Change to your content is in your hands

[Bob Bergman]

@r_karaivanov This might help you: https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html

[r_karaivanov]

Thanks @Bob Bergman , I'd start watching this page.

[Vince Rohr]

So we have pages with the new editor and the old editor.  I have users that do not know, nor care which editor they use.... but we now have two and people are confused.

Common issues now:

- inconsistencies in which tools they have available (E.G. images with borders, image effects, etc)

- inconsistencies in how to invoke editor features (E.G. '{' or '/' for macros, sections, tables)

- inconsistencies in default content appearance (E.G. sections, reactive width, etc)

- reports in 'data loss' with new editor (E.G. lost images, lost macro content (Gliffy), etc)

- pages not saving (when new), not saving changes or saving in an ineditable state (requiring revert)

I have had a significant amount of work created for me because of the issues with the new editor and how it was pushed on the community with what appears to be little or no regard for its impact.

This is still impacting us today.  When I filed tickets for these issues, first the ticketing system lost the tickets, then when it finally worked, the feedback seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

In its current state, this is a usability mess.  When can we expect some of this to get fixed?

[Tina Hutchinson]

@Tiffany Atlassian told me that after the new editor is rolled out to us, any Legacy pages that are edited and published will be permanently converted to the new editor.  Does this statement, "There will be no more default conversions without notice" mean that will no longer happen? That legacy pages will not auto-convert to the new editor when published?  Is there an option to keep pages in the old editor whenever we publish? 

I must agree with others here who are not happy about the bizarre changes Atlassian has forced on Confluence users again with this new editor. Now site admins have to explain to users how to use two different editors - the old one (mostly good), or the new one (mostly bad, except for the improvement to tables).  

Problems with the new editor: 

• Why does a new Blank page now default to a centered blog style, forcing users who want a normal full width, left-aligned page to click the arrows button?  A blog style page was already available in your templates for any users who wanted that! 
• Page layouts no longer include the full-width option. In order to use the full-width of the page, you have to not select a layout. That is not intuitive, it looks weird in the editor mode, and is difficult to explain to new users. 
• 40 text colors down to 7 colors - 6 of them bad. 

[Chellie Esters]

@Tiffany As you can see, there were MAJOR issues and inconsistencies with the new editor, and then when people tried to change to the new the old was brought back, and now the experience isn't the same.

Atlassian kind of 'owes' the content developers here a more meaningful discussion around the new editor. Us putting in bugs and such helped with the outcry, but now existing migrations are stuck in this weird limbo state. It doesn't look good as a brand and it should be addressed properly.

I hope the Atlassian team does the right thing here. Thanks!

[Kim Hirschman]

I am very encouraged that Atlassian is taking these steps.  I'm sure that the company's intentions were good but sometimes what looks good in one context is greeted with a lot of displeasure in another. For a really good example, see the story of New Coke. 

Now, to get back to my original question:  will the old template give us access to the "what changed" box again?

Thanks.   

[Traci Wilbanks]

Is this what you are looking for, @r_karaivanov?
https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html?

[chris]

Per the last comments, I contacted support to have the legacy editor re-enabled for when I create new pages, and they shut my ticket saying it reached billing. I re-opened it and they say they've passed it to the support team - but I have heard nothing since. Can someone please contact me to fix this problem? Or please update the article and give us a link to the right support team that will fix this for us.

[Tiffany]

Hi Community,

I wanted to clarify a few questions and points of concern.

If you are looking to better understand which features will be supported in the new editor from the old editor, please see our roadmap. We've also attached trackable tickets for each feature so anyone can vote on and see whether or not a feature will be moved to the new editor. 

Regarding the Legacy editor, we are not defaulting any new pages to the Legacy editor. We are simply keeping the Legacy editor template around for anyone who would like to create content using the Legacy editor as we continue moving to the Fabric editor. We understand that there are gaps that we need to address, and we want you all to know that our team is constantly making strides behind the scenes to do so. However, as we focus our efforts on closing the gap, we will not be adding features or fixing bugs on the Legacy editor unless we incur an incident. The best way you all can help, is to voice these concerns and vote on these issues if there are existing tickets. This is one of the best ways we check to make sure what we build puts our customers' needs first.

In the future, we will not be making any default forced changes to the new editor. We've heard the feedback from all of you, and this is not the direction we will take. As always, we stand by our value don’t #@!% the customer and will put you all first. 

