over?

Like • chris likes this

Simple question.... Does Atlassian have any testing/QA of changes before you release them?

From the appearance of this year's editor change it is not apparent!

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Absolutely. We acknowledge that there have been some hickups over the past year, however, every version of the new editor gets QA'd aggressively.

Like • Bridget likes this

How about User Acceptance Testing?

Clearly releasing the narrow width format without an option for full width shows UAT testing is minimal at best.

That should have been put out as an alpha test with an RFC doc to the community first.

Yes the cloud version will have bugs that impact you immediately.

The server version allows the user better options to manage quality by not installing releases immediately. Setup a new release in a dev environment, validate nothing breaks before moving it to other environments.

The cloud version will continue to be "high risk" relatively despite their "aggressive testing". When they pass a fix, it shows up right away in your production spaces. No options in the cloud product to disable a fix or accept a fix, it's just there. We had a site outage at one point on a change due to a change not well tested.

The support team did a good job of rolling back the patch the next day when users complained which resolved the issue.

Like • chris likes this

Another simple question.... Why don't you require validated documentation to be released when the application change is released?

Docs are either absent, outdated, or just wrong for the new editor. Especially keyboard shortcuts.

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Good question, Bob. It's a challenge to keep our content up-to-date for any given customer on a given day as you may have some new features but not all. We realize that there are some pages that aren't accurate, and we are working make sure the content is accurate and helpful.

Like • Bridget likes this

So.... your answer is that since some customers have one set of features and others have a different set of features, that the documentation will just be wrong for some of them.

If you can dynamically select what features we have access to, why can't you also dynamically select what documentation we can get to?

I would think that getting documentation of the new features would be critical to understanding how the new features should be expected to behave.

Like • chris likes this

Another simple question... Why, if the functionality is supposed to be the same, did the keyboard shortcuts change?

This occurred for table manipulation in the new editor. And the choice of new keyboard shortcuts for row and column insertion actually conflict with Windows standard keyboard shortcuts to rotate the screen. If they were ever tested, they were not tested in a PC (which is used by the majority of your customers!)

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When will I regain the ability to create a place-holder link to a non-existant/planned/future page, then use that link as the starting point to create the new page? (This is yet another functionality that was eliminated with the new editor!)

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Thanks for the question. We have a ticket for this https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67129 and we'd love if you can vote on it/add a comment so we can keep gathering feedback on it for priority.

It is also noted as BUG https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-65634

Which I think came from my feedback (but there is no way of seeing that info.)

Like • chris likes this

Side note... How do you advertise these sessions? There were only 4 comments before yesterday. This has the appearance of a public forum that you didn't tell anyone about.

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Hi Bob - I'm Jessica, a Product Marketing Manager on Confluence Cloud. I'm responsible for setting up the AMA so I'll answer your question! Pratima graciously offered to do this session on short notice, so we announced it in the Community last week. I know that many AMAs are set up with more advanced notice, and we'll aim to do another one that follows that format. We're in the process of planning additional public forums where you can hear directly from the Confluence Product team. Our team is also eager to talk to customers in 1:1 interviews. Let us know if you're interested in setting one up.

For future reference, try announcing them on this page, since that's where most of the affected users seem to be congregating: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-discussions/Try-out-the-new-editing-experience/td-p/1000813

It seems to take someone spotting it by chance and sharing it on that page for the rest of us to learn about them.

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We (your customers) are trying for transparency! 1:1 interviews just hide this from the rest of the your customers. It may make one person feel as if they matter, but the rest are left to languish!

Like • Andy - PTC Redundant likes this

Hi @Bob Sovers

Atlassian offers many communication channels like 1:1 interviews, discussion threads they start, AMAs like this thread, the Jira tickets, and a place where we can create question and discussion threads ourselves (this community).

All of these are intended to work together.

Personally, I can hear your frustration and see that it is hand-in-hand with a genuine desire to use and be part of improving these products. I hope to see more of your posts in this community.

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1-1 interviews are inappropriate for this. So many people use Confluence for so many different things. At least focus groups would give you a chance to include more people, and these people could then share ways of working that might actually solve some of the issues without requiring major input from Atlassian. But we still end up back at the point raised by other people - we've already given Atlassian feedback in several of these channels.

Wait, this isn't a webinar? Is this actually just you giving an hour of your time to create replies to questions on here? I must have misread the post. That's a shame.

As already mentioned by someone else, there is a feedback page here: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-discussions/Try-out-the-new-editing-experience/td-p/1000813

Why not just go through that page and answer questions there? And why are they not being answered anyway?

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I still don't see any responses from Pratima Arora... Is this actually happening?

Six minutes for a two liner with a screenshot.

Oh no, now we're rolling.

ok... now a reply from Pratima

Oops... now we are to page 2 of comments. Now I have to scan thru both pages to see where the discussion is.

This appears to be possibly the worst method for a question and answer session. There is no way to know what question is actively being answered, so that we can actively add follow-up questions.

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I'm having to click through from my email, which opens it in a new tab, so I then need to close it and wait for the next email to avoid having 50 or so tabs open.

Hi Tom - Sorry for the confusion! I'm the Product Marketing manager for Confluence Cloud. This AMA in the Community is a live Ask Me Anything session where our Head of Product for Confluence Cloud answers questions from customers. As I mentioned in a previous response, we organized this under short notice, but we plan to do many more events with our team with more advanced notice. We're listening to your feedback on preferred format, and we'll experiment with different venues. If you're interested in webinar content, we recently broadcast a popular one called "New Features in Confluence Cloud for Improved Team Productivity". You can watch it here: https://www.atlassian.com/webinars/business/new-confluence-features-for-improved-team-productivity

That webinar was over 50% sales pitch to get us to spend more money on the Premium level. We want to know what the rest of us will get for our current level of expenditure.

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@Bob Sovers Yeah Bob! Hear, hear. Totally the worst format for a good Q&A... I think that whilst I appreciate AMA's as they often give great insight into Atlassian development/roadmaps, there are some serious issues with Confluence Cloud that aren't being resolved ! In some cases.... not even addressed. 😭👎
Would help if there was a serious Q&A!

@Jessica TaylorNo, the confusion was my fault. I didn't read the description properly. I'm disappointed that you need to schedule in time for us to get replies to our questions. The webinar you mentioned (at least, the part of it that wasn't sales pitch) and other feedback pages feel like questions are being cherry picked for ease of answering.

I'm also disappointed that you are asking us for more feedback and questions when there are a lot of unanswered questions and ignored, sorry, "internalised" feedback on another page.

Mainly I'm disappointed that a lot of useful features have been removed from the Confluence Cloud editor and when I ask why I'm told to give use cases why they should be kept. The onus should be on you to find out what we don't want and then remove them accordingly. You could have held off the rollout for another year while you made sure all the useful features in the legacy version were included in the new version.

Like • Dan Van Essen likes this

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CLOSED: Join Pratima Arora, Atlassian's Head of Product for Confluence Cloud, an AMA on Oct. 15.

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