Is it possible to require users to fill in "What did you change?"?

[Greg MacLellan]

When changing a page in Confluence, there is a text box at the bottom for "What did you change?". Is it possible to make this a required field, so users have to enter a change message? In my previous experience with Wikis, this seems to help a lot when you're looking at list of recent changes or trying to find something in the history of a page, because at the least it provides a hint to relevant/irrelevant changes.

If you don't require users to fill it in, it's easy to forget or simply skip. Making it a required field is about the only way to make it work.

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Update: I ended up doing what Matthew Horn suggested.

To add this, first create a .js file hosted on a webserver somewhere, accessible to anyone accessing your Confluence install. If you're running a proxy in front of the Tomcat confluence server, that is a good place, in for example, a /custom directory.

Contents of this file:

jQuery(function(){       
        var saveEnabledTitle = 'Save your page ( Type \'Ctrl+S\' )'
        var previewEnabledTitle = 'Preview ( Type \'Ctrl+Shift+E\' )'
        var saveDisabledTitle = 'Please enter a change comment before saving';
        var previewDisabledTitle = 'Please enter a change comment before previewing'; // confluence UI limitation

        var saveButtonCheck = function() {
                var commentField = jQuery('#rte-savebar #versionComment');
                if (commentField.length == 0 || !$(commentField).is(':visible')) return;

                if (commentField.val().length > 0) {
                        jQuery('#rte-savebar #rte-button-publish')
                          .enable()
                          .attr('title', saveEnabledTitle);
                        jQuery('#rte-savebar #rte-button-preview')
                          .enable()
                          .attr('title', previewEnabledTitle);
                } else {
                        jQuery('#rte-savebar #rte-button-publish')
                          .disable()
                          .attr('title', saveDisabledTitle);
                        // note: have to disable preview too, since it doesn't work if the publish button is disabled. Probably a workaround but pretty complex.
                        jQuery('#rte-savebar #rte-button-preview')
                          .disable()
                          .attr('title', previewDisabledTitle);
                }
        }
        saveButtonCheck();
        jQuery('#rte-savebar #versionComment').keyup(saveButtonCheck);
        $('.aui-buttons.toolbar-group-preview, .save-button-container').click(function() { $('#versionComment').focus(); });

});

To add this to your Confluence, under administration, go to Custom HTML and add to "At the end of BODY":

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://hostname/path/to/file.js"></script>

This is a total hack, but it seems to work so far. Note that if you disable the Save button, the Preview function stops working, which is why I also disabled that button (my preference would be to only require the comment to Save, but it's not a big deal).

Warning: after using this for a year, many users still type useless comments like "update" or "edited" or even just a period. I think it probably will take until they have to go back and wade through a couple dozen changes to find a particular edit themselves before see the value. What's the saying.. you can lead a horse to water...

[Matthew J. Horn · Accepted solution]

What I would do is not try to add any back-end logic (in other words, change the form processing), but rather add some JavaScript. I would disable the Preview and Save buttons by default, and only enabled them when the length of the versionComment field is greater than 0.

[Matt Albone]

Hi Greg, you may be able to help me out.

This is basically the kind of functionality I'm looking for, but I just need to know, where did you put this bit of javascript in order for it to effect the confluence page editor?

Thanks in advance

Matt

[Kai Wassermann]

Thank you Greg for this piece of code.

Since I am rather new to programming with Confluence, could you please tell me where to put this code?

TIA

Kai

[Greg MacLellan]

Edited to include instructions

[Greg MacLellan]

Edited to include instructions

[SRBR SE]

Thank you Greg for this code.

Using Custom HTML and adding at the end of body, will work only for that page...

My question:

Is it possible run this code in all page of confluence as default? like a event...

Regards,

Caio.

[Greg MacLellan]

The way I described to add it adds for all pages (Administration > Custom HTML). I think you are confusing this with the "Custom HTML" macro maybe?

[Sam Hasler]

This looks like a more concise solution with fewer dependencies and would be less likely to break:

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/249722