2019: All Wrap(ped) Up Like a Present

[#1]

Hindsight might be 2020 but looking back, a lot of cool new features rolled out in 2019. From new collaboration and organizational powers to fresh templates and handy integrations, it’s been quite the glow-up for Confluence Cloud.

Here’s a holiday gift from us to you–our favorite features of 2019.

Create and collaborate

Save time with the all-powerful slash command

With the slash (/) command, you can add elements to your pages with a keystroke including tables, images, dates, macros, emojis and more.

Tidy up your table columns

Extract more insights from your data. When viewing a page, you can organize table columns to better spot trends. Arrange items like status, date, teammates, links, and more in ascending or descending order using table headers.

Jump to headings with anchor links

Connect people to your most relevant headings with anchor links. Add a link to your heading by hovering over it, clicking on the link icon that appears, and copying a link to the heading. After sharing the link, anyone who clicks will be teleported to that section on your page.

Feast your eyes on full-width pages

Full-width flexibility is great for pages that are information-dense and keep your readers from having to dig to find information on the page. Showcase information on one complete screen and your teammates will never miss another crucial detail!

With media picker, you don’t have to choose favorites

Make your content more memorable in Confluence by throwing in some extras with the media picker in Confluence Cloud. Add any file from Dropbox or Google Drive through the Confluence editor and access all of your files right from Confluence. If you really like spice, toss in a GIF from GIPHY.

The best part is that when you upload files to the media picker, those files will sync across all your pages in Confluence AND your Jira tickets, so you’ll never have to double-upload again.

Express yourself with improved comments

We introduced a new comments experience to help you better express ideas, have meaningful conversations, and keep information flowing.

• Quick commands: Type “/“ to open a menu, add tables, mentions, and more. Type “:” to add emoji!
• Native macros: Use native macro features in comments too like status, date, and code block.

Never forget a name with team mentions

With Teams in Confluence, you can keep track of groups of people like project teams, leadership groups, squads, and more. Mention Teams on a Confluence page or in comments to quickly add every person from the team without needing to remember who’s who.

Keep working on the go on mobile

With the new editing experience on mobile, you can add more sizzle to your pages with photos, videos, files, code snippets, panels and more using the + icon on your app. Tune up your content’s legibility and engagement when you use headings, bullets, colors, styling, and more.

Keep your projects' moving forward even when you’re on the go with the Confluence Cloud app, available for download for iOS devices and Android devices.

Organized chaos

Establish a new world order with drag n drop

Keeping Confluence pages all squared away in spaces can be challenging. With drag 'n' drop, you can continuously group pages by moving them around directly in the page tree.

Keep a neat space with contextual create

Add a child page under whatever page you like, directly from within the page tree. Hit the new + icon that pops up next to the page name in the page tree, and from your page will spring forth another one. Adding pages contextually lets you create them wherever you want them to live from the start.

Get back to recent pages with one click

Pick up right where you left off using recent drawer.  Find information faster like recently visited pages and drafts from anywhere in Confluence. Use the blue global nav on the left or the keyboard shortcut G then R.

Find what you’re looking for fast

Search like a pro with a better advanced search experience. Find anything and everything in Confluence with loads of search filters and info-rich results.

Time saving templates

Kickstart your marketing and team goals with built-in templates

We know what it’s like to stare at a blank Confluence screen, wondering how to get going while your mind keeps answering procrastination’s siren call. With five built-in Confluence templates, we’ve laid the foundation for you! These handy templates cover marketing campaign planning, competitive analysis, customer interviews, a messaging house framework, and blog posts.

We also added goal-setting templates to Confluence. Inspired by Atlassian’s Team Playbook, these templates give teams one best-in-class format to set, track, and stay focused on objectives. These templates – Goals, Signals, and Measures, OKRs, and Project Poster – can be found in the “Create” module.

