Confluence Release Notes at a Glance

More Control Over Your Tables

Confluence now gives you more control over your table columns. Columns can be resized to get tables looking the way you want them. For even more customization, a table mode can be selected from table toolbar. The options responsive and fixed width respectively adjust to the user's browser and leave table dimensions fixed regardless of screen size.

Batched Notifications

Atlassian has reduced the amount of mail that Confluence sends automatically. If multiple changes are made to a page or blog post, the system will only send a message with a summary of the updates that happened in the batch window (10 minutes). You'll still get important notifications such as mentions and new pages created in a given space.

Find Stuff Faster on the Dashboard

The dashboard on Confluence 5.9 is already helpful when accessing current projects and important pages. New filters make it easier to find pages, especially when you've recently viewed, edited, or saved them for later use. When you begin typing the page title, you will find the page immediately.

Users Can Delete Their Own Content

Deciding who can do what in a space, although sometimes necessary, can be inconvenient. To make life easier for admins, there is now an option for users to delete their own content (such pages, blogs and attachments).

Better Integration Diagnostics

The Application Links page with shortcuts to other Atlassian systems was completely redesigned. The overview of current integrations is easier as their status is viewable in real time, and focused diagnosis tools are helpful when you run into problems.

More Accountability with the Audit Log

The new audit log allows admins to recount changes to global settings, users, groups, and more. This is helpful when fixing problems or documenting important events. The log can also be exported to CSV format.

New Dashboard

Confluence 5.9 now comes with a brand new dashboard. Just like before, frequently visited pages can be viewed in real time. Recently posted, edited, and visited pages can be pulled up quickly and easily. The most important pages can be found in your favorites, and the dashboard even offers a place for frequently visited spaces. Additionally, Confluence administrators can make an entire right-hand column blank, for example, with images, links and appointments.

Create Blank Pages with a Single Click

Creating a blank page is even simpler, evolving from three steps to now just a single click. Instead of buttons in the header, Confluence offers two options: Create (A Blank Page) and Create from a Template.

Easier to Restrict Pages

With Confluence 5.9 it's much easier to define who can edit and view a page. The new lock icon at the top of the page leads right to the permissions dialog. There are three options: No Restrictions, Edit Restrictions, and Edit and Viewing Restrictions.

Less Scrolling, More Focus

When switching between editing and viewing a page, Confluence now lets you stay in the same place without having to scroll (in-place editing).

The user experience when reading longer pages is also enhanced: when scrolling down, meta data (tags, restrictions, etc.) and page tools are hidden to encourage focus on the content. When you scroll up again, the objects reappear.

CQL in Search

Confluence Query Language (CQL) was first introduced in Version 5.8. It is used to get more out of the macro content through keyword and site characteristics reports. Now CQL is integrated into the search function. You can do advanced search and refine the results by using a CQL filter (e.g. key words or users).

Adding Favorites Simplified

Adding a page to favorites is only a click away. On each page, there is a corresponding icon, which makes going through the menus unnecessary.

Intelligent Notification Checkbox

The viewer notification check box remembers corresponding sites based on the choice of the user. If you choose not to send any messages, the box remains unchecked at the next site edit.

No More 'Unknown Attachments'

If you copy and paste content from the editor to another page, Confluence automatically includes any corresponding pictures. This means considerably fewer pages with 'unknown attachments.'

Data Presentation Mode

In the past you had to download presentations. Now, you can now go right into Confluence and view them in full screen. New controls and shortcuts make it easier to navigate through slides and pages between files. Whether it's a series of design sketches, a PDF, or a Powerpoint slide show, presentation mode makes life easier by letting you stay in Confluence without having to launch a desktop application to view the files.

Improved Handling of Large Tables

Manually numbering rows can be inconvenient when dealing with large tables. Automatic numbering does away with this inconvenience. Even viewing large tables is a more user-friendly experience. The header rows remain in view so you can read the tables more easily. Additionally, page tools (cut, copy, paste) are now available for columns.

More Powerful Reporting

The Content by Label and Page Properties Report macros help you track work. Sometimes it's helpful to have more control over which pages are displayed. In Confluence 5.8, you can create your own search queries by adding a wide variety of fields.

