Confluence cloud edit function behaving very strangely

[Martin Farley]

So, I've just signed up to a trial for Confluence cloud to show the rest of my programme team how it could be used to support collaboration across the programme.

But, it's all very confusing . The page edit and macro functions are working in very different ways on the space home pages, compared to all other pages.

There are important macros missing from the child pages (all using the new functionality), while on the space home pages it seems to be working in the old way.

Even then, some of the macros are not working in the child pages (i.e. those using new edit function), such as embedding files like ppt and pdf into the page.

What is going on?

If this isn't fixed, I'm pretty sure we will not be using it going forward...

[Mike Bowen · Accepted solution]

Hi @Martin Farley 

Confluence cloud is a great tool for collaboration and you are right to trial it out and get familiar with the features and show them off with your fellow colleagues. 

If I can make a suggestion while trialling Confluence. Pick an editor and stick with it, don't chop and change between the old and new editor as you rightly pointed out, some things are missing in the new editor, while other things are better. Check out the Confluence Cloud Editor Roadmap for an idea of what has changed between the old and new.

Confluence editor is going through a number of new changes and one can read all about it from this post Confluence Editing Improvements. 

I agree with you some of the changes are questionable, but take it from me who has created an entire intranet in Confluence, as well as a process based wiki, knowledge base, customer portal, Jira Service Desk, none of the changes Atlassian has introduced in the new editor are  showstoppers. 

In fact I've used many collaboration tools in the past, SharePoint being one of it's main competition and Atlassian wins by a mile especially given how well the other apps such as Jira Projects, Kanban board, Jira Service Desk and Trello link up nicely with Confluence and vice versa. 

- Mike

[Martin Farley]

Mike, thanks for your quick response.

How do I pick an editor? It appears to have defaulted to the old editor for space landing pages, and the new editor for all other pages. I don't see any obvious way to change this. 

I've also introduced Confluence to several organisations, but this is the first time some of the functionality simply isn't working (iFrames, file views, page formatting etc). I'm also disappointed that the documentation theme is no longer available as standard, as it was the most useful one for office/project use.

I have used the Cloud version before and it worked perfectly, but it currently seems beset with problems. I will perservere, but need to present the options soon and in it's current form, it's simply a non-starter...

[Mike Bowen]

Hi @Martin Farley 

What you can do is create a new landing page under your existing landing page with the new editor. Then set this page to be your new landing page (Space Settings, Edit Space Details, set the home page). Now your landing page is the new editor and then every time you create a new page, use the new editor. 

On this page Confluence Editing Improvements it mentions you can contact the support desk and ask them to enable the new editor by default, that way you won't have a mix of editors.

It also mentions the editor is rolling out to small sites first, and that the new editor is available as a template, so that you can get use to it. Do you see the template with the new editor and the old editor? 

I am currently running iFrames in both old and new editor, both are identical macros and work perfectly. 

Not sure what you mean by documentation theme, unless you are talking about templates in the editor. If indeed templates then there are loads of possibilities, which can be turned on and off by a Confluence Administrator. 

- Mike

[Martin Farley]

Thanks v much for this. I didn't realise you could do this. My cloud instances only has the new editor for new pages, but space landing pages were still in the old editor, which was weird.

By documentation theme, I simply mean the old default theme, which allowed every user to see the structure of the entire site from any page. Now, they have to go back to the beginning and click through the other spaces to see this (see an example here).

The failure of the iframe macro is shown below I've picked Google as a page that has no access issues etc). 

I also am not very happy with all the white space that has suddenly appeared on every page, but that's a minor concern

[Mike Bowen]

Maybe the documentation theme was something for Confluence Server. I am not sure, as I am on Confluence Cloud. However, I had a look at it, and it is an easy fix ... 

Create a template with a page layout, where the left section is thin and the right section is fat. Add a Page Tree macro to the left section, customize it with a search bar and expland all, collapse all buttons. You could add a home link at the top of the page to take you back to the home page. 

Try clearing your cache in Google Chrome to fix the iFrame problem.

Here is my iFrame in new editor and I am able to customize it quite a bit, height, width, centre, left, right, bottom, top etc. It can also be linked with a CSS ID etc. I am linking to our company website.  

- Mike

[Martin Farley]

Thanks for your help - much appreciated - but the page tree macro will only include the pages for that space. The old documentation theme (which was the default one last time I used Confluence Cloud) would include the pages for the whole site.

It also doesn't work. The new layout squeezes everything into one column in the middle of the screenL (looks bloody awful!) and the page tree doesn't.  

I've never known Confluence to have so many problems. It is currently unusable for me and it looks as though I am going to have to recommend using Microsoft Teams + Sharepoint to drive collaboration for the foreseeable future... which is incredibly disappointing

[Mike Bowen]

In the new editor, you know you can expand the page (see arrows to make the page wide and full screen wide, so there should be no tiny unusable columns. That is one of the nice features of the new editor. 

How many spaces would you want to see on a home page? It is possible to list at least two popular spaces at one time in the left or right sidebar of a page. with loads of space free for normal text. Or just have one pane on the left or right side of the page if you need more space. 

Likewise there is the Space List macro, which can be placed anywhere.

I disagree that confluence is unusable though. New editor has it's Pro's and con's, but nothing is a showstopper. 

Unless you have a licence in Office 365 already I would never recommend SharePoint and Microsoft Team. Confluence and Slack any day, but each to their own. :-) 

Best of luck,

- Mike

[Martin Farley]

Thanks again Mike,

 I can now see how you can fill the whole page width, but it still leaves the title sitting in the centre of the page, which looks awful.

As for your question, 'how many spaces would you want to see...?", the answer is clearly, however many the user wishes. In the old set up, people could get to any other part of the site in one view. Now they have to start digging and searching. From an information management point of view, it's a very poor substitute. The introduction of the documentation theme about 10 years ago was a big step forward for Confluence - why even remove it as an option??

I don't want to be taking up page real estate with space and page list while there is a side bar sitting there that could be doing this (and used to do it).

On Cloud, I also cannot install content menus across the top, so the overall navigation of the new look and feel is much poorer than before.

I'm really no fan of Microsoft O365, but that's what my organisation have and for me to suggest Confluence instead, it really needs to be performing much better than this.

I appreciate your defence of it. I have used Confluence enthusiastically for the last 13 years (on and off), which is why I am so incredibly disappointed with these changes that have made it a much less attractive option. I will, however, perservere as I really don't want to use Microsoft Teams....