Integration power-ups

Let the Jira roadmap handle that

With the Jira roadmap macro, it’s easier than ever to embed the URL of your roadmap into any Confluence page and see it materialize for you. From there, the link is live and accessible to anyone who wants to see it. An executive needs to okay your roadmap? Leave Jira to the engineers and head over to Confluence by typing /Jira roadmap. This feature is available in next-gen projects in Jira Software.

Take the wheel with the Google Drive integration

Keep all your files in Confluence to create a single source of truth with the Google Drive integration. Skip the tab switching when you embed and edit Google docs, sheets, and slides in your Confluence pages. Adjust Google files' height and width and click the expand button to get a full-screen view.

Make sure you have the Google Drive integration installed on your instance, then take it for a test drive. You can find the app on the Atlassian Marketplace Google Drive for Confluence listing. Once installed, paste the Google Drive file (Docs, Sheets, Slides) link in Confluence OR type /Google, /Google Docs, /Google Sheets or /Google Slides OR go to + (Insert) menu in Confluence editor and click on "View more" to find Google Docs, Google Sheets or Google Slides.

That’s a wrap for 2019! We hope you have an excellent holiday season, and we’ll see you in the next decade.

[Alberto Buritica]

I like the new colors and emojis but I miss all the important functionality that Atlassian removed.

[Bob Sovers]

If anyone is interested, here is a query that will pull up ALL of the public-facing Bugs and Issues in the Confluence Cloud product that are associated with the "Fabric Editor" :  (currently 505)

https://jira.atlassian.com/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20CONFCLOUD%20AND%20component%20%3D%20%22Editor%20-%20Fabric%22%20order%20by%20created

This one limits it to unresolved: (currently 363)

https://jira.atlassian.com/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20CONFCLOUD%20AND%20component%20%3D%20%22Editor%20-%20Fabric%22%20and%20resolution%20%3D%20Unresolved%20order%20by%20created

[Bob Sovers]

It is interesting that for the entire time that the new editor has been in place, 505 bugs and issues were filed, and only 80 were fixed, answered, or deployed.

Here is the full breakdown:

• Total files issues and bugs for Cloud Fabric Editor -- 505
• Unresolved -- 363
• Fixed -- 77
• Won't Fix -- 6
• Duplicate -- 44
• Cannot Reproduce -- 5
• Answered -- 2
• Not a Bug -- 3
• Tracked Elsewhere -- 2
• Deployed -- 1
• Won't Do -- 1
• Incorrectly Filed --1

I guess that we should be thankful that none have the resolution "Unsolved Mysteries"  (yes, that is a possible resolution!)

[Michael Corvin]

2019 has been a disastrous debacle for Confluence Cloud with the new editor being so buggy and having lost core functionality.  This has rendered Confluence Cloud unusable for many of our use cases and therefore largely irrelevant to our organization except as a rough note pad.  Usage has decreased and we'll be examining alternatives unless the New Year sees Atlassian rapidly fixing the problems and restoring the myriad lost functionalities.  

UI improvements are worthless if functionality is lost.   

Fortunately, our established Confluence server sites are stable and we continue developing them, extending automations through the API, etc..

[Dave Sugrue]

I can't believe you guys had the audacity to claim you are proud of what you achieved in 2019???

You destroyed Confluence and alienated a huge part of your Customer Base. WTF?

[Shannyn Johnson]

Don't f*ck the customer right? Isn't that the motto of Atlassian, and aren't we customers? This is an example of fixing what wasn't broken. Who wanted GIFs instead of layout functionality? I have never been writing an instructional document for our team and thought "you know what would make this more professional? A GIF of a dog blowing out a birthday candle." Drag and drop is cool and all but moving a child page doesn't make it inherit the new parent page permissions, leaving us with the same moving options as before. Oh but now we have "sizzle" good job marketing team. 

[Sérgio Felix]

I've been using Jira for a little over a month and really enjoyed the power I gain within a Workflow, at least for me as a new user from Trello and Asana, it's been great!

[Ammar Kantawala]

Its been end of 2019 but the anchor link feature does not work at all. I am using the #name functionality and sharing the link to the teams accordingly to refer to specific sections. 

