How to remove all shared drafts and start with a clean state using Collaborative Editing
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Note that this knowledge base article was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center knowledge base articles for non-Data Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Purpose
Important Definitions
To understand more about this KB, the following definitions are necessary:
- CE: Collaborative Editing.
- Personal draft: a draft that is visible only by its creator and was saved while Collaborative Editing was disabled up to version 7.5.
- Shared draft: a draft that can be shared with collaborators other than just its creator and was saved while Collaborative Editing was enabled. This type of draft is still accessible in versions 7.5 and newer even with CE disabled due to the removal of Limited mode. More details here.
More information about drafts can be found in How Do Drafts Work on Confluence.
You have plans to enable Collaborative Editing (CE) after the following scenario:
- Confluence was running with CE enabled for some time.
- This means users have created shared drafts associated to published content.
- CE was disabled for any reason (maintenance or company constraints) and Confluence has been running like this for quite some time.
- This means users have been creating personal drafts.
- At this point, you would like to enable CE as it was enabled from scratch without any reference to old shared drafts.
- Any shared draft (and associated content, such as attachments) should be removed from the database before enabling CE.
- Removing old shared drafts prevents users from editing old versions of drafts that are likely outdated.
Part of this KB may be interesting to you on the following scenario as well:
- Confluence has been running with CE enabled for some time.
- You plan to permanently disable CE.
- Because of this requirement, you would like to clean any record associated with shared drafts.
Solution
Since there's no way to bulk delete shared drafts from the UI, the Confluence administrator should perform this operation from the database level.
This KB will walk you through the necessary steps to delete shared drafts and any of their associated contents, such as attachments.
Always back up your data before performing any modifications to the database. If possible, test any alter, insert, update, or delete SQL commands on a staging server first.
Before starting, we can identify all shared drafts which are going to delete after following further steps. Below is the SQL that will help you make a decision for removing the shared drafts from the system so that we will be aware about that:
- MS SQL Server and Oracle: How to remove all shared drafts and start with a clean state using Collaborative Editing
- MySQL: How to remove all shared drafts and start with a clean state using Collaborative Editing
- PostgreSQL: How to remove all shared drafts and start with a clean state using Collaborative Editing
Linked issues
Would like to see this as an enhancement in Confluence?
Please vote and comment on the following Jira Issue: CONFSERVER-35921 - Administrators should be able to see and delete drafts from all users