Confluence 7.0 Upgrade Notes
Here are some important notes on upgrading to Confluence 7.0. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, see the Confluence 7.0 Release Notes.
On this page:
Synchrony data will be removed during the upgrade
We've added two new scheduled jobs to help you regularly evict data from the Synchrony database tables. These tables have grown very large for most customers, so when you upgrade to Confluence 7.0, an upgrade task will truncate these tables. Many customers have already been manually truncating these tables as a workaround.
The upgrade task could take some time to run. On our test site (classified as Large) it took about 30 minutes.
Page edits that are in-progress may be deleted by this process if the changes have not been published, auto-saved as a draft, or were abandoned (for example if the user’s browser crashed while editing). Because Confluence auto-saves a draft every 30 seconds by default, the loss should be minimal. The auto-save interval is configurable, so you might want to check what it's set to in your site when planning your upgrade.
CDN dark feature removed
The unsupported Confluence CDN dark feature conlfuence.fixed.cdn.enabled has been removed. If you relied on this dark feature, you should remove it from your setenv.sh or setenv.bat file.
Pre-upgrade planning tool
The new pre-upgrade planning tool is provided by the Troubleshooting and Support tools app, which is bundled with Confluence. To ensure the tool displays the latest Confluence version info, it needs to be able to access
https://puds.prod.atl-paas.net/rest/v1/upgrade/info
If a connection can’t be established, for example if your firewall or proxy server blocks this URL, the tool won’t be able to fetch any updates to version data, supported platforms or documentation. It will instead list Confluence versions that were available when Troubleshooting and Support tools app was last updated.
If you don't want to allow this URL you can instead go to Administration 
> Manage apps and update the Troubleshooting and Support tools app before you use the tool.
Also, the version of the Troubleshooting and Support tools app bundled with Confluence 7.0 does not have a Data Center UI, but an updated version is already available from Marketplace that provides Data Center support.
If you're running Confluence 6.5 or later, we recommend updating the Troubleshooting and Support tools app before you upgrade, so you can use the tool to plan your upgrade to 7.0.
Post-upgrade report
After successfully upgrading Confluence, you'll now be directed to a new upgrade report page, which shows the status of your apps and application links, and highlights any important changes that may impact your systems or users.
You can also access the report at any time from 
> General Configuration > Latest upgrade report.
Changes to thumbnail and preview generation
When you insert an uploaded file into a page, Confluence generates thumbnail images of the file contents so it can be viewed inline in the page, or in the preview. Some types of files can be very memory intensive, so we've added guard rails to protect the stability of your site when people upload files.
- We no longer generate thumbnails for TIFF or PSD (Photoshop) files. These files are often very large, and have been known to cause out of memory errors. You can choose to turn this back on using the
confluence.document.conversion.imaging.enabled.tiforconfluence.document.conversion.imaging.enabled.psdand system properties. - We've added a time limit of 30 seconds when generating thumbnails for image files and presentation files (such as Powerpoint files). This is to prevent out of memory errors affecting your entire site. You can increase the timeout using the
confluence.document.conversion.imaging.convert.timeoutandconfluence.document.conversion.slides.convert.timeoutsystem properties.
The default values for these properties apply in both Server and Data Center, but the method you'll use to change the values differs if you are using Data Center, due to the way document conversion is handled by the external process pool. See Document conversion for Confluence Data Center for more information.
Atlassian User Interface (AUI) 8 upgrade
We've upgraded our frontend library, AUI, from 7.9.7 to 8.3.4. The look and feel of Confluence is the same, but you'll notice a few small visual changes to message flags and the app switcher icon.
App switcher icon
| Old icon |
|
|---|---|
New icon |
|
Messages
| Old message style |
|
|---|---|
| New message style |
|
Other minor visual changes
Updated In the editor, the autosave information no longer includes an icon.
| Old status style |
|
|---|---|
| New status style |
|
Trackback and referrers removed
We have removed the trackback and referrers features. An upgrade task will delete the the TRACKBACKLINKS and EXTRNLNKS database tables.
We recommend you back up the data prior to upgrading if you want to keep the historical data.
License Details screen changes
We've made some minor wording changes to the license screen to make it easier to understand, and more consistent with other Atlassian applications. For example 'Support period' is now called 'Maintenance expiry', but the functionality remains the same.
Change to how you configure your mail server in the Confluence distribution
If you set up your mail server in the Confluence distribution (in the server.xml file) rather than through the UI, there are now two additional jar files that you'll need to move from <confluence-install>\confluence\WEB-INF\lib to <confluence-install>\lib
javax.activation-x.x.x.jarjavax.activation-api-1.2.0.jar
See Setting Up a Mail Session for the Confluence Distribution for the full guide.
There's a known issue with JavaMail 1.6.2 that affects the ability to define alternate email providers. See CONFSERVER-59040 - Getting issue details... STATUS . This is resolved in Confluence 7.5.