[Vincent Mann]

I agree search is improved.

[Jessica Taylor]

Hi all – We understand that some of you were disappointed by the transition to the new editor. I want to assure you that we’ve heard this feedback and internalized it. It will help shape the way we prioritize future features on the roadmap, how we roll them out, and bring our customers along also in 2020!

2019 was full of highs and lows. Our team learned a ton from you in the process on where we did well and not so well. As a result, we’ve tried to increase transparency with AMAs, one-on-one meetings with our product teams, focus groups, and more frequent Community engagement.

At the same time, our team continues spending time on our feature rollout strategy with lead time for site admins to learn about changes and prepare for them as well as giving end-users tools that will help ease their transition. In November, we invited customers getting ready to receive the new editor to learn about the transition and ask questions. This outreach was inspired by feedback we received from this Community! We’re also committed to keeping the editor roadmap here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html updated so customers can see the status of new features, legacy functionality, and bugs.

Thank you for your passion and your dedication along the way.

[K R Ramakrishnan]

Love the features. Have started using confluence since last couple of months. I want to know whether action items in the meeting notes are trackable without a Jira interface.

[Deleted user]

@Jessica Taylor Thank you for acknowledging that some users have been disappointed by the new editor.

I am fairly confident that the vitriol expressed in these threads correlates directly with the seeming disinterest demonstrated by Atlassian staff for the genuine difficulties facing long-term users who are disadvantaged by what is doggedly promoted as an improvement.

I enjoy using the "legacy" version of the editor. It does what I need, and I know how to get around its limitations to achieve the results my company expects. The new editor looks great, but it feels like something superficially beautiful that is tightly bound within a straightjacket.

Thank you for honestly recognising that some (and it's probably many) users are feeling shell-shocked and resentful.

It would be helpful for Atlassian to engage with users to address the struggles imposed upon them by the new editor.

[Dave Sugrue]

@Jessica Taylor - you say you heard our feedback, but what have you done?

You don't seem to realise the urgency here. For those of us forced to use Fabric, we have been completely paralysed. While you decide about what to do (fix the huge amount of issues, or abandon Fabric for the terrible concept it was), the very least you can do is re-enable the legacy editor for us, so we can actually do our jobs? In the past few weeks, my team has pretty much abandoned Confluence and reverted to emailing each other word docs etc because of the disaster that is Fabric.

Can you please tell us what you are going to do with those of us who are denied access to the legacy editor? When can we start using Confluence again?

[Deleted user]

@Dave Sugrue If you have existing content created in the legacy editor, you should at least be able to use a copy/clone of an existing page as the host for new content.

[Dave Sugrue]

@[deleted] unfortunately, we are using a cloud instance we recently set up for this project (as it is shared by 2 organisations). Therefore, we only have Fabric (no legacy content).

For other cloud instances I use old templates to create pages and then delete the content to give myself a blank new page. It is stupid, cumbersome, frustrating (and should be embarrassing for Atlassian), but that is what we have been reduced to.

EDIT - Jan 2020 - Just to update people, I contacted the Atlassian Founders and was migrated back to the Old Editor. But not sure for how long.

[Tom Crowley]

@Dave Sugrue Damn... Have you tried exporting an unsuitable page from an old site and importing it into your new instance?

It might not work, but if you've got another site to play with, might be worth a go?

[Tom Crowley]

And, @Jessica Taylor, "the transition to the new editor." is only half of the disappointment. It's the new editor in and of itself that is causing the most harm. You can't improve the transition or rollout while the end product is still unsuitable.

2019 might have been a learning experience, but we're paying the price for the lesson. The longer this farce goes on, the less you can justify pushing the new editor on us. How would you feel if I came to your office and removed all the keyboards from your computers? You'd still be able to type. You could pull up an on-screen keyboard and use the mouse to point and click the letters. You wouldn't like that, though, would you? And what if you were paying me to do it? And I was telling you that it was an improvement, and that I was "proud" of myself for giving you this "cool new feature". And whenever you complained I "internalised" it, and so my own superiors and the board of the company I work for never heard any of these complaints. 

