Announcing Confluence 7.13 as the next LTS release

[Makisa Appleton]

Hey team and @MadelineBarr @Praneeth LV @Robert Horan @Mark Johnson @Marco Palumbo @Todd Alden 

Thanks again for bearing with us - we are certainly looking forward to releasing our next LTS! We have resolved a number of complex issues and a number that we considered to be blocking issues. I have good news in that we are preparing 7.12.4/7.13 Beta for release in the next week.

[Rita Nygren]

Waiting for an update on this release date.

[Makisa Appleton]

Hey team

Today we released a beta for Confluence 7.13.

New in 7.13

To find out what’s in this release, check out the Confluence 7.13 beta release notes.

Confluence 7.13 is a Long Term Support release, so we’re not including any new features or significant changes. This release is focused on bug fixes.

Many customers on Confluence 6.13 and 7.4, our last Long Term Support releases, have been eagerly awaiting this Long Term Support release, and we are expecting a lot of upgrades to this version. You can also check out our Preparing for Confluence 7.13 guide to help with your testing. We’ll update that page regularly, so keep an eye on it to see any changes.

Get started

Download the beta from our site to start testing.

[Ollie Guan]

Cool, THX! @Makisa Appleton 

[Robert Horan]

This is great news - if the beta has just been released, what is the ETA for a full release that customers can use for production instances?  I only ask because I need to provide an update to others.

[Plarium Ukraine]

@Makisa Appletonhello.
1. any estimates for "real" enterprise release? "beta" and "LTS" in one sentence is sound funny, its not safe to upgrade production server with beta release.
2. any estimates on XML-RPC API deprecation or REST API extension for user management (bulk disabling and creating users)? you deprecating XML-RPC, but dont give alternative instrument for automation.

[Makisa Appleton]

Hi @Robert Horan and @Plarium Ukraine 

Thanks for your comments and appreciate that a hard date would help with your planning. As you've likely gathered, we tend not to publish dates as there is still a possibility for us to hold back our release. This may happen through our final stages of testing and we may not ship as planned (as per internal dates). All going well however, we will next ship a release candidate/s followed by the full release. I'll continue to provide updates on this post. 

@Plarium Ukraine No current estimates on the API and acknowledge that this a longstanding ask. If you have additional feedback/use cases for this feature, please add to CONFSERVER-56205.

Thank you!

[Robert Horan]

Thank you @Makisa Appleton - its great to hear that the release date is rapidly approaching.  There are upgrades on hold, as I'm sure is the case for many others.  

[Plarium Ukraine]

Hello @Makisa Appleton
So no estimates, no API methods that already exist in bitbucket and jira and we need to wait 10 more years to get 500 votes in ticket?

[Jonny Carter]

For those watching, the RC is published. https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/preparing-for-confluence-7-13-1044114061.html

[Robert Horan]

For those with experience waiting on new releases, what is a realistic ETA for an official release given that an RC was made available several days ago?

[Ollie Guan]

Finally, 7.13 is here!

https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/confluence-7-13-release-notes-1044114085.html

[Makisa Appleton]

YES, we have released Confluence 7.13 LTS! Please read the details and find handy links to upgrade resources on this post: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-articles/Just-landed-Confluence-Server-and-Data-Center-7-13-LTS-Long-Term/ba-p/1779388#M2776

Thanks, team. Please post any further questions/comments on the new post and I'll try and answer them there.

[Marco Palumbo]

Thanks @Makisa Appleton 

We all were eagerly waiting for it (I checked almost every hour yesterday to see it was released)

So now I'm ready to update and do all the needed tests in a pre production environment but I see that 7.13 is not yet listed in the "Plan your upgrade" section. Do you have any idea about when (I'm located in Italy) it will come up? I'd like to reproduce all the steps of the upgrade as it will be in the production environment. 

Thanks a lot

[Makisa Appleton]

Hi @Marco Palumbo thanks for your excitement for 7.13. It is strange that 7.13 is not appearing for you and is recommending 7.12.2! Plan your upgrade is part of the Support Tools Plugin - could you please check that it is up to date?

There is more information on how to update apps on this page if you're not familiar: https://confluence.atlassian.com/support/pre-upgrade-planning-tool-973479832.html 

Hope this helps, otherwise, please don't hesitate to contact our Support team for more detailed assistance.

[Marco Palumbo]

Hi @Makisa Appleton I totally agree that is strange. The Support Tools Plugin version is 1.32.12 that seems to be the last version.

I tried disable/enable and uninstall/install of the plugin without any improvement.

BTW I see 7.13 on Apps Confluence update check... 

[Marco Palumbo]

Hi @Makisa Appleton I sorted out the problem.

Checking on the page https://confluence.atlassian.com/support/pre-upgrade-planning-tool-973479832.html I've seen that the plugin contact https://puds.prod.atl-paas.net/rest/v1/upgrade/info to retrieve releases informations.

Then checking on the firewall I realized that SSL Decription was causing the issue. 

URL excluded from decryption => Issue Solved 

[Makisa Appleton]

Hi @Marco Palumbo thank you for the update! I'm so glad that you were able to troubleshoot and figure this out! Hope your upgrade planning goes smoothly from here.

[Praneeth LV]

As a part of pre upgrade checks I realised there are couple of plugins like space admin and excellentable aren’t compatible with 7.13 yet, would have to check with the vendor!!

[Robert Horan]

Hi @Praneeth LV - Excellentable will be compatible with Confluence 7.13 shortly. Please keep an eye on the marketplace page:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211672/excellentable-spreadsheet-for-confluence?tab=overview&hosting=datacenter

[Babu R]

How do I get to know the ETA for Confluence 7.13.2 ?? 

[Amit Jain]

When will 7.13 get a version with Tomcat 9.0.54? Is there any ETA for that?