This documentation is intended for Confluence developers who want to ensure that their existing plugins and apps are compatible with Confluence 8.1.

Watch this page to find out when a new milestone is available and what’s changed. We will publish formal release notes once we release a beta.

Latest milestones

Issues with this milestone?

Hit the Feedback button on the Confluence EAP header or raise an issue to tell us about it.

Planned changes

In this section we'll provide an overview of the changes we intend to make, so you can start thinking how it might impact your app. We'll indicate when a change has been implemented, and in which milestone. 

Introducing new emoji set

Status: DONE

Customers will be able to create even more engaging content on Confluence with over 3000 emojis from the Twemoji 14.0.2 set at their fingertips, via the emoji menu (introduced in Confluence 8.0).

Learn how to use Symbols, emojis and special characters on Confluence.

If you haven't already, Migrate your HipChat emojis from Confluence Server to Data Center.

OAuth 2.0 support for mail server apps

Status: DONE

Updated 05 Apr 2023

If you use Microsoft Exchange or Office 365, the following Confluence plugins stopped working on 31 December 2022 due to Microsoft's End of Life for basic authentication:

• Confluence mail archiving (IMAP support)
• Confluence email to page (POP3 support only)
• Confluence reply to email (POP3 support only)

Confluence 8.1 will extend its OAuth 2.0 support to these bundled mail apps.

We have also backported this support to Confluence 7.17. and later, including the Confluence 7.19 Long Term Support release.

Migration of attachment data to new folder structure

Status: DONE

Sometimes attachments can go "missing" when a page move fails. To prevent this kind of data loss, Confluence has developed a more robust way of storing attachments in our file system.

On Confluence 8.1 startup, your attachment data will be migrated from version 3 to this new attachment folder structure (version 4). Confluence is expected to work as normal while this automatic migration task is happening in the background.

Learn more about the version 4 attachment storage layout format as well as the migration task at Hierarchical File System Attachment Storage.

Introducing Amazon S3 object storage for attachments

Status: DONE

Continuing our work started in Confluence 8.0 for an attachment data storage option, we'll soon be able to introduce support for Amazon S3 object storage.

We hope to make this solution available after we've performed more tests on migrating existing data to S3 object storage. Note that this storage option is only available to Data Center customers, and not available for on-premise deployments.

For vendors with attachment files stored in a filesystem, make sure you're accessing these attachments through APIs provided in AttachmentManager, and don't assume that their location is based on the Confluence 8.0 version of the Hierarchical File System Attachment Storage.

Move large page trees without disruption 

Status: DONE

Good things take time, and moving large page trees in Confluence is no exception. We're removed a misleading timeout warning that would appear at the 3-minute mark, even if the page tree actually moved after that period of time. What you'll now see is a loading icon and and a counter showing how many seconds have elapsed since the operation started – which will run as long as it takes the page tree to be moved. This bugfix will be backported to both Confluence 7.13 LTS and 7.19 LTS.

New in-product diagnostics metrics

Status: DONE

You can now see database connectivity and HTTP connection data for in-product diagnostics (IPD) through Java Management Extensions API (JMX) monitoring and the log file atlassian-confluence-ipd-monitoring.log. These metrics have been enabled by default to help customers and Atlassian Support identify potential causes of performance issues on running instances of Confluence.

Learn more about the new metrics at Live Monitoring Using the JMX Interface.

Introducing a Cloud migration log

Status: DONE

Customers can now find details about their migration to Confluence Cloud more easily with a dedicated migration log file at atlassian-confluence-migrations.log. We haven't made any changes to the main atlassian.confluence.log, which will still contain copies of these migration logs. We are planning to backport this feature to LTS versions of Confluence from 7.13.14 and 7.19.6  to make it easier for customers to access this migration info.

See Working with Confluence Logs for more information.

Improving accessibility for low-vision and keyboard-only users

Status: DONE

This release will contain additional accessibility fixes for our screen reader and keyboard-only users to improve their experience. Here are some highlights:

• We've removed unnecessary repetition of table headings when using voice over technology
• Screen readers will announce the macro suggestions activated by the shortcut "{" in the editor, and announce the option selected when you navigate that list with up and down arrow keys
• We've fixed keyboard support on the Status macro to enable the full functionality of this macro to keyboard-only users.

Check out the full list of fixed issues

Implemented changes

In this section we'll provide details of changes we have implemented, organised by the milestone they are first available in. This will help you decide which milestone to use when testing.

RC 1 – 7 February 2023

Milestone 8.1.0-rc1

Contains:

• minor bugfixes

Beta 2 – 5 February 2023

Milestone 8.1.0-beta2

Contains:

• minor bugfixes

Beta 1 – 30 January 2023

Milestone 8.1.0-beta1

Contains:

• new emoji set and shortcuts

• new in-product diagnostics metrics available through JMX monitoring (enabled by default)

• new migration log

EAP 1 – 11 January 2023

Milestone 8.1.0-m78

Contains:

• migration task to v4 attachments storage layout format

• improved user experience moving large page trees
• Confluence Mail Archiving plugin updated to support OAuth 2.0