The Companion app on Confluence Cloud

[#1]

Hi, my name is Owen. I'm the product manager on the Media team here at Atlassian.

If you've been using the new Confluence editor you may have seen the option to edit files with the Companion app is no longer available.

We're not actively updating the Companion app in Confluence Cloud, however, the option to use it is still available… if you know how to find it.

Note: Due to a recent security issue the Companion app no longer works on Internet Explorer, Edge or Safari. So this guidance will be for users of Chrome and Firefox.

This post talks through how you can still access the Companion app and I'll also talk about alternatives you have for replacing files and collaborating.

It's worth first noting that any pages you created in the old editor will stay in the old editor. So you'll still be able to preview files on a page and then edit them directly with Companion app.

Also if you're using the attachments macro in the new editor you can still preview the file then edit with Companion app. Also on the new editor you can still find the Companion app when editing a file via the attachments page.

You can still use the aforementioned attachments macro to replace files and upload new versions of a document.

You can replace the file on the attachments page, delete and re-upload the file, or drag and drop the file on the page.

Note: When replacing a file, so long as the filename is the same, any of the above options hook into Confluence’s versioning system.

In the future we'll be bringing in options to replace a file directly from the Media Viewer and from the editor itself.

You can also use the slash command to embed Google Drive files. For example when editing a page type “/” then ‘sheets' and you can embed a Google Sheets file. If team members have been granted access to edit the file on Google Drive they can edit the file in real time with you on the Confluence page. If not they get a 'read only’ view. By opening the embedded Sheets file full screen you can access formatting and formula options. Again you can edit these in real time with your colleagues.

We're working on an Office 365 for Business integration, so soon you'll also be able to edit Excel files via Confluence. Later this year we'll be bringing sorting and filtering options to our native editor's tables.

As mentioned above Companion app is still available via workarounds on Cloud, but we do believe the new options highlighted above will give teams a much deeper and enriched collaboration experience.

If you'd like to discuss any of the above please feel free to leave a comment and I can reach out and arrange a time to talk.

[Deleted user]

liquid information

as I say

Confluence must become an excellent container for liquid information, thus abandoning the old idea of editor and allow users to generate content with the editor that is more convenient for them.

[Korina Skhinas]

Owen, this article is saying that Companion app is not compatible with the new editor. Can you please provide an alternative way to edit and comment on PDF files? 

This is an important part of our collaboration worflow:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/edit-files-724765124.html

[Owen Wallis]

Hi @Korina Skhinas

Could I ask a couple further questions. The Companion app did not allow for commenting on files. Could you let me know how you were commenting before, and what you used this for?

The Companion also did not directly edit the files, it just provided a way to open files on your computer via the native program. If you use the attachments macro you can still create a list of the PDF files, edit them and then re-upload. Furthermore via the attachments macro and the attachments page in Confluence you can still access the Companion app. In the future we'll be making it easier to replace files in Confluence, but for now you can still access Companion to solve this job.

Thanks

Owen

[Korina Skhinas]

Hi Owen, 

Apologies for my confusion. I was referring to the ability to comment on a PDF as referenced in this article. 

https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/share-and-comment-on-files-724765118.html

Following some comment threads, I was led to believe that this was connected to the Companion app. If not, can you direct me the article or solution that would enable us to comment and resolve comments on a PDF in confluence? 

Thank you,

[Owen Wallis]

Hi @Korina Skhinas,

No problem at all. Commenting was actually tied into the old Media viewer. The new Media viewer does not allow for commenting, although it is a feature we are looking at adding back: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67745

If you had the time it would be great to chat on a video call so I could see exactly how you were commenting: https://calendly.com/owallis/

If you can't find a time then one option would be to embed the PDF on a page using a macro. Then on the Confluence page you can @ mention colleagues via comments to have collaborative conversations.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Owen

[Korina Skhinas]

Thanks Owen. Looking forward to the feature being added back. 

The use case that made comment functionality on a PDF so great was that we could drop a comment directly on a content or design element on the PDF with the amendments. It helped to minimize the need to spell out where exactly on the PDF we needed the change and also give our production team a 'checklist' of features to update and resolve when done. 

Hope that helps to clarify the use case. Happy to jump on a call when your team is closer to development and testing of the feature for the new editor. 

[Khoram Habedi]

Hi @Owen Wallis 

'' It's worth first noting that any pages you created in the old editor will stay in the old editor. So you'll still be able to preview files on a page and then edit them directly with Companion app ''

When can we except that we can do this in the new editor page directly? I think this is an important part for many confluence users and their collaboration workflows.

Best regards

Khoram

[Owen Wallis]

Hi Khoram,

We're not planning on bringing the Companion app to the new Editor.