Content by Label: The Content by Label macro can display a dynamic list of corresponding pages. By using Confluence Query Language (CQL) you now have more control over which pages are displayed. You can choose to include pages that are part of a particular page tree, which contain keywords in the title or pages, or that have a sequence of labels.

Page Properties Report: If you want to create reports that have diverse labels or pages under a certain parent page, CQL makes this possible.

Notify Watchers Checkbox

The Confluence remembers if the notification checkbox was checked or unchecked. One click deletes.

Monthly or Weekly Planning with the Roadmap Planner

When working with the Roadmap planner macro, you can now choose whether road maps are shown in weeks or months.

Collapsed Inline Comments

There are also improvements with inline comments. If there are several replies to an inline comment, they will be collapsed.

Recover Deleted Attachments

With the new version of Confluence, deleted files go right to the recycle bin. Here, administrators can recover the files, an often requested feature.

Full File Support

The biggest and most important improvement in Confluence 5.7 is how files are handled. Whether you have project plans, design drafts, or Word documents, the upload, viewing, and updating files has never been easier in Confluence. The tool bar includes the new Files button. Here any file can be loaded as an attachment and integrated into the page. Multiple files can be added on the go, saving time.

Thanks to the powerful new preview, users can view a wide range of files on Confluence without having to download them and use desktop applications.

Inline File Commenting

Commenting in Confluence is even easier, since you can comment on the spot. New inline commenting supports @mentions and replies to comments. Whether it's pages or files, comments can be closed when the respective discussion is ended. They can be viewed and opened again whenever necessary.

Easy Integration with HipChat

Teams that already use HipChat can benefit from its integration into Confluence. The shortcut to the admin area can be reached within seconds. Since Confluence and HipChat are connected, notifications and space activities, such as new pages or blog posts, can be sent right to the team's HipChat room.

Roadmaps Macro

Also new in Confluence is the Macro Roadmap Planner. With this macro you can clearly and easily view road maps for projects, releases, and more. Rows differentiate teams, products, and stages, while markers highlight milestones and important data, and bars indicate work phases and provide links to other information.

Profile Picture and Space Logo Uploader

The profile and space icon uploader is much easier to use. You can now change the size and position of the photo when you upload it.

More Room for Editing

The Confluence team revamped the editor to offer more space. Pages, titles, and breadcrumbs are now shown below the editor toolbar and scroll together with the page. Additionally, the cancel button is now a close button. When you press the close button, your draft is saved automatically.

Confluence Query Language

Confluence 5.7 introduces Confluence Query Language (CQL), a powerful, new content search REST-API. With CQL, you can run SQL-like syntax queries to search in a wide range of fields.

Even More JIRA Integration Thanks to New Charts

Confluence 5.6 now has two new, powerful charts, along with the JIRA Chart Macro. Both can be integrated into Confluence pages. The Created vs. Resolved chart gives you an overview of your team's progress within Confluence. You can now keep an eye on which issues were created and which ones were resolved over a span of time.

Gain even more insight on JIRA projects from Confluence by opening the new two dimensional JIRA chart. Get an analytic view of the issue status of team members' work or view the number and types of issues being raised in each area.

Blog Post Restrictions

An often requested feature in Confluence is the ability to restrict blog posts. Version 5.6 makes this possible. You can now publish confidential information such as project status reports, management decisions, or news that affects only a particular team or a specific space in the form of blog posts.

Faster Commenting

In Confluence 5.6, you can now post feedback and edit comments without having to refresh pages or blog posts.

Confluence Tasks: More Accountability and Due Dates

Confluence tasks can now have due dates and assignees. By typing // you can easily access the new date picker to add a due date. Different colors indicate if a task is overdue or due by next week. Tasks can be assigned to you via @mention. You can even assign tasks to yourself.

Confluence Tasks: More Visibility of Your Own Work

In your user profile, Confluence now gives you Task view, a place where you can see all your tasks. Thanks to filters, you can refine your view for complete or incomplete tasks and tasks that you created yourself or have been assigned. Here, too, colors let you know about the soonest due date, as tasks with earlier due dates are higher on the list.

