Highlights of 7.17.0-rc1

Released 14 March 2022

No significant changes in this release candidate. 

Highlights of 7.17.0-beta1

Released 2 March 2022

Make your integrations more secure with OAuth 2.0

For DATA CENTER SERVER

You can now configure Confluence as an OAuth 2.0 client and provider, allowing it to exchange data with external applications in both directions – either by giving external applications access to Confluence data or letting Confluence request data from these applications. Thanks to this, you can make your current integrations more secure and reliable. OAuth 2.0 also paves the way for popular 3rd party apps to create their own connectors to be used specifically with Confluence.

To make it simple and to keep your integrations in one place, we’ve merged the OAuth 2.0 functionality into application links. We’ve also used this opportunity to improve the application links themselves. You can use them to manage your integrations with other Atlassian products or external applications, using either OAuth 1.0 or OAuth 2.0.

Learn more about using application links

Keep your site running like clockwork

For DATA CENTER SERVER

Keeping a big, busy site running smoothly requires a well thought out monitoring strategy. Many of you already use JMX to monitor things like memory usage and CPU utilization. Now you can turn on application monitoring to get an even more granular view from the new app-specific metrics.

New monitoring screen allows you to turn JMX and app monitoring on or off as needed. 

Learn how to monitor application performance

Diagnose performance problems

Investigating the cause of a performance problem can be tricky, especially if you have many Marketplace or custom-built apps. It can be hard to know if the problem is in the application, an installed app, or a misconfigured integration.

App-specific metrics include the plugin key to give you a clearer picture of exactly what your apps are doing. This helps you rule out or pinpoint the source of a problem faster. 

Spot issues before they happen

One of the biggest benefits of investing in monitoring, is the ability to be alerted about potential problems before they happen. We know from our own monitoring of huge Confluence sites, that identifying problems early is essential to maintaining uptime and a good user experience.

Some of the things you can now monitor include how long it's taking to render web resources, perform AO operations, do garbage collection, and more.

See the full list of app metrics and suggested alerts 

Performance monitoring dashboards to get you started

If you don't currently have any monitoring, now is a great time to consider it. We've created some Grafana templates that you can use out-of-the box, or as a jumping off point to build your own dashboards.

Learn how to monitor Confluence with Prometheus and Grafana

Encrypt your database password

For DATA CENTER SERVER

You can now encrypt the database password that is stored in the confluence.cfg.xml file (JDBC connections only). We provide two encryption methods (a Base64 cipher and an Algorithm cipher), and the ability for you to create your own cipher.

Learn how to encrypt your database password

Updated VPAT documents for accessibility improvements

For DATA CENTER SERVER

Continuing our investment in accessibility, we’ve refreshed the VPAT documents for our products to reflect recent improvements aligned with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA.

Take a look at our VPAT documents for WCAG 2.1 and Section 508.

Other notable changes

• You can now disable individual health checks in Troubleshooting and Support Tools. This is useful if you want to skip particular checks. 

• You can now access the faster permissions service from the admin console. You should read the Faster permissions service documentation before enabling this service.

Upgrade notes

Configuring Confluence as an OAuth 2.0 provider

You can now configure Confluence as an OAuth 2.0 client and provider. If you’d like to switch to using OAuth 2.0, you’ll need to update your current integrations that use OAuth 1.0 or build new ones, compatible with Confluence. To understand what OAuth 2.0 flows are available and what data you need, see the Confluence OAuth 2.0 provider API.

If your integrations are ready to go, learn how to link to other applications.

Minor improvements to calendar restrictions

We've made some small changes to the calendar restrictions dialog to make it easier to use and understand. The way restrictions work have not changed.  

Invalid license check

If a Confluence Data Center or Server license isn't valid, system administrators will now see a banner prompting them to contact their license issuer to confirm. 

Change to JMX monitoring

You can now turn JMX monitoring off from the Monitoring page. Previously this was done using the confluence.jmx.disabled system property. 

You won't be able to enable JMX monitoring through the UI on any nodes that have this system property set. 

If you prefer to keep JMX monitoring disabled, we still recommend removing the system property, and instead using the UI to disable JMX. This will allow you to enable it in future, without needing to restart Confluence. 

Supported platforms changes

In this release we're adding support for PostgreSQL 12, 13, and 14. 

End of support for Microsoft SQL Server 2016

As previously announced, Microsoft SQL Server 2016 is no longer supported.

Advance Notice: End of support for PostgreSQL 10

Confluence 7.17.x will be the last release to support PostgreSQL 10.

For more information on these notices, see End of Support Announcements for Confluence. 

Infrastructure changes

Confluence 7.17 contains changes that may affect apps. Head to Preparing for Confluence 7.17 to find out how these changes will impact app developers.