It's been over two years since we released Confluence 6.0, and work is well underway for Confluence 7.0.

Platform releases like 7.0 are an opportunity to make bigger changes, including removing rarely used or under-performing features. While these changes can be disruptive in the short term, they provide us with essential opportunities to improve the user experience, performance, and stability of Confluence.

The user or administrator facing changes we're considering at this stage fall into a few categories; macros, gadgets, and administration or other screens. Your feedback during this process is really important to us, which is why we wanted to start sharing our plans with you now.

End of support means that Atlassian will not offer support for, or fix bugs related to, the feature beyond the specified Confluence version.

Macros

jUnit report macro

We ended support for the JUnit Report Macro back in Confluence 6.6.

We will remove the JUnit Report macro completely in Confluence 7.0. Users will see an 'unknown-macro' message wherever the macro has been used.

Feedback for us? Feel free to drop a comment on CONFSERVER-53942 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

IM Presence macro

The IM Presence Macro shows when a given user is online in a selected chat service. The macro only supports a small number of chat services, and we feel that most modern chat tools provide better ways to see this information.

We will end support for this macro in Confluence 7.0. See End of Support Announcements for Confluence for more details. 

Feedback for us? Feel free to drop a comment on CONFSERVER-57596 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

Network macro

The Network Macro allows you display the people a particular user is following, or people who are following that user. Following someone is a useful way to get notifications about their activity, and this network information is also available on each user's profile page.

We will end support for this macro in Confluence 7.0. See End of Support Announcements for Confluence for more details. 

Feedback for us? Feel free to drop a comment on  CONFSERVER-57597 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

Search results macro

The Search Results Macro allows you to display the results of a keyword search on a page. We are making some great changes to Search over the next few releases, and have observed that this macro is rarely used.

We will end support for this macro in Confluence 7.0. See End of Support Announcements for Confluence for more details. 

Feedback for us? Feel free to drop a comment on  CONFSERVER-57598 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

Space details macro

The Space Details Macro allows you to display basic information about the current space on a page. This information is available at all times from Space Tools > Overview.

We will end support for this macro in Confluence 7.0. See End of Support Announcements for Confluence for more details. 

Feedback for us? Feel free to drop a comment on  CONFSERVER-57599 - Getting issue details... STATUS . 

Administration and other screens

Attachment storage configuration screen

Since Confluence 5.5 the only supported method for storing attachments is in the file system. The Attachment Storage Configuration screen previously provided options for customers to change where attachments are stored. This screen has no purpose in any site where attachments are already stored in the file system.

We will hide this screen in Confluence 7.0 for all sites that are already storing attachments in the file system. If you still store attachments in the database, we recommend considering migrating to the file system, as storing attachments in the database can make backing up and restoring your database more difficult.

Feedback for us? Feel free to drop a comment on  CONFSERVER-57600 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

Orphaned pages screen

Currently you can see a list of all pages that Confluence considers orphaned pages (not a child of a space homepage, and not linked to by any other page). Since the introduction of the Confluence 5 default theme, the orphaned pages screen has been less useful because it's always possible to see all pages in a space via Space Tools > Reorder pages.

This screen will be removed from the default theme in Confluence 7.0. See End of Support Announcements for Confluence for more details. 

Feedback for us? Feel free to drop a comment on  CONFSERVER-57601 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

Hipchat integration screens

Confluence provides a number of integration points with Hipchat, including the ability to send page notifications to a Hipchat room, and use Hipchat emoji in Confluence pages. As you may be aware, we have discontinued development on all chat products. Hipchat Cloud services were shut down in February 2019, and Hipchat Data Center and Server will both reach end of life during the next 18 months.

We plan to take a phased approach in Confluence, so that any organizations still using Hipchat Server or Data Center can continue to use this integration.

We will end support for all bundled Hipchat plugins in Confluence 7.0. These will be disabled by default for new installations. This will have no impact on existing installations, and can be easily enabled if required.

If you're not using Hipchat, you can reduce clutter in your global and space administration screens by disabling the following plugins now:

• Atlassian Hipchat integration plugin
• Atlassian Hipchat integration plugin core
• Confluence Hipchat emoticons plugin
• Confluence Hipchat integrations plugin
• Confluence Hipchat plugin

Feedback for us? Feel free to drop a comment on  CONFSERVER-57602 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

Shortcut links

Shortcut Links were introduced in Confluence 2.3 and provided a quick way to add links to websites in wiki markup. Shortcut links can only be configured by an administrator, are not easily discoverable, and seldom used by end users.

Trackback and external referrers

Trackback enables Confluence to send and receive trackback pings when pages are linked to. External Referrers appear on the Page Information view of a page, and list clicks from external websites to the page. Trackback is no longer widely used in modern websites, and because it relies on accepting unauthenticated requests to a particular URL, is a spam vector.

We will remove the trackback and referrers features in Confluence 7.0. See End of Support Announcements for Confluence for more details. 

Feedback for us? Feel free to drop a comment on  CONFSERVER-57611 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

Usage stats

The Usage Stats plugin provides basic page view tracking in Confluence. We know that usage tracking is important to you, however the current implementation is disabled by default as it can have a noticeable impact on your site's performance.

View page source

The 

 (more actions) menu includes a View Source option. Users expect this to provide an editable view of the storage format of a page, but instead it provides a view of the page, as it would appear in the editor.

This feature is not to be confused with the unsupported Source Editor plugin, which does allow you to edit the storage format of a page.

Gadgets

Gadgets were designed to allow you to display information dynamically from sources like iGoogle or Jira, for example, in Confluence. The first gadgets were introduced in Confluence 3.1, and much of the technology they were based on is now superseded or obsolete. Since then we have also implemented a number of better ways to display dynamic information using macros and other integration points.

We will end support for Confluence gadgets in Confluence 7.0. See End of Support Announcements for Confluence for more details. 

This change will not impact gadgets from other applications or third party apps, but we do recommend you use an equivalent Confluence macro, where one is available, instead of a gadget. 

Feedback for us? Feel free to drop a comment on  CONFSERVER-57614 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

Here's a list of known gadgets and their equivalent macro, where one is available.