Confluence Tasks: Transparency with Task Reports

Confluence 5.5 has a brand new Task Report blueprint. This is a great way of keeping track of tasks that are important to your team or project. To add an existing list of tasks to a page, Confluence also has a new Task Report macro, which lets you search for tasks by location (pages or spaces), user, date, completion, and even more.

Move Your Blog Posts

An often requested feature, it's now possible to move individual blog posts between spaces. This can come in handy if blog posts were created in the wrong space or if you want to reorganize your spaces.

Disable Unnecessary Space Blueprints

Administrators can disable specific space blueprints throughout the whole Confluence site. Disabled blueprints will no longer show up in the Create Space dialog.

Custom Favicons

Now, administrators can also upload a custom favicon for every Confluence site. Favicons are the icons that are displayed browser tabs.

JIRA Integration

This new version of Confluence is marked by further integration with JIRA. In particular, Confluence has added support for the creation of JIRA issues in projects that have required fields. Confluence 5.5 also offers these features to the already numerous ones available:

• Support for required system fields

• Support for text-based required custom fields

• Support for JIRA status lozenges

• Ability to display a single issue in a table and adjust the columns to add to your page

• Better PDF exports from pages containing JIRA issues

• Better column sorting

Improved @Mentions

The @mentions autocomplete dialog now recognizes user names and helps differentiate between people of the same name. In addition to the person's name, the user name is also included. The @mentions can also be used with Confluence when commenting via mobile devices.

Optimized Macros: Page Properties and Page Properties Report

With the introduction of blueprints, more customers use the Page Properties and Page Properties Report macros to adapt existing blueprints or to make their own reports. The Confluence team made changes to make these macros more useful in a wider range of scenarios. A new ID parameter can be used to identify a particular macro when there are several Page Properties macros on a page. This gives you the flexibility to come up with reports for some or all of the macros.

Confluence Site Health Check

The Confluence team has also added a new tool to help check the health of your Confluence site. Health checks can be conducted through the Admin console. At this time, you can check your license validity, if your application server, Java version, and vendor are supported, or whether the embedded HSQLDB Database is in use. (The latter is not supported as a production database.) More checks will be added in the future.

More Integration with JIRA Agile

Atlassian has further integrated JIRA Agile and Confluence in order to help agile teams through all stages of the development process – definition of requirements, sprint planning, backlog population, progress reporting, and conducting retrospectives. In Confluence, you can now create issues and epics without leaving the editor and highlight text to create stories in JIRA and link them automatically to an epic. In JIRA Agile, you and your teams can create a page from an epic or sprint, link epics, tasks, and sprints with existing Confluence pages and create retrospective pages when completing sprints.

JIRA Issues from Confluence

When using Confluence and JIRA together, you can now easily create JIRA issues right from Confluence. You can create a single JIRA issue from highlighted text or multiple issues from highlighted text contained in a table. You can also automatically insert new issues to a page and track their progress. Issues can even be linked to an epic if there is an epic included on the page.

Faster Feedback with Quote in Comment

Giving feedback is even easier in Confluence 5.4. Highlight text on any Confluence page and a Quote in Comment button will appear. Add the highlighted text in the comment field and it will show up with the quote style faster than you can copy or paste.

New Retrospectives Blueprint

The second new blueprint is the retrospectives template. Whether the development team is preparing for a sprint or the marketing team wants to do a retrospective after a launch, document strengths, weaknesses, and assign new tasks. If you're using JIRA Agile 6.3.5 or higher, you'll be asked to create a retrospective at your sprint.

Full JIRA Traceability

Instantly get insight on how your content relates to your JIRA projects. If there are connections between your page and JIRA or JIRA Agile, a new button will appear at the top. By clicking on it, you can get the details on the issues, epics, and sprints connected to the page, giving you full traceability directly from Confluence.

Documentation Space Blueprint

In Confluence 5.4 you can now manage your software documentation. The spaces use a full page tree in the sidebar, a search field to search only within that space, and labels to add page topics.

Create Spaces with the Help of Blueprints
Confluence 5.3 blueprints now have a spatial structure. Pages with very little content are no longer considered blank.

