What just happened to Confluence Cloud?

[Till Noever]

Yep.

This thread has been running since August 2017. Has anything in the UX changed for the better since then?

Stupid question, I know...

[Olivia Hydari]

the new UX is a nightmare, i cannot use jira anymore. HEY JIRA! I will literally redesign your jira cloud UX for FREE. contact me!

[Corey Redlien]

Just another note to add to this:  We use nested tables all over the place in our documentation to keep things better organized and provide a clear understanding of how one piece of data relates to another.  They allow us to maintain visual context of related information in tabulated form and provide structure for users who need to fill in the right data that isn't just "one level deep."

A note about that "One Level Deep"

Most information we track in our Confluence installation is absolutely not just a shallow overview of something where all data can be kept in "one level".  Rather it's a deep dive into items that have, for instance, lots of configuration elements, all of which which must be maintained clearly and in an organized manner.

A product has a size attribute, which we then nest a HxWxD table that must be filled in.  A product server has a site being served from it.  Each site must record where in git it's stored, other important configuration data.  Data that must be well organized and we don't want spread across multiple pages or all over the page.  it's not a lot of data from a volume point of view, but it's critical that it exists and is presented within the right context correctly.

Finally, many of our templates are setup specifically with nested tables to ensure that those who use them to provide content have a clear way of inputting data uniformly and, more importantly, know what data they must provide and within what context that that data should be provided.

[Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_]

Alright...I admit...Atlassian is sort of listening.  See my latest post....SIGH

[Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_]

@philoye, this is very disappointing that Atlassian continues to remove functionality from Confluence and yet not delivering really desirable new features.  Surely the public outcry of the new look has alerted you to the fact that Atlassian is not quite listening or reaching out to the real end users before summarily dismissing features which Atlassian thinks are non-important.

I really think the Confluence Product Managers need to take a step back and re-evaluate some of the direction.  Stop listening to those "UI designers" and start listening to your hard-core User base.  

I have been using and administering Atlassian products for 9 years (more than 90% of Atlassian employees), I am an AUG leader for 3 years and recently a community champion, so very tapped in to your user base.   Confluence product managers are seemly not tapped in. 

Happy to discuss more.

[philoye]

I’m sorry that the lack of nested table support has affected you and your teams.

To be clear on what’s been done, previously in Confluence Cloud, you could place tables inside lists, block quotes, and other tables, we call these “nested tables”. We disabled the ability to create new nested tables. Your existing pages with nested tables are safe and you can still modify these existing nested tables (edit cells, add/remove rows/columns, etc). You just won't be able to create new ones.

As to why we have made this change, there are several reasons: 

• Less than 1% of pages have these nested tables showing there are other ways to get the message across.
• Nested tables are a huge source of complexity which results in a less reliable editor.
• Nested tables make pages harder to read, especially on mobile devices.  

As part of our broader efforts to create a reliable, predictable, stable, and expressive editor, we have made this change.

There is an open suggestion to bring this functionality back:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-58656

— Phil Oye, Senior product manager

[Helen Griffith]

Sadly I agree with @Till Noever... I don't think I've ever been so frustrated so frequently with a product!

[Till Noever]

Too cynical about Atlassian now to believe anything they promise. We'll see what happens, and if whatever they fix will be fixed without the introduction of unexpected annoying bugs. 

I really hate to be so negative, but I used to be a Confluence evangelist and now I truly dislike the product and its creators.

[Monique vdB]

Thank you for highlighting that, @Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_!

[Josh Mings]

Thanks Susan. That update is great to see.

[Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_]

Hi Everyone,

Please see this update CONFCLOUD-56841.  Atlassian is listening. 

Susan

[W.Erber]

@Bruno Miretti, yes one more feature disappeared.

As bad as this is, my biggest complaint is not that Atlassian makes mistakes or changes features - that can happen. Even though the policy of reducing features and simultaneous raising prices is quite amazing - to say the least.

My biggest complaint is their apparently complete disregard of the vital interests of their customer base. It almost seems as though Atlassian does not care at all if they break essential business tools of their customers (e.g., documentation pages), thereby negatively impacting the business and the reputation of their paying customers. And they seem to be unable or unwilling to learn from the mistakes they make.

Our service to our customers is affected - and we do care for our customer base!

