Fresh, full-width, and colorful new features

[#1]

Hey there, Community!

I’m Avinoam from Confluence Product Management. With the ability to store so much content on a Confluence page, it can be a challenge to make the most relevant information easy to find. Today I’m excited to tell you about some new ways you can make the need-to-know info easily accessible to your readers.

You’re now in full-width control
Last month, we announced the ability to make your pages full-width using a toggle at the top of the page.

If you want to keep that as a default setting across all your new pages you, change your primary setting, click user setting > Editor > Enable full-width as default for new pages. 👀 Showcase information on one complete screen and never make users skim over a crucial detail.

Jump to headings with anchor links
Connect users to your most important headings with anchor links. ⚓️Simply insert a heading → hover over the heading → click on the link icon that appears to copy a link to the heading. Once you share the link, anyone who opens it will be transported to that heading in your document. Avoid the endless scroll by sending your users straight to the info they need. (we're rolling this out gradually over the next couple of weeks, so if you don't see it yet - hold tight, you will soon!)

Paint the big picture in tables
Color us excited to introduce our extended color palette! 🎨 Refresh your table cell backgrounds with a variety of pastel and pop. You can now color code feedback, group, and highlight rows, or add pain scales to your tables.

Sort your table columns
See more from your data. When viewing a page, you now have the power to organize your table columns. Arrange items like status, date, mention, links, and more in ascending or descending order through the header of the table.

Feedback?

Try these out and let us know what you think! Please leave us a comment below.

[Kat Warner]

Are these improvements coming to on-premise Confluence soon or are they Cloud only?

[Chris Newland]

Are all these features live in Confluence Cloud now? Sorting tables works fine for me, but I can't seem to get the linkable heading to work at all - I hover over and nothing happens, no link icon... 

[Avinoam]

@Kat Warner on-premise and cloud currently use different editors with the introduction of the new cloud editor, so these changes only focused on the Confluence Cloud at the moment in the new editing experience.

@Chris Newland - all features above are available now in Confluence Cloud as part of the new editor. The new editor is rolling out gradually, but in case it hasn't rolled out to you yet you can use it via Blogs, Meeting Notes, or a new template for blank pages where you can use the new editor. Link-able headers specifically is also rolling out gradually only as part of the new editor, so if you don't see it yet - you will soon!

[Mochen Liu]

Can we define cell background color by color code? Instead of just a set of pre-defined colors? 

[Shaun Sheehan]

All the colors in the table are great, but what we really need are the text colors back for the body of our pages.  We have been limited to only 7 colors, and not one of them is blue... We need our colors back...

[David Gregory]

For linkable headings, will this be able to be used in other Confluence pages so that Confluence knows of the reference using search or recent (not done as a web link)? If this is not available, then you are effectively forcing us to use child pages even when the content is too short to make this reasonable.

[Melissa Romagnoli]

I am loving these new features, thanks!

[Chris Glynne]

I'm not seeing any of these in my Confluence Cloud instance.
What am I missing?

[Ches Spencer]

What is the expected date for these new features to be available to all Cloud customers as you mentioned this to include a gradual release?

[David Gregory]

When will you (or are you planning this at all) provide a mechanism whereby we can test the conversion of pages from the old editing experience to the new editing experience? This should be possible on a single page (or at the very least on a single space). Converting all of a customer's pages without a way to roll back does not allow us to do any testing on the conversion.

[Eugen Walcher]

Is it possible to have a default sorting column in a table no matter how it’s designed?

[Risto Pearce]

I love tables in confluence, they add so much value.

I hate not being able to do some basic arithmetic in tables. Seriously a few spreadsheet functions would go a long way here when I'm trying to do quotes, or any form of data analysis.

Either that or allow a better way to embed a particular section of google sheets with read only controls so it looks like a native table (that is specify the exact range of cells rather than "height" and "width")

[Anand Rajaraman]

Good news!! But LINKABLE HEADING doesn't seem to be functional still. Does this LINKABLE HEADING feature in pilot phase and not released for Cloud customers? https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-66773

[Tine Uldahl Vigsø]

How do I get these new features to work? There seems to be no changes when I create a new page in confluence.. 

We use cloud.. 

[Jane Cormack]

Hi - I often struggle to copy and paste content in my table into other rows in the table. It will copy a full row, but then paste all elements into a single cell. Is there a way to do this so I can move content around more easily in my table rows?

[Tony Vlcek]

Thumbs up for implementing "Jump to headings with anchor links" that was one feature that I was really lacking in the new editor.

[Itay Eliaz]

Regarding 'headings with anchor links', when generating Confluence pages which are later accessible via Jira Desk the pages' public URLs change, and the anchor links to headings within the page no longer work. Any foreseen solution to this use case?

[Ivan Lamačka]

Similar as Shaun Sheehan wrote, I am missing bacground colour for standard text (highlighted text) and for "White" text color especialy for all dark bacgroundcolour for tables.

[Avinoam]

The ability to opt in and preview legacy pages in the new editor is something we're almost ready to start rolling out so stay tuned for a post on that soon!

[Jermy Hoffman]

When table have a header row (normally it has), after publishing the page, it is impossible to select the header row, so if you want to copy it, you can't.

[Avinoam]

@Jermy Hoffman I can't seem to reproduce that. Sorry you're encountering that though! Would you mind opening a quick support ticket here https://support.atlassian.com/contact/ so we can have a closer look? thanks!

[Avinoam]

Here's the post on how we roll out + future glance into migrations: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-articles/How-we-roll-out-the-new-editor-in-Confluence/ba-p/1204966

[Jermy Hoffman]

@Avinoam Thanks for your fast response.

You are right, it was only in pages created from the old blank page template.

It is possible to select Table header in pages created using the New Editor.

New Editor:

Old Editor:

[Avinoam]

@Jermy Hoffman glad to hear it's working! Please let me know if there's anything else we can help with.

[Jeff Scattini]

@Avinoam or @Sunnyat Ahmmed - How are we supposed to convert old Anchor macros to these new linkable headings? I use a LOT of anchors in my templates. And, if I want to have a consistent look to my wiki, I need to convert all old pages to the new editor. How do I do that for macros that are disabled in the new editor? I'm using Anchor links as the example, but this has wide-ranging implications for us...

But focusing on Anchors, and leaving out for the moment that a lot of my anchors aren't tied to headings, how do I convert existing anchors to your new linkable headings? Because I am looking at thousands of individual pages and multiple links per page. 

Sooooo?