HipChat Server and Data Center integration
The Hipchat plugins are now disabled for all new installations. If you're upgrading Confluence and don't use Hipchat, you can disable the following system apps, which will hide all Hipchat integration options.
- Atlassian Hipchat integration plugin
- Atlassian Hipchat integration plugin core
- Confluence Hipchat emoticons plugin
- Confluence Hipchat integrations plugin
- Confluence Hipchat plugin
You can continue to use the Hipchat integration until Hipchat Server and Data Center reach end of life.
Edit in Office workaround is not available
In Confluence 6.15.6 (backported to the 6.13.6 Enterprise Release) we provided a workaround for customers who are unable to use Companion app, so you could continue to use Edit in Office.
This workaround is not available in Confluence 7.0, so the enable.legacy.edit.in.office dark feature flag will have no effect.
Ultimate Permission Manager app requires an update
As you may be aware, we acquired the Ultimate Permission Manager app a few months ago, and plan to incorporate the functionality into Confluence Data Center in a future 7.x version.
If you're already using the Ultimate Permission Manager, you'll need to manually update to the latest version of the app to use it with Confluence 7.0.
See Ultimate Permission Manager Release Notes for a link to the updated file, and instructions on how to update this app manually.
Confluence Source Editor
The Atlassian Labs Confluence Source Editor app is not yet compatible with Confluence 7.0. We hope to update this app in the near future. If you rely heavily on this app, you may want to wait until a compatible version is available on Marketplace before you upgrade.
Update : a new version of the Confluence Source Editor is now available on Marketplace. This version is compatible with Confluence 7.0.
Upgrading from 6.3 or earlier
If you are upgrading from Confluence 6.3 or earlier, there's a known issue where spaces do not appear in the space directory. You'll need to reindex your site after upgrading to fix this.
Supported platforms changes
No changes to supported platforms in this release.
Advance notice: Java 11 support
We'll be adding support for Java 11 in a future 7.x release. We chose Java 11 because, as a Long Term Support version, it will set you up for several years of access to regular bug fixes and security updates.
Infrastructure changes
Confluence 7.0 is a platform release, and contains a number of breaking changes, for example where we have removed a feature, screen, or API.
Head to Preparing for Confluence 7.0 to find out more about changes under the hood.
End of support announcements
JUnit report macro
We have removed the JUnit report macro. Any usages of this macro will display as 'unknown macro'.
News gadget
We have removed the News gadget. Any existing usages of this gadget will show an error.
Attachment storage configuration
We have hidden the Attachment Storage Configuration screen in the admin console, if you're already using the only supported attachment storage option (file server).
Trackback and referrers
We have removed trackback and referrers functionality. External referrers will no longer appear on the Page Information screen.
Orphaned pages
We have removed the Orphaned Pages screen in Space Tools. Go to Space Tools > Browse/Reorder pages to see all pages in a space, including pages that are not a child of the homepage (pages that would be considered orphaned if they have no incoming links).
Webdav plugin
We have ended support for the Webdav plugin, and plan to remove it in a future Confluence release.
IM Presence macro
We have ended support for the IM Presence macro. Existing instances of this macro will still work, but it will no longer appear in the macro browser.
Network macro
We have ended support for the Network macro. Existing instances of this macro will still work, but it will no longer appear in the macro browser.
Search Results macro
We have ended support for the Search Results macro. Existing instances of this macro will still work, but it will no longer appear in the macro browser.
Space Details macro
We have ended support for the Space Details macro. Existing instances of this macro will still work, but it will no longer appear in the macro browser. Space details info can be found at Space Tools > Overview.
Activity stream gadget
We have ended support for the Activity stream gadget. Existing instances of this gadget will still work, including in other applications such as Jira, but it will no longer appear in the macro browser.
Confluence page gadget
We have ended support for the Confluence page gadget. Existing instances of this gadget will still work, including in other applications such as Jira, but it will no longer appear in the macro browser.
Confluence Quick Nav gadget
We have ended support for the Confluence Quick Nav gadget. Existing instances of this gadget will still work, including in other applications such as Jira, but it will no longer appear in the macro browser.
Hipchat integration
We have ended support for Hipchat integration. Hipchat plugins will be disabled for all new installations. You can continue to use the integration until your version of Hipchat Server or Data Center reaches end of life.
For more information on all of these notices, see End of Support Announcements for Confluence.
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 Marketplace is unreachable, UPM 4.0.6 causes extreme slowness in Confluence 7.0.1. See CONFSERVER-58927.
- Synchrony will not start on Windows with AdoptOpenJDK jdk8u212 or See CONFSERVER-58784) for a workaround.
- 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.xmlfile 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.
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.
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:
- Go to > Support Tools > Health Check to check your license validity, application server, database setup and more.
- Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your installation directory, home directory and database.
- If your version of Confluence is earlier than 6.14, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all releases between your version and the latest version.
- Download the latest version of Confluence.
- Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.
- Use the Confluence Post-Upgrade Checks to ensure that everything works as expected.
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.