Problems working with attachments?

[Jeff W]

Hello,

I'm evaluating Confluence Cloud for our team.  Our task is to organize, annotate, share, and link a large number of resources, mainly PDF.  (E.g. Academic papers.)

I seem to be having serious problems getting the annotation and commenting features to work.

1) When I attempt to comment on an attachment, I drag the little comment pin onto the document fine.  A small window appears in the upper right with my name in it.  And then it hangs.  There's a spinning icon below my name that never goes away.  The page becomes unresponsive until I reload it, at which point the comment pin I dropped is gone.

2) When I pick "Edit with..." on a PDF file, I get the dropdown telling me to download the Atlassian Companian app that is already installed and running.  This is not the widely-discussed problem related to browser security; it happens in every browser with current versions of everything.  Instead, in the "companion.log" file, it reports this error on every attempt to access a PDF:

Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/System/Applications/Books.app/Contents/Resources/undefined.icns'

Note that "Books" is the Apple e-Reader.  It is not an app for editing PDF files, nor is it the default for opening PDF files.  (Indeed, if you attempt to open a PDF in Books, it will kick it over to Preview instead.)

3) When I pick "Edit with..." on a PNG file, it opens Preview.  Preview is not the preferred app for editing Images.  How is this controlled?

An easy-to-use workflow for these functions is pretty crucial for my team.  Are these known issues that can be worked around?

Thanks for any advice!

[Diego · Accepted solution]

Hello there @Jeff W!

First thing I need to let you know is that Atlassian does not actively update the Companion app:

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.

The whole blog post can be seen here:

• The Companion app on Confluence Cloud

After I read your situation, I believe that we might be talking about a recent bug we have with the Companion App and macOS Big Sur:

CONFSERVER-63278 - Companion app does not show PDF on Mac OS Big Sur

The error logged there is similar to what you shared with us:

error: adc:browser 2021-04-01T15:05:39.018Z logged raw sentry error: {"extra":{"unhandledPromiseRejection":true,"Error":{"errno":-2,"syscall":"open","code":"ENOENT","path":"/System/Applications/Books.app/Contents/Resources/undefined.icns"},"node":"v12.13.0"},"message":"Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/System/Applications/Books.app/Contents/Resources/undefined.icns'","exception":[{"type":"Error","value":"ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/System/Applications/Books.app/Contents/Resources/undefined.icns'","stacktrace":{"frames":

The bug was created just the other day for Confluence On-Premises. I am currently unable to validate that for Cloud because my machine is locked out of the new version due to policies. I will check with my team further details.

With this in mind, I would like to ask you a few questions:

1. Are you using macOS?
2. If you are using macOS, which version?
3. Are you able to replicate the behavior on a machine running Windows or an older version of macOS?

Let us hear from you!

[Jeff W]

Ah, I see.  Thanks for the information!

Ability to easily share and annotate documents is key to our workflow.  I'm sorry to hear that functionality is being removed.

I will let my team know that we can cross Confluence off of our list.

[Fabienne Gerhard]

Hi @Jeff W 

welcome to this wonderful community!

to 3) and probably also 2) My first idea (and it might only be small advice) did you check out which program is set on default for editing png and pdf. Maybe this is something you wanna check out and set 'Open with' for pdfs to Preview aso. How to you can find here. 

But this is just for the editing problem. 

[Jeff W]

"Books" is not the default app for editing PDF files.  It's not even an appropriate app for editing PDF files.

[Fabienne Gerhard]

Absolutely 😅 but probably the default app for opening 

[Jeff W]

As I mentioned in the original post, Books is not the default app for opening PDFs.  It doesn't even support them.  

There is no reason why the Atlassian Companian should be trying to use it.

Preview is the default macOS app for both PDF and PNG.  Yet the app is treating them differently.