My team is structured just about the same way. I am the BSA and we use Confluence for ALL of our documentation and it is linked to the epics in Jira. All members can get to the spaces, but the shortcuts at the top of the column helps them get to what they care about most quickly with many less clicks than they would have to without them.
Thanks for creating this post and gathering feedback. I just want to voice that I agree with a lot of the feedback presented in this thread and want to reiterate that this is a huge loss of functionality that effectively eliminates a way to create navigation to other locations in Confluence (outside of a child page with a smartlink on it located in a typically already crowded out page tree).
This would be the equivalent of Google Drive taking away Shortcuts, which they are not planning to do because they see the value in creating custom connectivity between areas of work and the different ways that would be useful to crucial for business-as-usual for med-large organizations.
I was relying on Shortcuts to create personalization for users at the space-level and connectivity between related Spaces. It was a fantastic and powerful feature that drove accessibility through being able to create custom views for different personas. It allowed users to have 360 vision into topics related to them without having to simply know they existed from memory or search without having to go 3 clicks deep into the navigation.
The way I have been using Shortcuts that I'll dearly miss: Every Team space in our Confluence had a separate place at the top of the sidebar to view/ access key Project spaces.
For example, if I am on the Engineering team, I can go to my Engineering space and have 360 vision into all Spaces Engineering -- view/access (Scrums, environment set up, support playbooks).
I hope this feedback generates some reconsideration around this change and, at the very least, creates an option for SmartLinks to be located above the Content line, outside the page tree, as a stand-alone menu, even if that is 2 clicks instead of 1, it is better than 3 and won't crowd out the page tree.
Additional note: It could be worth changing Atlassian University content that encourages lots of Space generation. If there is no good way to shortcut out to related spaces, having a lot of spaces can now mean just having a lot of content graveyards no one knows exists.
I'll add my vote for reconsidering this change. We use shortcuts as many others do, we do not see any benefit to the change but we see many drawbacks to trying to use smart links in this way. If shortcuts are not preserved, I don't see us migrating them to smart links. We'll have users go back to bookmarks.
@Ned Lindau I scheduled a call with you. You've asked several people above: When you create shortcuts, are they normally 1) to Confluence pages that exist somewhere within that same space; 2) to Confluence pages that exist in another space; 3) to content that lives outside of Confluence?
The short answer is: it doesn't matter. There was a fast, useable workflow before in my space and now that functionality is broken. I use shortcuts to send users to content that lives outside of Confluence, and now there are multiple steps - that used to be one step - to reach those pages, as well as terrible UI. This change increases the lift on my users with no discernible return. For pages to which we linked, if a user needed to log in to that page to view, that happened anyway, but the UI was cleaner and clearer.
What is the sense in making a link to an external source look like a link inside the current Confluence space - that's what the page tree is for, is it not? This change is both confusing and convoluted. Also "redundant functionality" is disingenuous - the two ways of linking did not work the same way. Let me ask this: is this change for the benefit for the Confluence dev team or for Confluence users? What will Atlassian do to make this right for its customers?
When you create shortcuts, are they normally 1) to Confluence pages that exist somewhere within that same space; 2) to Confluence pages that exist in another space; 3) to content that lives outside of Confluence?
In my use case it's mostly #1 — a quick way to access Confluence pages that would otherwise require drilling down. I use Shortcuts to quickly access mostly...
I was using shortcuts for quick access to pages on other spaces, to sharepoint folder, to external sites and to pages on another Atlassian cloud instance.
Most of them are now blocked with a "We can’t display this link as an embed, just as a card" and requiring unnecessary clicks while opening in the same page instead of opening a new tab.
This does not help with "reducing the time users team spend on app-switching while also enhancing collaboration across platforms." nor with "simpler creating, organizing, and finding".
I would also like to see the shortcut feature back. Smartlinks do not fulfill the same requirements as shortcuts.
Regarding your question: We use shortcuts primarily to switch between Spaces. We have an instance with 160+ Spaces and thousands of pages. So it makes sense that we map cross-references to related Spaces and their pages via the shortcuts.
All in all, I really have to question whether you are using your own product at all.
Your reasoning is so alien to the user.
- Shortcuts are used by a relatively small number of Confluence users. -> What does that even mean??? And even if that is the case, what kind of justification is that??? - Smart Links match and improve upon Shortcuts, leading to redundant functionality. -> Just absolutely wrong. It does not fulfill the same purpose. - Deprecating the Shortcuts menu in the side navigation allows us to move content up a bit farther, meaning less scrolling for users. -> As already mentioned by other users, the shortcuts can be collapsed. And if you really don't want to use this feature, you can deactivate it.
Personally, I am once again disappointed by a regression that Atlassian is trying to sell as a new feature.
@Ned Lindau Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback on the change regarding shortcuts. As the admin of a space with more than 250 pages, I use shortcuts to highlight important central content for navigation or basic knowledge. This makes them easier for users to find. I also don't want those shortcuts (or new smart link) to appear in the content tree. This space is also centrally managed in terms of content and therefore no smart links should appear in the navigation between the other pages.
I hope that the option to create shortcuts will be retained. As the new solution worsens the structuring of the content.
@Ned Lindau I use the shortcuts as a place to put links to the 5-10 Confluence pages within that space that are most important for my team to see, or the ones they are most going to look for. It's an easy way to get them to those pages rather than having them scroll the sidebar or Ctrl+F on the landing page I created, which is chock-full of links to pages within the space.
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
June 18, 2024 edited
UPDATE: THANK YOU TO OUR INCREDIBLE COMMUNITY FOR THE FEEDBACK. IT'S CLEAR WE MISSED THE MARK HERE, SO WE'RE GOING TO ROLL BACK THIS CHANGE & CONTINUE ITERATING. I WILL REACH BACK OUT IF AND WHEN WE HAVE ADDITIONAL IDEAS AND INVITE ANY & ALL OF YOU TO LET US KNOW IF WE'RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK!
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
June 19, 2024 edited
@Rob Bl — they will not be reverted. You should be able to create new shortcuts again however, and the parent page for your migrated shortcuts contains a migration log with url, shortcut name, etc, which should aid the restoration process. Thanks again for the continued engagement and feedback here.
Until now, I had been creating links to other spaces with this link. It works the same as pressing each space from the space at the top of the screen, but it takes just one click and I used it frequently, but with this change, I can no longer perform the same action. I believe this change was made because there were people who requested it, but it is inconvenient to change the specifications so that the previous behavior cannot be performed. I would appreciate it if you could make the previous behavior available as well. Thank you.
It is great to invite back the original shortcut feature, as this "moved shortcut" change introduce no convenience, only caused display issue of those "embed" page (that change cookie setting article is not helpful). Our shortcut is only link to the page of existing space, not external content, more like a "favorite", to give user quickly access to those most visited pages. We are happy with original shortcut feature.
Perhaps Smart Link is a useful way to display external content, but not yet apply to our user case.
Agree with Monika Griffin, shortcut must not be mixed with content tree, especially shortcut to existing space page (cause redundant within content tree) , perhaps it is only good idea when create smart link of external content, only in that case, add it into content tree. Please consider this in future development.
While my personal experience with creating Smart Links in the page tree to replace shortcuts was a positive one. I ultimately do think it will be a better experience, but understand that not everyone shares that opinion. I applaud the Atlassian Team and @Ned Lindau who worked on this for making the decision to pause this initiative.
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