Convert your old templates to the new editor!

[#1]

Hi Atlassian Community,

My name is Avni Barman and I am a Product Manager on the Confluence Tailored Experiences team! Following the recent release of page migrations, we are now giving admins the ability to migrate their Confluence templates. This feature will start rolling out in a few weeks. With our template migration tool, you can convert your old templates to the new editor in a few clicks! If you are a space or site admin of your Confluence Cloud instance, read on to find out more about how you can use this feature!

Converting Your Content Faster with Template Migrations

We are saving you time with our template migration tool so that you don’t have to convert end-user content to the new editor page by page when they use templates in the old editor. With this new feature, we are tackling the user pain of “split-brain” (having two editors in the same instance) and making it easier for admins to move their instances towards one unified editing experience.

Here’s how it works:

Go to your Space Settings and click Content Tools to see which templates are on the old editor that you can click to Convert

Preview the content first before converting

and that’s it! Your template is now migrated and all new pages created from this template will be created in the new editor! For now, only fully supported templates will be capable of migration.

Feedback or Questions

Don’t forget to let us know any feedback or questions you have in the comments. We’d love to hear your suggestions on how we can make this experience even better for you!

[David at David Simpson Apps]

Thanks for this.

What happens when legacy templates contain nested macros?

[Jen]

I haven't seen the expand macro released to the new editor, many of our templates include the excerpt macro nestled inside the expand macro, we wouldn't be comfortable converting without this functionality.

Also, we need to have the ability to restrict/hide page comments.  The HTML macro doesn't support this in the new editor.

Appreciate your response, looking forward to conversion.

[Reinier]

Sounds good and it looks nice but is there a possibility to roll it back to the old template if this is not working as expected? And are other items included like Gliffy?

[Philip]

I would tread lightly and have a contingency plan in-place if your current templates include designs that do not work in the new editor. The new editor has severely broken some of our design templates and we've had to wait months for either someone to make a Marketplace Add-on or for a feature to be natively supported.

[Robin De Pauw]

Any idea if this will ever be a thing for global templates? 

We mainly work with global templates instead of space templates. I assume this will be added in the future or will we need to recreate all the global templates? 

Thanks!

[Avni Barman]

@David at David Simpson Apps @Jen thank you for your questions! Nested macros are not currently supported in the new editor. So, if your template has a nested macro there is no way to convert that today and that template will have to stay in the legacy editor. @Philip Unlike page conversions, any elements not supported in the Fabric editor today will not be available for template conversion for now. We will let you know if anything changes and if we plan to support this in the future!

@Reinier since we are not allowing conversion of unsupported content, you will not be able to roll it back to an old version. However, we are only allowing template conversions of supported content so you will not loose any functionality or data if you do plan to convert your template to the new editor! Additionally, if your template incorporates Gliffy, it should be eligible for conversion without any issues.

[Avni Barman]

@Robin De Pauw Yes, this will be available for global templates with fully supported content as well! 

[Linda Schumacher]

How do we find out when we can convert?

[Jen]

@Avni Barman follow up:  Is there an expire date for the old editor?

[Avni Barman]

@Linda Schumacher you should be able to convert your templates in about a few weeks! I'll make sure to reach out to you here to update you when the feature is ready.

@Jen The legacy editor isn't going anywhere.

We know that many of you are concerned about all the changes and what they may mean for the future of the legacy editor. We have no plans to end-of-life it in the foreseeable future, and if and when we do, we'll make sure to explicitly communicate it well in advance. Please check out this community article to learn more about our stance on this topic!

[Reinier]

@Avni Barman thanks for the honest answer. I guess you will understand we will not migrate until most of the issues that come along with a new deployment are fixed. This to avoid jumping through a lot of hoops if we do and encounter issues.

[Pawel Kowalski]

Is this feature now available?

Avni ATLASSIAN TEAM Oct 13, 2020

@Linda Schumacher you should be able to convert your templates in about a few weeks!

[Avni Barman]

@Pawel Kowalski So sorry for the delay on our end. This feature isn't available yet but I will be sure to reach out to you all here when it is ready - thank you!

[Bronagh Quinn]

@Avni Barman Can you please let me know when the convert feature will be available? 

[Avni Barman]

@Bronagh Quinn @Pawel Kowalski @Linda Schumacher The feature is now available! Sorry for the delay and thank you so much for your patience.

[Linda Schumacher]

@Avni Barman There's one page that won't let me convert. I get this screen when I click Convert. Please advise. Thanks.

[Avni Barman]

@Linda Schumacher try refreshing your Content Tools page! Maybe another admin deleted that template. If that doesn't work then potentially your template contains unsupported content. In that case, it wouldn't be eligible for conversion. Hope that helps and please don't hesitate to reach out with any more questions!

[Linda Schumacher]

@Avni Barman this template is rarely used and I edited it - it has very simple content (a couple of tables). It's not super crucial.

[Linda Schumacher]

@Avni Barman when I tried to create a page from this template and then convert it, it told me there is a conversion issue. Something about the content, but not sure what that would be. I'm playing with it to see if I can remove that content or reformat it - if I can figure out which content it's complaining about.

Update - So it finally converted after I removed a header at the end of the template. So we're good to go now. Thanks!

[Matthew Billington]

@Avni Barman - I'm also getting the "We can't find the page" error page when attempting to Convert templates. Even very basic templates with just a header and a "Children Display" macro are failing.

I haven't had the feature work on any templates in our space.

[Avni Barman]

@Matthew Billington Thank you so much for letting us know! We have implemented the fix. Can you please try again? Thanks!

[Jenny Severin]

As this bug is not resolved: CONFCLOUD-67460  , is it possible to revert a template that was converted back into the old editor? 

[Avni Barman]

@Jenny Severin unfortunately you will have to go in and manually make those changes as there is no way to revert a template back to the old editor once it is converted. Thanks for understanding!

[gareth.thackeray]

I don't have a "Content Tools" option in my Space Settings.  What do I need to do to get access to it?

[gareth.thackeray]

Found it!  Space settings -> Look and feel -> Templates