Highlights of 8.6.0-rc1

Released 29 September 2023

Contains:

• Minor bug fixes

Highlights of 8.6.0-beta1

Released 18 September 2023

Say more with image captions

For: END USERS

With image captions, you can make complex screenshots in your Confluence wiki easier to understand and provide commentary on interesting pictures in your blog posts. Simply select the image in the editor, type your caption, and hit Enter. The hard part is coming up with a good caption…

Learn more about image captions

Screenshot: Add, edit, or remove a caption using the image properties panel

Screenshot: Image caption displayed on a published page

A faster way to create text links

For: END USERS

Make quick work of creating hyperlinks by pasting a copied URL over highlighted text in the editor. How’d we ever link without it?

Animated screenshot: Copying a URL, and pasting it over highlighted text in the editor creates a text link

Paste without formatting using Ctrl+Shift+V

For: END USERS

If your work involves transferring content from digital press releases, presentations, or databases into Confluence, you can quickly clear the formatting by pasting the content using Ctrl+Shift+V or (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+V for Safari).

Animated screenshot: Pasting webpage text into the editor with ‘paste without formatting’ shortcut

Note that in previous versions, this shortcut is used to add a table row. To add a table row in Confluence 8.6 and later, use Ctrl + Shift + Y. 

Use forward slash / to add macros

For: END USERS

The forward slash '/' command has become a recognizable and popular shortcut across several software apps. So, in Confluence 8.6, we've added it as a way to activate macro suggestions (also known as macro autocomplete) so you can find and add shortcuts swiftly while editing. You can already to use '{' to activate the same menu in Confluence Data Center. We just figured, why not both?

Animated screenshot: Forward slash / activates the macro suggestions menu in the editor

More accessibility improvements

For: END USERS

This release contains more accessibility fixes. Here we’ve highlighted some of the fixes you can expect:

• Intuitive tabbing in the editor – Tabbing navigation when editing pages and blogs now follows logical ordering and maintains focus when formatting options are selected.
• Alt text for Chart Macro – You can add a text alternative to describe your charts in the Chart Macro, and if left blank, default alt text will be applied to describe the chart for screen readers.
• Improved screen reader announcements – Listen out for better screen reader announcements in the Create Page dialog, Create Space dialog, Live Search macro, and Chart macro; we’ve also made the background color of table cells available audibly.

See the full list of accessibility fixes

Use AWS Secrets Manager to manage your database credentials

For: ADMINS

Confluence 8.6 supports AWS Secrets Manager as an additional encryption method that system administrations can use to protect the values in the confluence.properties files. Use it to avoid storing plaintext values in your product's database configuration files and rest assured that your Confluence instance is protected from credentials leakage.

Learn how to configure AWS Secrets Manager in Confluence

Upgrade notes

End of support for Server licenses

Confluence 8.6.0 will be a Data Center-only release and won't support Server licenses. With Atlassian Server end of support, make sure you have a valid Data Center license before upgrading to Confluence 8.6.x or later versions.

To update your license:

1. Go to Administration  > General Configuration > License Details

2. Under Update license, enter your Data Center license key

3. Select Save

Confluence 8.5.x Long Term Support release will continue to support Server licenses until February 15, 2024.  Check out your options for upgrading

Changes to Jira Issues Macro total count display

We've reduced the time it takes to load the editor on a page containing many Jira Issues macros displaying the Total issues count. To do this, the macro now caches the count when it's added, and again when it's viewed, which results in fewer calls made between Jira and Confluence.

To clear the cache and see the latest issues count of your Jira issues filter within the editor, you should save and publish the page and then return to the editor. Refreshing the page in view mode will also clear the cache.

This fix will be backported to Long Term Support releases Confluence 7.19.15. Read more about this bug at CONFSERVER-74871 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

New emoji audit logs

In Confluence 8.4, we introduced the ability for users to upload their own emojis (also known as custom emojis). We’ve since added audit logs for the following operations so system admins easily search and track custom emoji-related activities, including:

• custom emoji upload enabled

• custom emoji upload disabled for users

• custom emoji uploaded

• custom emoji deleted by user

• custom emoji deleted by admin

See Audit Log Events in Confluence for more details about these and other audit logs.

Faster permissions service enabled by default

Confluence 8.6 will have the faster permissions service enabled by default. The service delivers faster load times when Confluence must check permissions on a large number of pages, for example when loading a Task Report macro, page indexing macro, or the dashboard display when a person first logs in. This will benefit enterprises with large data sets and users.

The faster permissions service was originally shipped disabled by default in Confluence 7.16.

Configure the faster permissions service

Supported platforms changes

Added support for PostgreSQL 15.

Infrastructure changes

Confluence 8.6 contains changes that may affect apps. Head to Preparing for Confluence 8.6 to find out how these changes will impact app developers.