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Top 5 Most Requested Features for Confluence 2016

December 6, 2016
#News#Confluence
11 min

In our post last year we reviewed the most requested features for Atlassian Confluence, this year we decided to take a new look at them and see what has changed since that time.

At first, let’s remember Top 5 Most Requested Features for Confluence in 2015. That list looked as follows:

But what’s the destiny of these requests today? Well, let’s see.

  • #1 Copying page hierarchy with attachments – Released to Server and Cloud
  • #2 Sectional Editing – Resolved
  • #3 Page edit permissions should be inherited by pages, like view permissions are – Open
  • #4 Easily create a copy of an entire space – Open
  • #5 Numbered Headings – Open

The two of these five requests have been resolved this year. So, you can see that Atlassian is attentive to customers’ requests and tailors their collaboration platform to actual customers’ needs. And today we will look closer at features requested for Atlassian Confluence in 2016:

#5 – Easily create a copy of an entire space

This feature was on the fourth place last year. Today it is on the fifth place with 498 votes and 232 watchers and 79 comments. The description of the feature request is:

It’d be really very handy to be able to duplicate a space. Export/import only works on 1 space I think (it seems to have lots of integer ids in there so I dare not try exporting, twiddling things and reimporting).

What would be really nice would be a ‘copy space’ option where you can duplicate an entire space as a different name/key.

e.g. setting up projects at codehaus; it’d be good to use an existing space as a base, then copy the entire thing, then after that either export/import to search/replace, or just manually modify pages after that.

As a solution for this issue you can try Copy Space for Confluence. This add-on for Confluence Cloud allows you to duplicate your space with all pages, comments and attachments stored within it.

If you do not want to install any add-ons for this purpose you can use the native functionality of exporting Confluence spaces to XML. Here you will have to change the space name in the exported XML files and then restore this space in Confuence as a new space. It’s not convenient so we’ll better wait for a solution from Atlassian team!

#4 – Watch Page and Children

This feature request was added 10 years ago. Now it has 503 votes, 261 watchers and 63 comments. The description of the feature request is:

It would be good to allow notifications to include an entire family of pages – so you can opt to watch a page and be notified if it changes, if any of its children change, or if any child page is added or removed.

As a solution to this feature request we can name Tree View add-on for Confluence Server. With this tool you can watch and un-watch a complete tree of pages (parent and child pages) with one click. 

The add-on is an open-source and free project. The repository is available at https://bitbucket.org/apurde/tree-view.

#3 – Rename Space Key

This request was added 12 years ago. Now it has 538 votes, 293 watchers and 45 comments. The description of the feature request is:

Hey folks –
Any chance the ability to rename the space key is in 1.3? <weak grin>

I realize this is probably a big thorny task due to links in the pages, but my users want to do it. No, let me rephrase that… some of my users are whining loudly saying they ‘need’ to change the key, especially for “team” spaces where the team name/acronym has changed.

And now after 12 years there is still no specific solution or workaround to this request! We can only wait for a resolution from Atlassian or any vendor from the Atlassian Marketplace.

#2 – Page edit permissions should be inherited by pages, like view permissions are

539 votes, more than 325 watchers and more than 100 comments from users waiting for this feature to be done. Let’s see the description of the feature request:

Edit restrictions are not inherited.

When we have a big existing space and we want to change edit permissions of a hierarchy, it’s very painfull because we have to change manually the permissions of every pages of this hierarchy.
We should be able to optionally inherit ‘edit’ permissions so as to ‘view’ permissions does.

In fact, I don’t really understand why you do it for ‘view’ permissions and not for ‘edit’ permissions.

As a possible workaround you can use the solution from Karin van Driel:

If you have lots of related pages that require restricted editing, it might make sense to stick them in their own space, so you can manage the permissions at the space level. This is how we solved this for some of our documentation. You can then link the pages in another Space where you wish it to be viewable amongst other documentation, through the Confluence Page Gadget. That way you can display it in a space with other pages that are editable, but restrict the editing of those specific pages globally.

Eventually, 113 comments and over 10 years with no movement – it’s a bad result for such an useful request. Still waiting for an Atlassian resolution!

#1 – Extend ‘Mentions’ to work with groups as well

And #1 in our today’s top is the request with 567 votes, 329 watchers and more than 100 comments.

Agree that it’s so annoying to type @user1, @user2, … for the whole team when you want to mention them all. So the implementation of this request seems really obvious and it’s strange that it isn’t in Confluence right from the start. But it more than four years have passed since the request creation.

As a workaround to this issue you can create an email account that forwards mail to all your team members. Then create a user with this email address in Confluence. So, now when you mention this user, all team members will be notified.

Conclusions

It will be fair to say, that Atlassian team tracks popular feature requests and brings some of them to life. Many users are also trying to find some alternative solutions and workarounds to the issues they encounter. And, of course, there is always the Atlassian Marketplace with lots of vendors and add-ons for Atlassian products. Who knows, maybe right now you can find a solution to your specific feature request on our Marketplace page.

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