What just happened to Confluence Cloud?

[Abhay Patil]

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

[Bruno Miretti]

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

[Michael Corvin]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH....

Just verified that nested tables are indeed gone.  

We use nested tables very often and there is absolutely no technically justifiable reason to make them 'unsupported'.   (On our older server sites we created pages through the REST API that include complex table xml that renders just fine - it must be that they're just limiting them because their GUI editor can't handle them?)

WTF is Atlassian's major management and technical malfunction?!?!?!?!?!?!   They are effectively destroying what was the class leading collaboration toolset that was worth the COT$.

That's it, we're done.  Not spending another dime on Confluence if I can help it (tho we're stuck with one cloud site used for in-house work for the time being. sigh).  

We'll keep all our existing server sites at their current revisions so as not to break years of legacy usage.   And for new projects we're transitioning to XWiki.   If they screw Jira up as royally as Confluence we'll actively seek to replace that too.

Cleary, all the complaints and comments here in the community, mostly by those of us who have been the evangelists, administrators and trainers for Confluence/Jira/etc are irrelevant to Atlassian.

[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…

[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!

[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

[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.

[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_]

Hi Everyone,

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

Susan

[Josh Mings]

Thanks Susan. That update is great to see.

[Monique vdB]

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

[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.

[Helen Griffith]

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

[Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_]

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

[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!

[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]

 i quit jira today. migrating my team to asana or trello.

will keep using confluence. 

[Josh Mings]

We've got the page tree back finally!

[Neil Yalowitz]

The "hide sidebar" button disappeared.

How can a user hide the sidebar during a presentation?  Just grab the edge and try to make it skinny?

[Josh Mings]

Click on the border between the sidebar and content. It will minimize/maximize the sidebar. Will not completely hide it though.

[Dmitry Astapkovich _Colined_]

And yes, good luck with this trick in the mobile device.

And yes, this option is saved by user. So if you'll be lucky enough to click this invisible button on the mobile device, it will collapse the sidebar in your desktop browser.

[Dmitry Astapkovich _Colined_]

1. It there any chance to get rid of two things in the sidebar:

 - old school meaningless dots

 - huge indents?

2. Is it possible to store my tree state? Currently every time I open or reload the page it collapses everything back to lvl 0, so I have to expand it back all the time.

3. Is it possible to make font for page names in Children Display macro bigger? Currently it's way too small, especially when HUGE BLACK dots are so close. Yeah, those old school ones. I want to wipe them from this place as well:

4. Is it possible to add hover reaction on V and > icons? Now the click are is big enough, but there's no highlight for the it, which makes clicking a bit difficult:

5. Is is possible to assign icons to the custom links in the sidebar? Same default icons look not informative and get in the way, while they shouldn't:

5.1 Is it possible to keep the custom icons as a list/column for at least for 2-3 items, when the sidebar is collapsed?

5.2 If 5.1 is too complex to be done, is it possible to pop up the list of links at the same spot. Currently the list jumps sky high:

Thank you for reading! I could not expect someone will reach this of depth of my whining =)

I do know the answer. Nothing will be done, because ... well, because it's not important, I guess. But please, Atlassian people, next time you see "Don't #@!% the customer" poster in your office, take a moment and remember this thread. Just to keep it real.

[Helen Griffith]

Really good point about the massive indents. The dots don't annoy me so much, but yes, the indents. Urgh.

I'm glad the page tree is back but I do still miss the option to overwrite the left-hand nav with my own custom content. But I've given up hope of having the ability to customize anything.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

For those of us still not liking it, there may be some hope.  See one or both of

• https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-discussions/Calling-all-Confluence-Cloud-users-Give-us-feedback-on-a-new/td-p/1139742
• https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-discussions/Calling-all-Jira-Cloud-users-Give-us-feedback-on-our-exploration/m-p/1126694

and give them some feedback

[Scott Beeson]

Hey, it took them 2 years, but they listened!