how do I create draft versions of a page for collaborating on changes before publishing

[Kathryn Moye]

What is the best way to create changes to a page as "proposed" changes and collaborate on those changes then somehow "publish" those changes to the page that already exists?  I would love to use inline comments but I am using forms on the page and inline comments are not allowed there.

Thanks

[Rob Woodgate · Accepted solution]

Hi Kathryn,

Collaborative editing is designed for exactly your scenario

[Kathryn Moye]

I thought that was only real time edits.  We have a group that wants the ability to propose changes that are then approved by a manager at a later time.

Thanks!

[Rob Woodgate]

Hi Kathryn,

When you have collaborative editing turned on, all changes are saved automatically but the new version of the page is only made public when you use the Publish button.  So you and your colleagues can make lots of changes to a page without publishing them, and only publish once those changes have been approved.  The original unedited page will be displayed to users until you publish, so you could edit a page for months before publishing the changes if you wanted.

If that's not quite what you're after, then the simplest way to do what you want would be to take a copy of the page you want to edit and restrict viewing only to those people editing and reviewing it.  Then you and your colleagues can make whatever changes you want, go through an iterative review process and then move the approved content into the existing live page when you're ready.  This has the advantage that you don't have to turn on collaborative editing if you don't want to.

Regardless of which option you choose, there are also workflow add-ons in the Atlassian Marketplace that you might find useful if you're looking to build a review and approval system in Confluence.