⭐️ Exciting collaboration updates for Confluence starting in June!

[#1]

Hello Confluence Admins,

We're excited to announce that starting in June, we'll be rolling out new features and updates to enhance your Confluence experience. Our goal is to help every Confluence user work more collaboratively and stay in the flow of their work. Here's what you need to know:

Introducing Live Docs

We're launching Live Docs, a new content type designed for lightning-fast team collaboration. Different from Pages, Live Docs show everyone’s work in real-time and don't need to be published, making them perfect for capturing meeting notes, group reviews, or brainstorming sessions. Converting a Live Doc to a Page, or a Page to a Live Doc is a simple click available in the (more actions) menu.

Important: Live Docs are open by default when they are first created meaning they automatically inherit the permissions of their parent object or space. This is different than a Page that when first created starts in a private draft mode only visible to the author until it is published.

Updated features for faster, more focused collaboration

To make Confluence more predictable and efficient, we're updating headers, sidebars, panels, and comments to be consistent across content types. Here are some of the key improvements:

Pin/unpin editor toolbar option

• Customizable Experience: You now have the option to pin or unpin the editor toolbar. By default, the editor toolbar is pinned in Pages. In Live Docs, the toolbar is unpinned by default to support a more dynamic . This allows users to choose their preferred editing environment, minimizing distractions or ensuring tools are readily available as needed.
  

New floating action bar

• Quick Access: Located at the bottom right, this bar provides quick access to frequently used actions, making your workflow more efficient.
  

New details panel

• Comprehensive Information: The new details panel offers specific information about your content and can be accessed via the floating action bar.
  

Redesigned Header and Overflow Menus

• Streamlined Look: The header and overflow (… more actions) menu have been redesigned for a consistent & streamlined experience across Confluence. Options such as the ability to star content, under or redo, as well as the ability to convert between a Live Doc and a Page can be found in the updated (more actions) menu.
  

Centralized comments panel

• Streamlined Discussions: The new comments panel (available via the new floating action bar) provides a centralized view of all discussions, helping teams engage with feedback faster and more efficiently.
  

When these changes will happen

The introduction of these new Confluence Cloud features and updates will begin in early June and progress into August. This will be a gradual rollout meaning some Confluence sites will not see these changes in their environment until later in the summer. Both user emails and in-product walk-throughs will be used to help communicate these changes when a site receives updates.

We encourage you to share this news with your teams ahead of time to help proactively answer questions they may have.

Resources and Support

In addition to this community resource, the following documentation pages include detailed information about these upcoming changes:

• Create and collaborate in real time with live docs

• Get to know the new and simplified content layout

Should you need account specific assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out to Atlassian Support.

Cheers,
Abhinav Singh
Principal Product Manager, Confluence

[Kevin Hawley]

Hope the Live Docs are not going to send an email notification to everyone on every edit, like the eight related to this one article that were in my inbox this morning.

[Darryl Lee]

Hi @Abhinav Singh --

Are these changes going to be in Bundled Release Tracks? Do you know when they should be hitting Preview? What about Release?

The only one of them I see is:

Editor updates: Select where your toolbar appears, insert with +, and more

We're introducing a revamped editing experience in Confluence. You can now choose where your formatting toolbar appears in Confluence: Fixed at the top or in-line with your text.

We've also added more ways to search for and insert elements such as tables, the date, and excerpts. Several actions have been moved to the ... more actions menu to maximize editing space. This update aims to provide flexibility and make it easier to access tools.

Which is apparently a Beta/Experiment?

• How to use the new toolbar and insert elements 
• 📣 Beta update: Control where the edit toolbar lives 🎉 

In App updates it's tagged as

Status: Coming Soon

Rollout schedule: Starting in May 2025

Change type: Experiment

If I look at the Rollout schedule for my sites, I see:

Premium: No timeframe yet

Standard: Starting in May 2025

As many of us are still in the midst of migrating our sites and users to the New Navigation of 2025 it would be good to know exactly when the next round of screams of "OH GOD WHERE DID EVERYTHING GO?" will begin.

Thanks!

[Kristian Klima]

Hello @Abhinav Singh 

Here's a little idea how to make Live docs way more useful - enable splitting the restrictions for the Live Docs and the last published version. 

Example: HR team collaborates on the new benefits policy in Live Docs while the employees still access the last published version.

More here.

[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks for this @Abhinav Singh - looking forward to using more of this soon.

[Elena Papa]

Will this solve the issue of teams uploading Requirement Documents and them not being updated to last version when more than one person is working on the same page?

