Problem

The Workbox notification icon is missing from the upper right of Confluence.

Causes

There are multiple reasons that can cause the Workbox icon to not display. Below are the causes and the respective resolutions are in the Resolution section:

Cause 1 - The version of Confluence is 4.2 or below

Cause 2 - Confluence 5.4 or earlier is running on Clustered edition

Cause 3 - The Workbox plugins are not enabled

Cause 4 - In-App Notifications are not enabled

Cause 5 - Apache mod_disk_cache

Resolutions

Resolution 1 - The version of Confluence is 4.2 or below

The Workbox feature was not introduced into the product until 4.3. The resolution is to upgrade to 4.3 or higher.

Resolution 2 - Confluence 5.4 or earlier is running on Clustered edition

As our documentation illustrates, the Workbox feature is not available on Clustered editions at this time:

The workbox is not available in clustered environments. The plugin will be installed and enabled, but it will detect that the site is in clustered mode and will not display the dialog.

There is a feature request to bring this functionality to Clustered environments, which is being tracked here: CONF-27248 - Getting issue details... STATUS

Resolution 3 - The Workbox plugins are not enabled

If you are running non-Clustered Confluence versions 4.3 and higher and the Workbox is still not appearing, check that the plugins which provide this functionality are enabled. They might have been disabled by a Confluence administrator or were not loaded properly due to a technical issue.

How to check these plugins:

1. Navigate to Confluence Admin > Manage Add-Ons
2. In the drop-down menu, select System to display system plugins
3. Look for the following plugins and ensure that these plugins, along with all of the modules within each, are enabled:
   
   1. Workbox - Common Plugin
   2. Workbox - Confluence Provider Plugin
   3. Workbox - Host Plugin

For more information on how to enable or disable a plugin in general, please see: Disabling or Enabling a Plugin

Resolution 4 - In-App Notifications are not enabled

Navigate to Confluence Admin >> In-App Notifications and switch to displays in-app notifications

Resolution 5 - Apache mod_disk_cache

If you are running Confluence with Apache, there is an option of Configuring Apache to Cache Static Content via mod_disk_cache . If the user running Confluence does not have access to the CacheRoot directory set in the httpd.conf (e.g. /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf), the cache will not be properly retrieved and the notification icon will only display on the first load after clearing the browser cache. Make sure the directory has read/write access to the user running Confluence. 

<IfModule mod_disk_cache.c>
  # "/s" is where Confluence serves "static" stuff. Instruct Apache to cache it:
  CacheEnable disk /s
  CacheIgnoreHeaders Set-Cookie
  CacheRoot "/var/cache/mod_proxy"
</IfModule>