[Martin Sauter]

@Abhay Patil There is a ticket for this bug – please vote for it: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-58739

I reported this major bug last week, and Atlassian Support set it to priority «Highest» – but they have not even assigned the task to someone. Atlassian is really in a bad state…

[Bruno Miretti]

and your forgot nested tables, very used in technical documentation, are no more supported... (crying)

[Abhay Patil]

Too many elementary glitches in Confluence! Now thumbnails of embedded attached files are gone, and broken images seen! #FAIL

[Josh Mings]

Yeah, that would be a pain. There's no way to set redirects in Confluence that I know of unfortunately.

[Deleted user]

Thanks, I that is a workaround at least :) 

But in our case even the overview page is work in progress. So we add stakeholders, milestones, releasedate and roadmaps there. In that case we would have to edit the hidden startpage and the copy.

Is there anyway to redirect instanly from the startpage to the copy, so that there has not be any content on the startpage?

Thanks for your help.

[Josh Mings]

The workaround we've found is to make a copy of the 'Home page', put it at the top of the page tree and link people to this page. This way they see the Home page and the child pages in the page tree. Like so: https://luxion.atlassian.net/wiki/x/u2glB

We then hide the 'Overview' link in the sidebar. 'Pages' is still visible above the child pages and the link to the 'Overview' page is still accessible from the breadcrumbs, but we've added a 'Children Display' macro on the 'Overview' page to display direct links to the child pages and avoid having to go to 'Pages'. It's the most we've been able to do to prevent people from getting lost until Atlassian improves the options and customization.

Hope this helps.

[Deleted user]

We have the same problem here with the missing page tree in the default side bar:

Once you have clicked on «Pages» in a specific space this is the default next time you open that space. But then the space home page is not visible anymore and you have to click again to bring it back. 

So we see either the home page with no direct access to one child side or we see the page overview but not the home page without further clicks.

Maybe you should consider to blend in the sidebar optionally.

[Till Noever]

Most users don't give a rat's ass about keyboard shortcuts. Neither, to be honest, do I (a developer), who uses only one shortcut, and that's 'E' for edit. ONE!

I have come from thinking that Confluence is one of the best tools for corporate wiki and even simple documentation use, to one who has actively UNrecommended it to two people contributing to purchasing decisions, who were interested in my opinion.

The arrogance of those who are responsible for these changes exceeds just anything I've experienced in decades of software development and use. Even Microsoft's.

Atlassian has to make some serious decisions about whose opinion matters. That would be either the clients and their requirements, likes, dislikes and 'user' needs (novel idea, is it?) or the (and obviously totally clueless) ivory tower notions  of corporate managers, who don't give a $%$*^ about clients, but only about their own and their immediate group-think groups' ideas about what should be.

[Bruno Miretti]

"the dev team really believe that in the long run, after our customers get used to the new layout, our customers will get more tasks done and faster"

The new UI has been implemented in mid August if I well remember so this is quite a long run and my users and myself are still complaining about how it is complicated to find options that were available easily before this new "shiny" UI has been implemented. And now we have the new editor experience... with new bugs, new ugly and small icons and hidden options... because the Atlassian product managers and developers think all users should know the keyboard shortcuts... (facepalm)

[Rob Woodgate]

"the dev team really believe that in the long run, after our customers get used to the new layout, our customers will get more tasks done and faster"

A couple of questions here:

1. Why in the hell are the dev team making design decisions this enormous? Why aren't product managers and designers making the decisions?

2. No-one gives a damn what they "really believe".  Can you show us some hard evidence that your "customers will get more tasks done and faster" like, oh, I don't know, USER RESEARCH?

This is NOT like the ribbon on Office products, which was based on about 18 months of heavy duty user research with thousands of people.  This is a small bunch of people thinking that the way they work is the way everyone works, or in other words, a perfect example of why dev teams in a grown-up company aren't entrusted with this kind of decision.

[Rob Woodgate]

Spot on.

[Rob Woodgate]

The Search box change smacks of a designer being far too clever by half and not caring how bad the user experience is because "it's still 1 click".

The Phantom Menace was "still a Star Wars film" but that doesn't mean that Jar-Jar Binks was a good idea.

[Rob Woodgate]

+1 for Robert Quinn and Susan Auth's comments.

Liron - if the page is "disturbing and taking focus away from the overview page" then tell users to minimise the side bar.

Don't take it away for these "many many use cases", when there are clearly "many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many use cases" where it IS useful (as evidenced by the flood of negative comments here).

This feels like one of those cases where a single whale wanted something and Atlassian implemented it because the single whale is a lot more valuable to them than a shoal of small fish.