Purpose

If you experience serious problems with collaborative editing, such as data duplication, our Support team may ask help from users report problems and collect editing data.  The plugin extracts data from the editor then matches it with page events and version history to create a complete snapshot of the lifecycle of the page. This data can assist our Support and development teams to identify low level issues in the editor. 

You should only use the plugin when suggested by support, and should consider the files sensitive data.

What data does the tool collect?

When someone reports a problem, we collect all the changes that have happened to that page, including the page or blog history, any page events, and data from the collaborative editor (for the past 72 hours). The user reporting the problem will also be prompted to describe the issue in their own words. 

Note: Synchrony captures every key stroke made in the editor when editing a page. For example if you type "The best ice cream is Vanilla" and then backspace and change it to "Chocolate", both "Vanilla" and "Chocolate" will be included in the Synchrony data. 

This data is exported as a zip file, and saved to the following directory:

• <shared-home>/collab-data/ if you run Confluence in a cluster

• <local-home>/shared-home/collab-data/ you are using non-clustered Confluence.

Because the collected data includes user generated content, generated reports are only kept for 5 days, then automatically deleted by the Clean up collaborative editing feedback reports scheduled job.  A maximum of 200 reports are kept at any one time.  You can change both of these values if necessary. See Configure the plugin.  

How do I send this data to Atlassian? 

The data collected is stored in your shared home directory. If you choose to share this data with our Support team for analysis, you can transfer the files through a support ticket. Do not share this data in any public locations, such as in Atlassian bug reports.

This data should only be provided when requested by a Support team member.

Using the plugin

Install the Collaborative editing feedback plugin

You need System Administrator global permissions to do this. 

To install the Collaborative editing feedback plugin:

1. Download the collaborative-editing-feedback-plugin-1.0.1.jar file.
2. Go to Administration > Manage apps.
3. Select Upload app and browse for the jar file. 

 Note: The tool will be bundled with Confluence in a future version.

Allow your users to self report problems

By default, the plugin only allows people with System Administrator global permissions to report problems through the administrative interface. 

To allow users to self-report problems:

1. Go to Administration  > General Configuration > Collaborative editing feedback.
2. Select Settings.
3. Select the Allow users to report editor problems checkbox. 

This will add the Report editing problems button to the header, when viewing or editing a page. 

Report an editing problem

To report an editing problem from a page or blog post:

1. Navigate to the problematic page or blog post.
2. Select Report editing problems from the header.
3. Enter any relevant information, such as what you were doing when the problem occurred.
4. Indicate if you had recently copied and pasted data on the page, or if the page was updated externally (such as through the API, or by an app).
5. Select Send feedback. 

The report will be saved to the shared home directory, and will appear in the list of available reports (only accessible to System Administrators). 

Report an editing problem by page ID

System Administrators can also generate reports for problematic pages using the page ID. This is useful if you don't want to allow users to self-report problems.

To generate a report for a particular page or blog post:

1. Go to Administration  > General Configuration > Collaborative editing feedback.
2. Enter the page or blogpost ID in the Export collaborative editing data for content field.
3. Select Create dump button. 

The report file will appear in the list of available reports. 

Configure the plugin

You can change the default behaviour of the Collaborative editing feedback plugin using the following System Properties.