Choosing blueprints is now even easier, thanks to the new Create Space dialog. Pick a blueprint to create a space best suited to your needs.

Sharing Links with the Team

The Shared Links blueprint gives you a way to share links with your team quickly and easily.

You can add the Share on Confluence button to the browser bookmark bar. When you click the button, the link of your current page will be shared.

See Entire Page Trees

You now have a choice! View the whole page tree in your space or switch modes to view the child pages.

Request Access to Restricted Pages

Have you ever received a link to a restricted Confluence page? Now you can request access to see the page.

Confluence will send an email to the page's author, who can, with a single click, grant you access.

Access to Recently Visited Pages

The search function works faster and cleaner. When you click the search box, you now get a list of recently visited pages.

Enhanced Filter Searches

The new filter search makes choosing filters very straightforward. Filter options are now listed on the left side of the screen. You can filter by space, content type, and date modified.

Blueprints – Make Decisions Together

Important project decisions can now be easily documented and made together as a team.

Multiple Layout Sections 

The page layout can now be divided into sections that can be moved and rearranged. Layouts are now flexible.

Quick Access to Key Functions

The new 'watch' button can be accessed quickly and easily, as well as page or blog post sharing with different groups.

Blueprints

New, interactive templates, called Blueprints, are here. Create meeting notes, product requirements, reports, and more. Edit the blueprints to meet your needs and download new ones for free in the Atlassian Marketplace.

Page Properties Report Macro

This macro gives you an orderly summary of metadata that has been embedded in Confluence pages through the Page Properties Macro.
With this release, the Confluence team has added new parameters for the Page Properties Report Macro so you can now choose which spaces have their data displayed.

Global Navigation

The new Confluence header allows quick and easy navigation between different applications such as Confluence, JIRA or HipChat. A button allows the creation of content right from the home page.

Administrators can now access the menu direct with one click.

With the new 'Create' button in the header, you can choose between different templates for pages, lists, blog posts and more.

New Sidebar

The new sidebar offers superb overview of pages and child pages. The widths can be individually moved and adjusted. Space administrators can now get a good overview and a sense of transparency with the new sidebar.
Add shortcuts to relevant content and edit space details right on the page.

Improved Editor

The new edit mode auto-adjusts in relation to your screen size. When you reduce size of a window, the toolbar, buttons and footer shrink, helping you maximize space.

The new Youtube video macro will display a video preview when you paste a link in the editor.

Confluence Mobile

Work where you want.
With the new mobile Confluence for iOS 5, you can now work completely independent of location.

• Manage your personal tasks and notes.

• Browse through popular content, blog posts and networking activities

• Browse Confluence for content and users

• Compose and like comments.

• View the profiles of your colleagues, tap to call, SMS or email them right from a mobile device.

Table Sorting

Another standard feature in Confluence, tables can now be sorted by number or letter in ascending or descending order—all with one click on the column header.

Additionally, cells can be labeled and highlighted in different colors.

Rich Text Template

The template editor now supports rich text content. You no longer need to use the Wiki Markup to create templates or update them. You can convert an existing page to a template.

Personal Tasks

The workbox goes even further. You can now create and manage tasks. You can also create your own tasks, even ones that were included in comments or pages in the workbox. You can find a button in the workbox leading directly to these pages. Tasks can be easily dragged and dropped into priority.

Page Layouts

In this version, you now have a way to design the layout of a wiki page yourself. Choose from a variety of display options and create custom, theme-matching structures.

The sections and column macros stay with you as well.

Attachment Tags

You can now specifically tag attachments to easily find them again when you need them.

The new Gallery macro helps you label blog posts and tagged attachments.
The Attachment macro and Space Attachment macro display documents and other attachments with a specific keywords.

Additionally, the Content by Label macro now displays your attachments.

Plugin Manager

What's the most current version? Do I need it?

See all your plugins with a single click, uninstall and update at the press of a button – keep everything in view.

The days of forgotten updates are over, as Confluence now leads directly to the Atlassian Marketplace.

Confluence Newsletter

What's New? The newsletter will now email you daily or weekly recommendations of the most popular items based on the number of likes and comments.

Confluence also takes into account the activities of the users of its network and your favorite spaces.