[Ben Shuker]

Maybe what Atlassian should do @Tiffany is not release an incomplete product.

Imagine how much more smoothly this release could have gone had the fabric editor released with feature parity to the current editor that we all use.

As it is, the fabric editor is of no use to us, all it does is create additional work when we have to delete and recreate pages using the legacy editor.

I'd really like to see the option to complete disable the fabric editor until it's finished and I can create pages that follow the same look and feel as the hundreds of pages we already have.

[Vince Rohr]

We are in the 1000's of pages and attachments.

[chris]

@Tiffanydid you read my comment just before posting your comment after mine? The dialogue here says the old editor can be enabled at any time by contacting support - but there is no information on how to contact support. I went through the support link on the Atlassian website only to reach accounts. First they closed my ticket but I sent a reply. Then they said they would forward to technical support but that was days ago and I have heard nothing since. And now, as official Atlassian staff, you've replied to the thread but totally missed the opportunity to say "oh - let me follow this up for you. Please fill in this form at this link and I will chase up the request" or something like that. I cannot believe how impossible it is to get support with Atlassian. Why on earth can't you just re-enable the old editor for everyone and be done with it? Why do some customers, like me, have it removed from my templates? Why does the blog article suggest that for some users there are technical reasons why they will be slower to be upgraded than others? Are you holding this thing together with gaff tape?

[Shannon S]

Hello @chris, 

I am deeply sorry for the runaround you've been getting with this issue. I've done some investigation, and I can understand the problem now.

Our Support Offerings allow for any administrators of a Cloud site (Standard plan or better) to use the Support Portal.  Non-administrative users and Cloud Free users (both administrators and basic users) can still raise support tickets by creating a new question on the Atlassian Community site. The Atlassian Community support staff will then be able to assist you, since we're alerted to your question after it's been created.

In your case, your Confluence site is on a Cloud Free plan, thus you were directed to the Community to raise your request. The second issue is that you were logged in with your non-administrative user when you raised a ticket via our Support Portal. So, about 1.5 weeks ago, the engineer on your case sent you an approval request in order to enable the legacy editor, which you likely did not receive if you were still logged in with your non-admin account.

Because you were logged in using another account, you wouldn't have been able to see the access request. If you were to login to the support portal now, using your management@ email instead, you can confirm access, and we can enable the legacy editor on your site:

Can you take a look at that and please let me know if you're able to approve access with your administrative user?

Once you approve that, please let me know. I'll get in touch with the engineer so we can proceed right away. 

Regarding your concerns:

Why on earth can't you just re-enable the old editor for everyone and be done with it? Why do some customers, like me, have it removed from my templates? Why does the blog article suggest that for some users there are technical reasons why they will be slower to be upgraded than others? Are you holding this thing together with gaff tape?

Please me to gather some background information on this, and I'll follow-up with you on Monday!

By the way, if you ever need my help again with any Confluence issues, please feel free to tag me directly.

Take care, and have a pleasant weekend.

Regards,

Shannon

[Aleksandr Paren]

"The legacy editor isn’t going anywhere" - God bless!

I think you have to understand that a lot of users creating the specific documentation and the new editor functionality doesn't apply for them because the new editor looks simply and like a toy for bloggers and not for technicians or other professional staff. I think it nice decision to have a legacy editor for the professionals content employees and new editor for different kinds of users.

Anyway new editor has bugs, in my point of view new product has to be released only when it has been tested and no have bugs with the based functionality.

[Jan Bauer]

Please make sure that issue https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-65302 is fully resolved before deprecating the old editor and making it unavailable. This issue is mission critical for our business and we are already looking for alternatives.

[k.mchardie]

Thank you for listening to your customers.

[Andreas Neumann]

Thank you for the good news, that we may continue using the old editor. Would be great if you could update the text in the German "add" popup, it still says that the old editor will disappear in a few weeks.

[Jawann]

I really wish the new editor had feature parity with the old editor before it was released.

[Shannon S]

Hello @chris,

Apologies for not following up last week! In response to your question:

Why on earth can't you just re-enable the old editor for everyone and be done with it? Why do some customers, like me, have it removed from my templates? Why does the blog article suggest that for some users there are technical reasons why they will be slower to be upgraded than others? Are you holding this thing together with gaff tape?

The reason we didn't automatically make the change across all sites is that we want to give users the choice. However, most Confluence Cloud sites should still have the legacy editor template. For anyone who does not have the legacy editor template and requires it, they can request the site admin contact support to have it enabled.

There are also others who have been happy with the new editor, and do not have the legacy editor template. It's important that people have the choice if they want the additional template or are happy using the new legacy for all of their page creation needs.

Lastly, to answer your question about why someone might be slower to be upgraded, it depends on the size of the site and what kind of content is on the site. You can see How we roll out the new editor for more details on this.

Take care, and have a pleasant rest of your week.

Shannon

[Ian Kaplan]

I am very happy to see that the "legacy editor" (e.g., the editor that includes features that we count on and that is better than the new editor) will still be available.

I am also happy to see that Atlassian and the Confluence Cloud team in being more responsive. This has not been true in the past. Many of us felt that our comments were being ignored. This was a huge issue for me since I have so much content on Confluence that there is not easy way to move to another platform. I felt stuck in this "marriage" with a partner that was ignoring my needs. I am happy to see that this has changed (or so I hope).

[David Allyn]

This is a great run down, thank you for listening to the community's request for a better understanding of what's being done.

I need to express my opinion simply to relieve my frustration on the editing experience.  When you were developing the requirements and designing the UX, why did you try to reinvent the wheel from scratch?  And, if you were making a better editing experience, why did you choose markdown technique over an evolved editing experience?

It's clear that Atlassian has been moving away from a pure-programmer user base for a few years, and trying to draw in business users.  And, given that trajectory, why on earth would the UX team choose building upon a pure-programmer style in-line editing system?  Business users don't edit that way.

Business users use tools like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Camtasia.  These are the editing experiences of the users you want to attract - so why choose a editing UX that is decades old?  This editing experience has evolved over decades of feedback and adoption.  Why not start with those tools and build off them??

I challenge you - discuss with your colleagues and leaders building an editing experience that is truly 2020 contemporary.  Follow the lead of other products that already have business users, and build on top of *those* experiences for us.  Listen to what your users are asking for, or you may lose them to other products.

Atlassian is filled with extremely talented people.  I'm 100% sure you can create a kick-ass experience we've never seen.

Good luck - we're all counting on you.

[Ian_L_Kaplan]

Following up on @David Allyn 's comment: I am a software engineer and systems architect. I also have a consulting company (Topstone Software Consulting) and a local corporate entity for tax purposes.

I use Confluence for engineering notes and architecture notes.

I also use Confluence to keep track of all of things like quarterly tax filing, business expenses and payments. This is where the document link is critical. When I make a payment, I include a note in Confluence with a document link to the invoice and a document link to the payment. If someone tells me that they didn't get the payment, I can go back to the bank payment information and provide the date and other information.

Over the years I have become a heavy user of Confluence and I store a lot of information in it. For example, if I am traveling I have information on airplane tickets, hotels and rental cars. Often there are document links.

I went on a scuba diving vacation to Indonesia last November. This was a complicated and expensive trip. In addition to travel information, I had documents on travel insurance and dive insurance. All in Confluence.

I also keep my personal financial information in Confluence. For example, all of the information I need for my US yearly federal tax filings.

Confluence allows me to avoid getting buried in paper. If there is an important document, I scan it and store it in Confluence.

I have so much information in Confluence that there is no easy way for me to leave. This is why I have been so upset about the changes that were made with the new editor roll out. In addition, I felt that Atlassian was not being responsive to user concerns. This seems to have changed for the better.

We cannot change the past. The reasons for the cloud editor debacle don't matter as much to me as the path forward in providing an editor that provides the same features that I count on for my business and my personal life.

For many Confluence users Atlassian has released an inferior product in the new cloud editor for Confluence. This needs to be corrected. Again, we need the functionality we had with the old editor.

[Deleted user]

We have the new editor in our Cloud environment. And the features that are not supported here are really frustrating. Can anybody please tell me how to enable the legacy editor in the existing editor .

Regards,

PN

. 

[rod]

@[deleted]: You have to pass through Atlassian support to do that: https://support.atlassian.com/contact

[Ira Chandler]

And this is a glaring condemnation of the Atlassian policy of being "holier than thou", decimating functional products elements in favor of what some "committee" decides is a much better way to do things - without the slightest regard for the users who have to eat the dog food.

(A camel is a horse designed by a committee.)

Have you learned your lesson?

From my experience, until the superior attitude is removed from the top levels of management, Atlassian will not learn from this debacle of product destruction.

Prove me wrong.