[Dustin Smith]

Hi @Kevin Hawley 👋 - blame the marketing guy for those accidental email notifications. 🤦🏻‍♂️ I did some post publish edits to Abhinav's message and didn't realize it was going to start hammering inboxes. My apologies. Turns out there is also a personal community setting called "Edits made to posts in collections I'm watching" that you can toggle if interested which will switch off edit pings.

To your question on Live Docs, you definitely don't get notified for every user edit. 😅 If the notification system detects no edits for at least 15 min. on a Live Doc you are watching then it will trigger an update ping.  The goal is that we want users to be able to keep track of changes on a Live Doc where things might be moving quickly, but not overload them when a team is in the middle of collaborating. 

[Pierangelo Repetti]

Will these updates be available for all Confluence plans ?

Thank you

[Nick Wade -Opus Guard-]

Thanks for these updates @Abhinav Singh and all the Confluence team!

While we're here, a qq – what's going on with table alignment at the moment? I have to add custom CSS into the PDF Export Globals to get a simple quote page to export with left aligned tables :/ 

[Dustin Smith]

@Pierangelo Repetti Yes! All plans will receive these updates.

[Darryl Lee]

Hi @Abhinav Singh - moving Apps to a subfolder in the Overflow menu breaks Keyboard Shortcuts for third-party apps like the one I just got working.

I opened a ticket about this:
https://ecosystem.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/34/ECOHELP-68424

I also posted about it in the Developer Community Forums:
https://community.developer.atlassian.com/t/new-more-actions-menu-in-new-content-layout-breaks-keyboard-shortcuts/92565

Can you please make sure this gets fixed soon?

Thanks!

[Debbie Jolley]

This looks like a useful update thank you.

One minor point - given the amount of people who do things via muscle memory - is it necessary for a brand new option to appear at the top of the list?
I appreciate for some users a Live Doc may be their primary use case; but for a lot of users creating a Page will still be the primary use case in Confluence.
Has any consideration been given to the placing of the options?

[Darryl Lee]

@Abhinav Singh speaking of Keyboard Shortcuts (and @Debbie Jolley speaking of muscle memory!), does this change also include the new built-in Keyboard Shortcuts described here?

• Keyboard shortcuts and autocomplete 

That new shortcuts page shows that these heavily used single-key shortcuts have changed:

Create (C), Comment (M), Labels (L), and Watch (W)

For many of us who are previewing these updates, L for Labels doesn't work anymore, while C, M, and W still do work. (h/t to @Kristian Klima for the heads-up!)

[My instance is on the Live docs beta as well as for the "New content layout".]

I really hope you are not deprecating the Create (C), Comment (M), and Watch (W) single-key shortcuts:

• Is Atlassian changing 14-year old Confluence Keyboard Shortcuts? 

[Abhinav Singh]

@Kristian Klima for this https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Confluence-Cloud-Admins-articles/%EF%B8%8F-Exciting-collaboration-updates-for-Confluence-starting-in-June/bc-p/3032924#M841

Curious on how do you envision this to be different than current "Pages" functionality.

Until published, all changes on a page are in edit mode - so in your example HR folks can still be working to make the changes together in the edit mode of the page (all changes are saved but not published) and once completed, they can hit publish button and all the viewers would get access to the latest version.

[Kristian Klima]

@Abhinav Singh 

Let me counter-ask :)

What is the point of the Live Docs then if multiple users can simply collaborate editing a page in the Edit mode :) 

The whole point of Live Docs was, I believe, to make collaborative editing easier - and it does so. But at the same time, it exposes the live changes to the Read Only audience. 

[Abhinav Singh]

Great question @Kristian Klima !

Simply put: Live Docs are intended to speed up your collaborative work without constant edit/publish cycle (that has its own significant use-case). Everyone is viewing & editing the same thing at the same time.

For use-cases that require more control & delineation (aka curtain) between viewer vs editor versions similar to your HR policies e.g. Pages are the perfect content type for the same. 

We expect users would begin most of their work on live docs for faster live jamming and once it's finalized & requires tighter version control (& maybe less ultra-frequent edits) they can convert them into pages. PS: Not all live docs would eventually end up as pages though given the lifecycle & kind of work.

[Kristian Klima]

@Abhinav Singh 

What's so strange about the use-case that is simply taking advantage of

• the single biggest benefit of a page (display of the final content) AND
• the single biggest benefit of a live doc (fast collaborative editing)

[Johanna Vaher]

In what form will these be rolled out now in June? The information about each feature still says they are in beta. Will they still be in beta and be something you opt in to?

[Dustin Smith]

Hi @Johanna Vaher  - this will be a GA rollout meaning all the features currently listed in beta will transition to general availability.