What you need to know about Confluence 5.8

The release of Confluence 5.8 brings some important changes that those running previous versions will want to review.

Deprecations

Perhaps the most significant one is the end of support for Java 7. This means that before upgrading Confluence you must first ensure that your environment is running Java 8.

Atlassian have also deprecated support for a number of browsers including IE9. We recommend that you check both your server and client environments against the changing list of supported platforms.

In addition to these deprecations there have been a number of other notable changes to Confluence's functionality.

Page restrictions upgrade

This is a welcome update that means that when you give another user permission to edit a page, they now also automatically receive permission to view the page. In addition, the restrictions, labels and location elements have now moved up from the bottom of the edit screen and will be available just below the toolbar.

Improved editing experience

Another great refinement to the editor is that the Notify Watchers check-box remembers your selection, so if you're doing a slew of edits you don't need to remember to uncheck it every time.

Present directly from Confluence

Along with changes to the editor, there is now a full-screen presentation mode, allowing you present your Powerpoint and other multi-page attachments directly from the wiki.

The changes to attachments don't stop there they now have the ability to be recovered from the trash, just like pages. Inline commenting has been updated so that long comment threads are now rolled up until you click into them to reveal the whole chain of messages.

Bundled add-ons

And topping it all off the Confluence Questions and Confluence Team Calendar plugins are now bundled with Confluence itself, allowing you to choose to install them at the same time as installing the application.

Share your Confluence 5.8 questions or experiences in the comments below. If you have questions about migrating to Confluence 5.8, contact us today.