The latest Enterprise release is here: Confluence 7.4

[#1]

G’day Enterprise Community!

I’m excited to share with you that the latest Enterprise release, Confluence 7.4, is now available! Similar to Jira Software 8.5 and Jira Service Desk 4.5, Confluence 7.4.0 is designated as an Enterprise release at launch. This release is devoted to raising the already high bar we’ve set for the quality, stability, and performance of our releases. We’ve focused on thorough testing and hardening of Confluence’s existing features to let you focus on planning your upgrade.

Read more for all the information and resources you’ll need to make your upgrade journey successful as you move to our newest Enterprise release.

Enterprise release 101

Enterprise releases receive backported bug fixes and security updates throughout their two-year support window. If you manage a large, complex Confluence deployment that requires significant effort to upgrade, the ongoing support provided by an Enterprise release ensures you have access to regular bug and security fixes without needing to take on another major version upgrade. We aim to ship an Enterprise release roughly once every 12 months so that customers with long cycles can plan their upgrades accordingly.

The greatest hits: Confluence 6.13 - 7.4

We know that many of our customers on our last Enterprise release, Confluence 6.13, have been awaiting an Enterprise release on the new 7.x platform. Now, with the Confluence 7.4 Enterprise release, you’ll reap the benefits of the Confluence 7 platform and everything we’ve delivered since:

Confluence 7.0 platform improvements

• Upgrades to many Atlassian maintained libraries, and several third-party libraries including jQuery, Guava, and Spring framework to help us leverage recent improvements and move quickly if vulnerabilities are found in these libraries in the future

• Removed 72,000 lines of deprecated code to drive better health for Confluence and Apps

• Automatic clean-up of your Synchrony data to keep your database tables from growing too large over time (Synchrony is the engine that powers collaborative editing)

• Support for more modern databases including MySQL 8, Oracle 19c, Postgres 10, and for Java 11 (also a long-term support version)

Next-level enterprise features for Data Center

• CDN support to improve geo-performance

• Rate limiting to improve instance stability and self-protection

• Advanced permissions management features for easier administration

And the cherry on top? No need for clustering to access Data Center features. You can now access Data Center features on your current infrastructure by simply applying a Data Center license.

Additional improvements to search, Companion app & more

• New search experience that makes it easier to search, filter, and find the information you need to keep work moving forward

• Companion app improvements that make it easier for you to keep track of the files you’ve opened for editing

• Re-introduced support for Edit in Office since we know that editing files is a vital part of working productively in Confluence

• Mobile device management (MDM) support for the Confluence Server & Data Center Android and iOS apps are now available

Planning your upgrade

We understand that these upgrades can take time, so we recommend you begin planning sooner rather than later. Here are a few resources to help you prepare:

• Pre-upgrade planning tool

• Confluence 7.4 Enterprise release upgrade notes

• Confluence 7.4 Enterprise release change log

• Confluence 7.4 release notes

Data Center only: If you’re upgrading from Confluence 6.10 or later, you may want to put your site into read-only mode during your upgrade. This way, your users will be able to view pages, but not create or change them.

• How to Make Confluence Read-Only

• Using read-only mode for site maintenance

Feel free to share any questions or comments in the Comments section below!

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

Thank you for that article! 

That's great, time to upgrade and provide more feedback, I am sure it will work fine.

[Markus Dieterle]

Very nice. Because of the synchrony feature we have to upgrade asap. Almost all other bullet points are also very useful for us. Thumbs up.

[Ondrej Kvinta]

I'm disappointed.

Is any chance that in Enterprise version will be repair bug: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-53500? 

This is huge problem, and for us no renewal without it. 

[Lisa Kaufman]

@Ondrej Kvinta We are currently investigating backporting this to 7.4 as part of an upcoming bugfix release, please watch the bug report on JAC to be kept up to date.

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

@Lisa Kaufman Could you help us with that request? 

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-55928

I hope 7.8 will be LTS ?

[Carol Jones]

@Lisa Kaufman - Any word on this year's Long Term Confluence Release? I was just doing all my normal annual searches, but I'm not coming up with much. Want to ensure we plan accordingly, so even if you are only able to share the planned release month, that would be helpful, but I'll take as much information as you're able to provide!

[Brian Keough]

Hi @Carol Jones - thanks for your question!

Hopefully you received our email announcement on the upcoming LTS release for Confluence, however if not, we just put together this announcement post with the same information. 

I hope this helps!

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-articles/Announcing-Confluence-7-13-as-the-next-LTS-release/ba-p/1622751#M2136

Cheers,
Brian

[Joe Pursel]

Hi,

With CONFSERVER-59227 being Closed and included in the release of version 7-12-3 and is included in version 7-13, and as stated in https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/issues-resolved-in-7-4-9 If you're still running 6.13 LTS we recommend you don't upgrade to 7.4.x just yet, as a content duplication issue CONFSERVER-59227 CLOSED could impact your site. We're working on it right now, and recommend waiting until the fix is available before upgrading to 7.4 LTS. 

I am using 6-13-4 in a server instance and I was planning to upgrade to 7-4-9 prior to the guidance provided above.

Do you have plans to include the fix for CONFSERVER-59227 in 7-4-10? If so, when do you plan to release this version?

Thank you,

Joe