From what we've seen the Companion does not help with collaboration, and rather it hinders it. 

I'm keen to learn what collaboration use cases Companion does help you with though?

Thanks in advance

Owen

[Khoram Habedi]

Hi Owen,

ex. We have a page with 10 sub-items. Under each of the sitting sub-items, we have 3 documents. On the old page, we could edit directly on the page under a specific point. This meant that we saved time in terms of searching for the document under attachments. It may take some time to find a document under attachments when there are 30 documents that have different names and it is not always possible to remember the name of the specific document.

I hope you understand and if you have any tips, let me know :)

[Owen Wallis]

Ok thanks, so you are wanting someway to easily replace files?

And the Companion app is your current workaround for that?

[Khoram Habedi]

we use companion to make changes in the files directly in the page and not under attachment.

[Peter Natale]

@Owen WallisAny news on the Office 365 integration?

This issue is basically killing my business case and user integration. Unless you are planning a way real soon to manage office files properly we are likely to leave Confluence. Happy to explain my concerns, though knowing Atlassian i doubt it will achieve much. I told the product team 18 months ago in a survery this is killing us.

[Owen Wallis]

Hi @Peter Natale happy to chat. You can find a time with me here: https://calendly.com/owallis

In the meantime if you paste an Office link into Atlassian it will create a Smartlink to the file. So you can collaborate on said files inside Confluence.

This Marketplace app also has good support for Office files: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1216862/team-files-office-365-google-docs?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

[Janet Dixon]

The Team Files: Office 365 & Google Docs add-on is great if your files are stored somewhere else like SharePoint or Google Docs.  However.... if the files ARE attachments to a Confluence page, that doesn't help.  We have several teams who will be migrating content from SharePoint, and I suspect many will want to keep many Office documents as Office documents and set them as attachments to a page.  I hope the changes to how attachments are handled in Confluence Cloud does happen soon.  Otherwise, I may have a lot of staff not very happy with this aspect of Confluence.  While the product is excellent at being a Wiki, it does need to be more robust in the area of file management.

[Owen Wallis]

Hi @Janet Dixon thanks for the comment. I'd love to chat more about the needs of your team. Feel free to find a time with me here https://calendly.com/owallis

[Jo Van Kerkhove]

It seems to me that online data management solutions are not reliable enough to be used for organizing office documentation.

Once you have the company informed and up and running in one system, the software changes, and we are back to start everything all over.

Talking about hidden costs, this is a huge one.

[Carl Irish]

Our org recently changed to the Cloud Version of Confluence and was trying to use the Companion App to edit files attached to a page.  Stumbled across this thread and see, after 2 years, no progress made.  Left to remove and re-upload files.   Grossly inefficient and terribly disappointing. 

[frans vervuurt]

Hi Owen,

Is the above still valid??

I have Companion installed on my laptop, use Chrome to access Jira & Confluence in the Atlassian cloud, but I do not see any option to edit a document in e.g. Word when viewing it.

So, what do I miss here??

Do I need to configure anything anywhere?

Thanks a lot

[Matthew Furry]

Wow - yet another example of how Atlassian has totally broken Confluence for former on-prem users!  We are a software developer in a niche, and if we listened to our customers this way we'd be out of business.  

We used Atlassian Companion the same way as others have described here.  Excel spreadsheets were attached, but the Office plug-in displayed one tab.  Yes, Excel is not a database, but it is a useful tool to display related information that does not have another fully fledged system.  

Thanks for messing us up again.  Still bitter. 

[Deleted user]

Hi eveyone,

we have the same issue with a recent migration in 2023. Is there any solution for this issue by now?

Thanks and best,

Jonas

[s.weber]

Hi @Owen 

in your Article you promised some changes for 2020 already, I cannot confirm that you kept those Timelines.

We are about to migrate to Confluence Cloud Enterprise with 1800 users and the lack of Companion is huge for us!

We still can not see any deeper integration with O365 or a native filtering Option as you promised for 2020:

We're working on an Office 365 for Business integration, so soon you'll also be able to edit Excel files via Confluence. Later this year we'll be bringing sorting and filtering options to our native editor's tables.

A native cloud integration between Confluence and O365 is the most logical. Atlassian is already working on deeper integrations with Microsoft, like for MS Teams, but unfortunately not for Office.

What is the plan here? Uploading and Downloading office files to alter them manually is neither collaborative not state-of-the-art.

Could you please list here the corresponding public development items, so people have a chance to vote and watch them?

Thanks & BR

Sascha

[Matthew Furry]

Moved from on-Prem to cloud over two years ago… still waiting to get ba k the missing features.  

[Manuel Walker]

We have recently migrated to the Cloud. Apart from other deficiencies, this is the worst. File integration on pages and the editing is horrific. Huge regression.