Columbia Confluence Migration Documentation

We are excited to announce the upcoming migration of Confluence to the cloud. This transition is designed to provide you and your teams with enhanced security, a modern user interface, and early access to the latest features. The confluence migration is scheduled for June 14-15th (Friday-Saturday), 2024. Please note that any modifications made during the migration window will not be transferred or preserved in the new instance.

This guide is intended to assist you in understanding the differences in access and workflow between the old and new versions of Confluence

Accessing Confluence in the Cloud

New URL

Confluence will have a new URL after the migration to the cloud. You should still login by going to https://confluence.columbia.edu/ and you will be redirected to the new cloud URL of https://columbiauniversity.atlassian.net/wiki. Any bookmarks you have using the old URL will need to be redone.

Login Steps

Please follow the below steps to log into Confluence.

  1. Navigate to https://confluence.columbia.edu/

  2. Click Log In

  3. Enter your UNI@columbia.edu email address then click Continue. Please note that you will only be able to login to Confluence using your UNI@columbia.edu email address.

  4. Log in through the standard UNI login screen

  5. You will be brought to the Confluence dashboard page

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First Time Login Screens

The first time you log in you will see two screens unique to the 1st log in to the cloud. The first screen will ask you to describe the work your team does. For this screen simply click Skip at the bottom.

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The 2nd screen will ask you to search for spaces relevant to you. On this screen you will see all spaces that are publicly accessible and those to which you have direct access. Please click Search for a space and search for one of your spaces and select it.

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After this you will be taken to the Confluence dashboard.

Navigating Confluence

Confluence in the cloud has a number of changes to the interface

 

Home Bar

The Home Bar has been redesigned to offer more and easier access to your Confluence content

  1. Product switcher: If you have any other cloud Atlassian products such as Jira this lets you access those products.

  2. Confluence logo, Home: Navigate back to Confluence Dashboard from any page

  3. Recent: Find and resume work on the things you use most. Find or search for pages you’ve visited, worked on, drafted, or starred in recent days and months.

  4. Spaces: Get an overview of the things you care most about in Confluence. Your starred spaces appear at the top, followed by your recently visited spaces.

  5. People: See the people and teams you work with, and create new teams.

  6. Apps: See and manage apps installed on your Confluence site. This includes new tools such as Calendars, Automation, and Analytics.

  7. Templates: Access the library of templates available for use in each space you’ve starred or recently visited. Note: If you don’t see this option, look under the More tab.

  8. Create: Create pages.

  9. Search: Find pages, spaces, or people, or use the advanced search filters. You can search anything visible to you in Confluence.

  10. Notifications, Help, and your Profile and Settings: See what's new, get help, access your tasks, manage your watched spaces and pages, and customize your settings 

Locating your spaces

A short list of spaces you have starred will appear on the left of the Dashboard page. To view all your spaces you can go to Spaces at the top of the page. There you will see all your starred spaces listed. To view all spaces you have access to click View All Spaces. Please note this includes spaces that you have been added to as well as spaces that are publicly accessible.

Your Confluence Space

Blogs vs Pages

There are now two types of pages you can create, blogs and pages.

  • Published blogs are available in the Blog section of your space and are grouped chronologically. This means that they have a sense of timeliness and are more suited to announcements, news, and updates. 

  • Published pages are accessed from the Pages section of the space sidebar. Pages live in a page tree and can be nested and organized hierarchically, so you can have pages under pages. This lets you give your content structure and highlight relationships between pages.

Page Editor

This is one of the biggest user experience differences between Cloud and Server/Data Center and one that drastically improves the user experience in Confluence.  The new Cloud editor has introduced significant changes with a lot of new templates and new ways for page formatting.

 

Macros

One of the key changes to the editor for Confluence Cloud is related to macros. In Cloud, additional functionality has been built into the editor so that macros are no longer needed for things like text alignment and strikethrough formatting.  Learn more about Cloud macros here.

 

Smart Links

Smart Links reveal important context about links within a Confluence page without leaving that page. When you paste a link in the editor, it will transform into a Smart Link. There are a few different ways to view smart links:

  • Inline view: The Smart Links inline view makes your links “pop” on the page. You’ll see the logo from the source of that link, so you quickly have more information about the type of content

  • Card View: Smart Links card view provides even richer detail. You can see a small preview of the content, plus additional information about it. You’ll also start to see actions added to cards over time as the links are edited and worked with.

 

Other editor changes and updates

  • Inline comments: Whether editing a page or viewing it, quickly add comments to pages by:

    • Highlighting the text you want to comment on.

    • Selecting the Comment button that appears above the highlighted text.

    • Entering your comment and selecting Save (Ctrl+S or +S).

  • Anchor links: Anchor links are automatically created in Cloud for headings.  Non-heading links still need to be specified by the Anchor macro.

  • Editing tables: Tables in Cloud are edited and managed differently. In general, it should be a more intuitive experience but may need a little getting used to.

 

Space Administration

If you administer your space most of the functionality remains the same however some of the tools have been moved around.

 

Space Settings

Instead of going to Space Tools in the lower left to administer your space you will now go to Space Settings on the left in the middle of the page.  

There you will see the menu to manage your space.  Most of the options remain the same but are split up and displayed differently.

 

In Space Settings, you will see the below options

  • Manage Space - Manage details for your space

  • Space Permissions - Manage permissions in the space for individual users and groups.  Open the space up to anyone in Confluence or the general public

  • Manage Content - Hanage the content in your space by reordering pages, identifying hidden or abandoned pages, and restoring content from the trash

  • Look and Feel - Customize how your space looks and manage templates for your space

  • Integrations - Outside integrations, most notably the Custom Space User Management where you add/remove users from your groups

  • Automation - Set up automation for your space.

 

Managing Users

Managing users in the Confluence cloud is similar to how it was before the transition.  If you need users provisioned in Confluence please contact the Confluence team and we will add them to Confluence.  Once a user is provisioned in Confluence you can add them to your space.  This can be done on the individual user basis under Space Permissions -> Users or you can add them to your spaces groups by going to Integration -> Custom Space User Management.

Custom Space User Management

 

Custom Space User Management works the same way as it did prior to the cloud migration.  On the left, you have your list of spaces.  Clicking on a space will bring up the list of users on the right.  In the user pane on the right, you can add/remove all users who already have access to Confluence.  Any new groups you create will by default have view access to the space.  You can manage the groups permissions by going to Space Permissions -> Groups.

More Resources

You can find more resources on using Confluence Cloud at the below links: