Content nesting enhancements in Confluence Cloud

[#1]

Hi Atlassian Community! I’m Kieran, a Product Manager on the Atlassian Editor team. 👋

We're excited to introduce enhanced nesting capabilities in Confluence Cloud. Based on your feedback, you now have more flexibility to organize your content by embedding different elements within each other. This includes panels, lists, actions, quotes, and soon, nested expands.

Imagine crafting beautifully organized documents with nested information layers, making it easier for your readers to navigate and understand your content.

For more details, see what's new below.

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What’s new

Actions inside lists

Include actions in numbered and bulleted lists.

Lists inside quotes

Add numbered or bulleted lists in quotes, including lists with actions.

A more flexible panel

Nest media, code blocks, actions, dividers and decisions in panels.

Enhanced nested expands

Soon, you can nest the following inside a nested expand (e.g. an expand in a table):

• lists (bullet and numbered)

• actions

• code blocks

• panels

• quotes

• dividers

• decisions

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We hope you enjoy these updates!

- Kieran Gray and the Editor team

[Jan Kuntscher - appanvil - Aura Karma Mantra]

Hello Atlassian Community and team,

As an app vendor deeply invested in the ecosystem, I've been following the enhancements in Confluence Cloud with great interest. The introduction of advanced nesting capabilities promises to transform how content is organized and presented, which is a fantastic development for all users.

However, I feel compelled to address a longstanding issue that significantly impacts both vendors and users alike. The issue, tracked under CONFCLOUD-68323 since 2019, highlights the absence of nesting support for body macros developed by third parties. Despite nearly 800 votes, this critical concern seems to have received limited attention, which raises questions about the prioritization of features that foster a truly inclusive and versatile platform.

The exclusion of third-party macros from these new nesting capabilities not only hinders our ability to innovate but also diminishes the overall utility and flexibility of Confluence Cloud for end-users. This oversight seems to represent a missed opportunity to fully embrace the collaborative spirit and potential of the Atlassian ecosystem.

By integrating support for nesting all macros, including those developed by the vibrant community of app vendors, Confluence could significantly enhance its value proposition. Such an inclusive approach would not only address the concerns expressed in CONFCLOUD-68323 but also pave the way for a more dynamic and customizable user experience.

I understand the complexities involved in implementing these changes, but I firmly believe that by working together, we can overcome these challenges. I urge the Atlassian team to reconsider the priorities and allocate the necessary resources to resolve this issue, reflecting the community's needs and the collaborative ethos we all value.

In closing, I hope this feedback underscores the importance of addressing long-standing concerns and fostering an environment where every contribution, whether from Atlassian or the app vendor community, is valued and nurtured. Together, we can achieve a more inclusive, flexible, and powerful platform that truly meets the needs of all its users.

Thank you for your attention to this matter and for your ongoing commitment to improving the Confluence experience.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Lists inside quotes - been waiting for this one! Great improvements 😄

[Kieran Gray]

Hey @Jan Kuntscher - appanvil - Aura Karma Mantra thanks for this feedback. There is an early-access program underway at the moment for a Multi-bodied extension API. You can find out more about this here and if its suitable to some of your needs, I'm sure the team would be keen to have you join the EAP. 

[Jan Kuntscher - appanvil - Aura Karma Mantra]

Thank you for bringing up the Multi-bodied extension API. While we're in the loop about this development and engaged with Atlassian from early on, it's crucial to articulate that this API, primarily designed for tabs, does not fully address our concerns or the needs of the broader developer community. Its current form limits the potential for broader innovation and integration, particularly because it doesn't support the comprehensive nesting capabilities that third-party macros require.

This specific limitation echoes a larger industry-wide challenge of ensuring equitable opportunities for all ecosystem participants. The dispute between Spotify and Apple provides a poignant example, where Spotify contested Apple's practices within its App Store as creating unfair advantages. Although our situation with Atlassian is distinct, it similarly highlights the need for an ecosystem that supports fairness and inclusivity, enabling all partners to innovate and compete on an equal footing.

In light of this, we advocate for a more expansive approach that accommodates the full spectrum of developer contributions, ensuring the Confluence ecosystem remains vibrant, competitive, and equitable. We remain dedicated to constructive engagement with Atlassian towards solutions that enhance value for all stakeholders in the ecosystem.

[Barbara Szczesniak]

So I still can't insert an image or a note panel in a list? (Yes, I know there was a workaround put out, but that just messed up your ability to select text anywhere around where you continued the list numbering.)

These are standard parts of writing step-by-step procedures. It would be nice to be able to align the image or panel with the text of the list item, but, right now, I'd settle for being able to insert it at all.

[CDougherty]

It's so disappointing to finally get movement on this and it's a half baked solution.  

[mawi]

A great step forwards towards achieving feature parity with the old editor!

This has been sorely missed - expands with code snippets, expands in tables, with code snippets, expands in tables with images, etc, etc. 

There is alot of work that remains but this is a great step forward, enabling us to move to the new editor in many more pages. Thanks!

[Cherri]

I am still waiting for the expand inside the excerpt macro I have over 60 procedures to convert and cant while this option is no longer available, why did you take this option away in the cloud version?

[Bo Bøgvald]

So, improving nesting here, removing nesting there (tables)....?? Looking forward to see nesting reintroduced for tables.

[Peter Tima]

Hello Atlassian team,

I am delighted to see that Atlassian is working on nesting of different objects within lists.
I am posting my comment here also on behalf of my colleagues, all of us being technical writers.

We use different boxes (i.e., Info, Warning, Error) at any required level
in nested lists. Specific to this was the fact that the info box was displayed at the same
left, indented margin as its related list object of type 'text'. The effect was that the text in the
info box was limited to the related list object and building up the context of the second list object:

Here is an example how it SHOULD BE:

This doesn't work anymore: Now, the info box spans from the very left to the very right margin,
regardless of the nesting level. Also, the last list object ('Third list object...') IS NOT indented anymore!

Here is an example how IT IS NOW:

This totally breaks the content structure and also the numbering of the nested lines.
And above all, the user becomes confused because the box frame now indicates
to relate to nesting level 0 which is wrong.

I want to point out that positioning an info box at a certain indentation level in a list
is a fundamental tool for holding together content at a specific place.
Therefore (and I think I am speaking for a larger community here) we would appreciate
if this issue could be solved with high priority, because daily content is often
required to be attributed by additional info, note, and error boxes. AND: we need this
urgently because we have thousands of articles that contain these boxes.

Thank you for you support in advance.

[Daniel Rykheer]

One small step for mankind.... Still the "unlimited" nested expands, eludes us.
It's a step forward, but we need more. Nesting is such a basic thing in documentation and readability.

(Expands should work like lists. Not like blocked and bordered embedded content)