Confluence 8.8 release notes
8 February 2024
We're excited to present Confluence 8.8This Confluence release supports only Data Center licenses. If you have a Server license, check out your options for upgrading.
Highlights
- Delete multiple attachments at once
- New REST APIs to make content management easier
- Say ‘G0oD8y3’ to plaintext user directory server passwords
- Changes to app uploads via the Universal Plugin Manager
- The ATST app upgraded to 1.54.0 with new health checks
- New infrastructure metrics for in-product diagnostics
- More accessibility improvements
- Removal of rarely-used rendering methods in Confluence
More
Read the upgrade notes for important info about this release and see the full list of issues resolved.
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Delete multiple attachments at once
For: END USERS ADMINS
Deleting attachments one at a time is fine if your page only has a handful of attachments, but for organizations working with countless attachments on a page, it's manual and time-consuming. We’ve heard this feedback, and we're excited to add the ability to bulk delete attachments in this release.
With great power comes great responsibility, so for now, you can delete a maximum of 20 attachments at a time. You can also download the selected attachments.
Screenshot: New Delete button to bulk delete selected attachments.
New REST APIs to make content management easier
For: ADMINS
Access more REST APIs to help you automate, script, and scale the following content management tasks:
update permissions for a page
archive and restore spaces
See the REST API documentation for the new methods to use.
Say ‘G0oD8y3’ to plaintext user directory server passwords
For: ADMINS
Secret manager now includes support for user directory password encryption. When configuring user directories, the supplied server password will be automatically AES encrypted. For existing instances that have user directories already configured, passwords will be encrypted automatically upon upgrade to Confluence 8.8.0. Confluence will automatically generate encryption keys and store them in the keys directory. The directory is not included in site exports, so you must manually back up this directory. To locate it, look in:
the
shared homedirectory for clustered instancesthe
local homedirectory for single-node instances
See Backup and Restore for more information.
Changes to app uploads via the Universal Plugin Manager
For: ADMINS
To enhance security, we’ve changed how Data Center products, including Confluence, handle app installation through the Universal Plugin Manager (UPM) and REST APIs. The Upload App button of UPM is now disabled by default. System admins can still enable app installation via two possible workarounds:
Re-enable the UI upload button and API. Setting the system property
upm.plugin.upload.enabledto true. For security reasons, do not leave this setting on permanently. We recommend turning it off once plugin upload is complete.Load custom plugins from your Confluence file system. Set the system property
atlassian.confluence.plugin.scan.directoryto a target location of your custom plugins, which will be loaded into the system upon restart. We recommend a directory within the Confluence home directory, such as$CONFLUENCE_HOME/plugins/installed-plugins. Make sure you restart Confluence after setting this property.
**If you run a Confluence cluster, a rolling restart is enough to pick up the configuration properties you set to enable the features.
This change doesn’t affect the installation of apps from the Atlassian Marketplace. Note that the UPM upload option is still enabled for instances running in dev mode.
The ATST app upgraded to 1.54.0 with new health checks
For: ADMINS
The Atlassian Troubleshooting and Support app (ATST) has been upgraded to version 1.54.0, and will be available by default in Confluence Data Center 8.8. Checks include:
If you’re using Confluence 8.7 or earlier, you can still upgrade the ATST app to 1.54.0 manually through Atlassian Marketplace and start using the newest health checks right away.
New infrastructure metrics for in-product diagnostics
For: ADMINS
We’re adding a number of new metrics for monitoring the health and performance of your instance infrastructure:
outgoing and incoming mail servers
user directories
shared and local home directories
node communication
Synchrony connectivity
Learn more about the new infrastructure metrics
More accessibility improvements
For: END USERS
We've continued to focus on remediating critical accessibility issues and upgrading to the latest Atlassian User interface (AUI), providing improvements for screen reader and keyboard users across Team Calendars, the space sidebar, the editor toolbar, avatars, dropdown menus, inline comments and more!
See the list of resolved tickets for further information.
Removal of rarely-used rendering methods in Confluence
For: ADMINS
This release required the unplanned removal of a number of rarely-used rendering methods. In some very rare circumstances this may result in customer-developed plugins or user macros failing to render. If you encounter broken user macros after this upgrade, please contact Atlassian Support.
Resolved issues
For full details of bugs fixed and suggestions resolved, head to our public issues tracker on Jira.
Get ready to upgrade
Before you upgrade, check out the Confluence 8.8 upgrade notes for important changes in this release, then follow the usual upgrade instructions to upgrade your site.
Been a while since your last upgrade? Check out our upgrade matrix for a bird's-eye view of the most important changes since Confluence 8.5 LTS.
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Credits
Our wonderful customers...
You play an important role in making Confluence better. Thanks to everyone who participated in interviews with us, made suggestions, voted, and reported bugs!