Quick Administrator Tips To Prepare for Confluence 4.0

We've put together some quick tips on how Administrators can prepare for Confluence 4.0:

1. Stay Updated On The Latest Docs

Watch the Planning for Confluence 4.0 page. We will update that page with more resources as we make further progress -  so make sure you stay updated!

2. Download, install and trial the Confluence 4.0 EAP

We strongly encourage you to set some time to download and install a Confluence 4.0 Early Access Program milestone build. You can be even more prepared by conducting an upgrade of your data in a test environment to see how the upgrade goes. Don't forget to get your internal users (especially the power users) to test out Confluence 4.0. Ask them to go to their complex pages and see what they look like in the new editor and get feedback from them.

3. Give us feedback!

We really would love your feedback as you trial the Confluence 4.0 EAP. We've made it really easy to do so. All you have to do is simply click the "Got Feedback" button you see in the Confluence toolbar:

This feedback will go directly to the Confluence team.

4. Upgrade your user macros - Now!

With the introduction of Confluence 4.0, all macros that are inserted in the editor will need to happen through Macro Autocomplete, or through the Macro Browser. This includes User Macros too!

However, a problem with User Macros in the past was that the only way to insert them was if you knew what parameters were available - and that wasn't documented anywhere. 

Now, if you are running Confluence 3.4 or higher, we introduced the ability for an Administrator to make their user macros visible in the Macro Browser and Macro Autocompelte. So the good news is you can prepare for that now, without having to wait for Confluence 4.0 to ship! How do you do this? You will need to define parameters for your user macros. All the documentation on how to do this can be found here. We've also created two examples to help you get started.

Important: If you do not do this, you will not be able to insert user macros in Confluence 4.0.

6. Test your plugins

Although not all plugins are 4.0 compatible yet, you can still test a majority of your plugins in our EAP. We strongly recommend you try this and let us know if there are any issues. This is really important especially if you have custom plugins that you've built internally.

 How do I migrate my plugins to Confluence 4.0? All this information for plugin developers can be found from the Planning for Confluence 4.0 landing page.