Here are some important notes on upgrading to Confluence 6.11. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, see the Confluence 6.11 Release Notes. 

Upgrade notes

Get ready for new file editing

In this release we’ve introduced a new way to edit files. Users can now edit any file attached to a Confluence page using the default desktop app for that file type installed on their computer. After saving, they'll be able to automatically re-upload the file to Confluence as a new version.

Changes to Edit in Office functionality

Updated: 8 October 2018

This feature replaces the Edit in Office option, which had some tricky limitations. It was restricted to Microsoft Office documents and only worked if you had the right browser, operating system and app combination.

We've removed the 'Edit in Office' button from the attachments page, the View Files macro and the Attachments macro.

If your users currently rely on the Edit in Office function, you might want to send them our guide to using the new Edit Files feature.

Installing the Atlassian Companion app

To be able to edit files, your users will need to download and install the Atlassian Companion app on their machine and have it running in the background. You can read more about this process in our Edit Files guide. If your users aren't able to install applications themselves, you may want to distribute the app to them.

We also provide a Microsoft Installer package (MSI) to install the Companion app for Windows across multiple users or machines. If you deploy via the MSI, the Companion app won’t automatically get the latest updates, including security and bug fixes, so some maintenance is required. Learn more about Administering the Atlassian Companion app.

Terminal server environments

The Edit files feature isn't currently compatible with terminal server environments (for example, Windows Remote Desktop Services) where each virtual desktop session shares the same network interface. This may be something we include in a future release. See CONFSERVER-56302 - Getting issue details... STATUS  for more information.

If required, you can remove the Edit files option from your Confluence site. Head to Administering the Atlassian Companion app to find out how to disable file editing.

Change to table and image resizing in PDF exports

When you export a page that contains a table, we reduce the width of the table columns as much as possible, so that the whole table fits on the page (a normal Confluence page is usually wider than an A4 / US Letter page). 

Previously we attempted to resize images when resizing the table, but this often led to small images being resized unexpectedly. We now use the size set in the editor, instead of attempting to resize images in table cells. This means that if the images in a table exceed the width of the PDF page, part of the table may be cut off. See Wide tables are cut off in PDF exports in Confluence for suggested workarounds. 

Scheduled XML backups disabled for Data Center   

Confluence's scheduled XML backup has been known to cause outages in large sites. For this reason, if you have a Data Center license, we'll disable the XML backup scheduled job when you upgrade to Confluence 6.11.

Having a robust backup strategy is important, for Server and Data Center sites. We recommend you back up your database, install, local home, and shared home directories regularly, rather than relying on XML site exports.

New diagnostics info coming soon

After upgrading to Confluence 6.11, you may see some new messages in your application log, and a new atlassian-diagnostics.log file, which is also included in support zips. This is related to new diagnostic information we're working on, for things like low memory or disk space, or slow HTTP requests, long running tasks, or macro rendering. No action is required for these messages for now.

We plan to fine-tune the thresholds and provide a UI for this diagnostic information in an upcoming Confluence release.

Supported platforms changes

In this release we've:

• Added support for Oracle 12c Release 2 (12.2.x)
• Added support for Microsoft SQL Server 2017

Update configuration files after upgrading

The contents of configuration files such as server.xml, web.xml , setenv.bat / setenv.sh and confluenceinit.properties change from time to time. 

When upgrading, we recommend manually reapplying any additions to these files (such as proxy configuration, datasource, JVM parameters) rather than simply overwriting the file with the file from your previous installation, otherwise you will miss out on any improvements we have made.

Upgrading from Confluence 5.x?

Collaborative editing is made possible by the magic of Synchrony. When you install Confluence Server, Synchrony will be configured to run as a separate process on your server.

If you're upgrading from Confluence 5.x, there are a few requirements you need to be aware of:

Infrastructure changes 

For developers

Head to Preparing for Confluence 6.11 to find out more about changes under the hood. 

End of support announcements

No announcements. 

Known issues

• Users can't edit files using the Atlassian Companion app in some browsers. See Can’t edit files in Confluence Server using Atlassian Companion app in Internet Explorer, Edge, Firefox, or Safari
  
• If you use Apache to limit who can access the admin console, you should update your configuration. See Using Apache to limit access to the Confluence administration interface for our suggested configuration.
• There is a known issue where read-only mode attempts to write to <shared-home>/confluence.cfg.xml , but the file doesn't exist in the shared home directory. This problem affects sites that have been previously upgraded from Confluence 6.0 or earlier. See Could not save access.mode into the shared confluence.cfg.xml file error after upgrading to Confluence Data Center 6.10
• There is a known issue where some fonts that Confluence relies on are not available in older Linux distributions. See Confluence UI shows garbled or corrupt text on CAPTCHA, macros and/or diagrams due to missing fonts. 
• There is a known issue where the "hibernate dialect" property was being incorrectly retained after upgrade. Customers who have been using Confluence since version 2.4 or earlier (legends!) should check the hibernate dialect in their <confluence-home>/confluence.cfg.xml file before upgrading to Confluence 6.x to avoid this error: Upgrading fails with ERROR The size (16777215) given to the column 'event' exceeds the maximum allowed for any data type (8000) in Confluence.
• There is a known issue when upgrading Confluence with an Oracle database. Oracle users should upgrade their driver to 12.2.0.x before upgrading to Confluence 6.1 or later. See Upgrade to version 6.1.x Failed With Error "ORA-01000: maximum open cursors exceeded" for more information. 

Upgrade procedure

Note: Upgrade to a test environment first. Test your upgrades in your test environment before rolling them into production.

If you're already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the latest version:

1. Go to > Support Tools > Health Check to check your license validity, application server, database setup and more.
2. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your installation directory, home directory and database.
3. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 6.5, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all releases between your version and the latest version.
4. Download the latest version of Confluence.
5. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.

Checking for known issues and troubleshooting the Confluence upgrade

After you have completed the steps required to upgrade your Confluence installation, check all the items on the Confluence post-upgrade checklist to ensure that everything works as expected. If something is not working correctly, please check for known Confluence issues and try troubleshooting your upgrade as described below:

• Check for known issues. Sometimes we find out about a problem with the latest version of Confluence after we have released the software. In such cases we publish information about the known issues in the Confluence Knowledge Base.
• Check for answers from the community. Other users may have encountered the same issue. You can check for answers from the community at Atlassian Community.
• Did you encounter a problem during the Confluence upgrade? Please refer to the guide to troubleshooting upgrades in the Confluence Knowledge Base.

If you encounter a problem during the upgrade and can't solve it, please create a support ticket and one of our support engineers will help you.