In the email, you can choose to be notified daily, weekly, or not at all.

Image Effects

With new effects, images in Confluence look even better. Effectively change image backgrounds without modifying files themselves.

Quickly Find and Replace

Revising content is now even faster. With this new feature, you can search for words and phrases and replace them with a single click for the entire document.

Network

See user updates, which can be followed on Confluence. As with favorite spaces, you can now see updates from the people you follow with the network tab on the Confluence dashboard.

It is easy to follow other people, just hover over an avatar and select 'Follow' or 'Unfollow.'

New Editor

With the new editor, you can create pages clearly and easily. The user interface offers many features, including a new toolbar, simple adjustment of images in Confluence, and faster macro integration.

Autoformatting

The wiki markup has been replaced by autoformatting.
Fans of rapid text formatting, this new feature offers an innovative design experience with simple shortcuts: bold, italic, or underlined fonts, superscript or subscript, and more.

Watch the video on the right to learn more about the features.

@Mentions

With the @mention function, you can get the attention of your colleagues to focus on important matters. Link people to pages, comments, or blog posts via email.

Page Comparison

Who modified what, and when did it happen? With the page comparison function, you can quickly view changes that were made. You can easily see where things were deleted or added, as they are highlighted in color. Changes for subscribed pages can also be sent through e-mail, and they even display highlighted colors correctly.

Editor Plugin Improvements for Developers

Plugin developers can now add buttons to the Macro Property panel. Also, images can be added instead of empty placeholders. In placeholders, arbitrary parameters can now be selected. There are no longer automatic displays of the first parameter. Items can be added to the More menu in the editor.

View Storage Format

As support for plugin developers, developers can now view the storage format and Confluence administrators page now. You can find it in the Tools menu.

API Changes

Atlassian disabled the getPage () and getBlogEntry () methods in the XML-RPC / SOAP API.
A script that reads or is attached to the primary existing pages will no longer work. New pages can still be created and existing pages can be overwritten.

There is a new landing page for Confluence 4.0 planning. This includes resources for developers that will help to create new plugins and to use the new plugin points, as well as how to upgrade existing plugins.

Better Connection to Active Directory, LDAP and Crowd

No longer complicated: With the latest version of Confluence, the connection to Active Directory is easy, flexible, and powerful. Choose between 11 supported directory types and add as many as you want. Configure all LDAP settings in your Confluence Administration Console: permissions, server and schema settings.

Improved JIRA Integration

Connect JIRA and Confluence with greater ease! Create, search, or post a JIRA task with less clicks. The status of JIRA tasks are automatically synced in Confluence documents. Link JIRA tasks in Confluence and vice versa—each program adds links automatically.

Drag & Drop fur HTML 5

Get rid of Google Gears: With Confluence 3.5, you need this feature, which is no longer supported by Google. You can uninstall it without the functionality of Confluence being limited. HTML5 accepts the structure of content automatically. HTML5 is supported by the following browsers: Firefox 3.6, Safari 5, Google Chrome.

Autowatch and Blog Posts

Stay up to date with Autowatch. Automatically monitor your own content from now on. You can easily turn AutoWatch on or off in your Confluence-mail settings. With Auto Watch activated, you receive messages when editing pages that you created, commented on or edited. A better overview shows only the most recent blog posts or select a single space that has a blog post you want to view. Share pages and news now also via e-mail with as many users as you like!

Improved Code Macro

Programming in Confluence is now even easier. Syntax highlighting supports many different languages, and more will be added. Additional features: (1) expandable code block, (2) long lines of code automatically written in two lines without changing it (3) line numbering (4) thematic color schemes.

Improved Admin Console

The days of closing Confluence to modify scheduled tasks are over. Now you can easily create the Administrator menu tasks, configure, disable or enable, and view task history.

Space Categorization

Categorize your spaces and manage them in the new space directory. This directory provides an alternative to the dashboard and displays a list of global and private areas to which you have access. You can choose: Do you want to see all spaces or only your favorites? Maybe you want to see all spaces in a specific category?

Integration of Music and Movies

With the new Multimedia macro you can now embed and play back audio and video files in Confluence.