How would you feel? Would you be angry? Would you kick against it? Would you try to find a new computer? And what if the on-screen keyboard was buggy, and didn't even do the things it pretended to do? Would you get more angry? What if the Shift key didn't work, and it was missing the number 7 and the letter A? And when I posted my articles saying how rosy everything was, and how much good work I'd done, wouldn't you be just a little bit upset? And when a few people who use touchscreens told me it was a good idea because it looked more modern, and I liked their comments, and replied with happy messages, and appeared to disregard your negativity, or have it censored, or just "internalised" it some more, wouldn't that affect you? Wouldn't you want to know what "internalise" even meant?

Wouldn't you hate that your job was now much harder? And that other people were complaining to you about things that weren't your fault? Wouldn't you begin to feel some resentment towards me for doing this? And wouldn't you start to stop caring whether you made my job harder, because I'd made your job harder? And when people told you to not criticise me, and think about my feelings, wouldn't that make you feel like no one cared about your feelings? Or your job? Or you? And if I promised to improve and listen to your feedback, but never gave you your keyboard back, wouldn't that make it all feel meaningless? Wouldn't you just not care what I said, because you still didn't have a tool you should be able to use every day to do your job? Wouldn't you be a little bit scared about your own job? What if you can never do it properly again? What if your customers don't like the way you type things now, with no letter As or number 7s? What if this change was a lot more serious than I thought?

What if we swapped places and you had to deal with this instead of us? How would you feel?

So... Merry Christmas, I guess. 

[Dave Sugrue]

@Tom Crowley - that worked, thanks! Hadn't even tried it as I assumed that it would try to convert an imported page.

So now, every time someone wants to create a page, they have to copy an existing one, delete the content and move it. And now I need to go back and recreate all the existing content that we tried to create in Fabric, so that the entire site is consistently using the legacy editor.

It's a brutal workaround, but that is unfortunately what atlassian have left us with.

[Tom Crowley]

@Dave SugrueNo worries! I wasn't sure whether it would or not, but thought it had to be worth a go. I remembered that back when I was (oh so very) naively trying to get all of our stuff on the new editor and we were importing documents, they all imported in the old editor. 

(We took Confluence on mid-year, and I stupidly made the call to have our site moved over before realising the full extent of the reduction in functionality and performance. Regrets? Yeah, I've had a few!)

And that sounds like a horrible task. Good luck with that.

[Deleted user]

@Tom Crowley Oh, my! What a perfect analogy. Thank you for creatively expressing my own deep frustrations for which I could find no outlet without being moderated or being accused of hurling insults. Thank you.

@Jessica Taylor I know you're simply doing the job you're paid to do, but for the love of all things holy, can you not see how the Fabric Editor is preventing many of us from doing the jobs we, too, are paid to do?

If there were a commitment to introduce user-configurable elements into the new editor that provided a facility for existing users to build in the functionality we have depended on for so long—and the editor was allowed to mature alongside the legacy editor until it was truly ready—I believe you'd have no end of adoring fans rather than what you have right now.

The Fabric Editor has the potential to be amazing, but right now it is anything but.

[Tom Crowley]

@[deleted] I feel like I write my best material on these threads...! If only I could channel it into novel writing, I could quit the day job!

And great summary. The potential is there, but it's still a few years away from being a replacement for power-users.

[David Revilla]

Add Bulk Clone, please!

[Deleted user]

@David Revilla I don't expect a bulk-clone option to be introduced in my lifetime. My company maintains a subscription to the Copy Page Tree plug-in (by Artemis Software from the marketplace). It does what it says (and also includes the option to delete entire page trees, too). I can't imagine why Atlassian would expend energy on creating a solution when it is able to point customers to a commercial solution instead for which it needs to provide no support.