Suggest Changes like in Google Docs

[Teresa de Figueiredo]

Hi, 

Our organization is moving over from Google Docs to Confluence and would like some way to suggest changes and track changes in documents. Specifically when we are writing new features in existing documentation we would like to distinguish what has already been released vs. what is still pending development. Currently we do this by suggested changes in Google Docs as a clear way to see what has not been implemented yet and an easy way to accept the changes when the feature is implemented and released. 

Does anyone know if Confluence has features that would accomplish this goal or any great add on for this use case?

Thanks!

[Caleb_MacLachlan]

This is the main thing stopping us from switching to confluence. Suggesting edits that can be accepted/rejected is NOT accomplished through inline comments, and would be a very useful feature that brings Confluence in line with gdocs

[Irina_Bel_Stiltsoft_]

Hi @Teresa de Figueiredo ,

The feature Talk Suggestions from the Talk – Advanced Inline Comments can help with your case.

You just need to select the text you suggest to change, click , and enter your suggestion text. The initial content will remain on the page and your suggestion will be displayed on a sidebar.

When you suggest something, the owner of the page gets a notification and can decide whether to accept your ideas or not. Once accepted, changes automatically apply to that piece of text.

[traack]

This looked great to me at first, until I realized that this is a Confluence plugin written by a third-party (not Atlassian), and it is not free.

It will cost my company over $6,000 a year for this plugin after the first thirty day trial period. $6,000 for a suggestion ability is one of the reasons that I still use Google Documents over Confluence for documentation and collaboration purposes.

[Irina_Bel_Stiltsoft_]

But this is just one of the features Talk app has. It also works in edit mode (unlike native Confluence inline comments), provides the Talk report feature that helps to observe all the inline comments from different spaces and pages, the Talk Restrictions feature to restrict visibility for a comment, archiving comments feature, the Talk Priority feature, and a bunch of features more. Native inline comments are far behind that and far less user-friendly.

[Sam Lucas]

Hi there @Teresa de Figueiredo ! I am a product manager for Confluence Page Creation. We are actively looking into Suggested editing! First and foremost, we are working on bringing a live-edit experience to Confluence for quick and easy creation and collaboration. We will then seek to add suggested editing. We just started an early access program for live-edit page creation. You can learn more and sign up here.

[Gabriel]

Hi Sam! 

while that is a useful feature and maybe a prerequisite, it's really not Suggested Changes like in Google Docs or good old Microsoft Word. 

BTW, wasn't live collaborative editing here for at least five years already? Or this brings it to pre-publishing mode? 

[András Taraszovics]

@Sam Lucas Do you have a rough timeline in mind when it comes to introducing suggested edits? That would be a lovely addition to Confluence and would definitely extinguish a lot of concerns over using Confluence instead of Google Docs as this is one of the key features which sets Google Docs apart from your document management solution.

[Daniel Eads {unmonitored account}]

Hi Teresa,

In-line comments sound like what you need. Check out the documentation for them here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/comment-on-pages-and-blog-posts-139483.html

In Confluence, you can simply mark them as Resolved when the feature is released (this makes the comment go away, but you can still see it in the page's history of resolved comments). Alternatively, if you edit the page and replace the text the comment is attached to (for instance, the text might be "Pending Development" and you change it to "Released"), the comment will automatically be resolved.

But more generally, since you asked if there are any add-ons... People generally track this sort of thing in Jira. You can use Jira macros in Confluence to show the status of all your issues (bugs, feature requests, etc.). See here for documentation about showing the status of Jira issues on Confluence pages: https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/jira-issues-macro-139380.html

Cheers,
Daniel

P.S. If you feel like this answer helped, please click the grey checkmark next to the answer to mark it as accepted. This helps us focus our efforts on unsolved questions. Thanks!

[nbic]

I know this answer is almost a year old, but the inline comments aren't really what they were looking for. What the suggestions in Google Docs does, is letting the one writing a comment make edits, that are marked in the document and may be rejected or accepted, by acknowledging the comment.

You may make comments with this feature, but it does nothing to actually edit the document, which I believe is what was requested.

[Nicholas Conti]

Ya would love to see a feature like Google's "suggested edits".

[traack]

Another power of suggestions in Google Docs is to make a suggested edit by someone who the owner might not want to give privileges to edit outright. The owner can then approve a suggestion with one button click, rather than needing to manually adjust the document, as they would need to in Confluence.

[Deleted user]

Comments don't work because they disappear when you start editing the page.

[Joseph Boiteau]

> Comments don't work because they disappear when you start editing the page.
it changed recently, they now stay around! :)