Confluence News Ticker

We tested a freshly announced macro for reusing content on Confluence and Jira – Synced blocks.

The idea is the same as with excerpt/insert excerpt and include content (page) macros. Create one ‘source’ copy of your content and reuse it as many times as you want on other pages. Edit the source, and the changes propagate everywhere.

Synced Block does the same but takes a slightly different approach to HOW it operates.

You simply copy & paste the block from one page to another and the macro automatically creates the connection. What’s more, you can share content across Confluence AND Jira.

In the macro’s menu, you see which page is the source, and on which pages the reused content appears.

Source page options:

Target page options menu allows you to go directly to the source page and edit the Synced Block macro there:

The macro is being rolled out to Atlassian customers. Excerpt/insert excerpt and include content (page) macros are still available.

For information, check the official Atlassian documentation.

Rovo can be immensely helpful when you point it to resources within your Atlassian organization’s realm. But nothing happens in isolation and very often you must extend your research outside the confines of your intranet.

You go online.

Now that Atlassian announced Web Search in Agents, you can dispatch your Rovo agent to search the internet and look for a specific kind of information, tell it what and how to, and so on.

This is an expansion of the web search, which is now turned on for some users by default.

Web Search in Agents can be toggled on/off for a specific agent and works along current settings for trigger, instructions, knowledge, and skills.

Learn more in the official Atlassian’s announcement.

For more technical details, see https://support.atlassian.com/rovo/docs/knowledge-sources-for-agents/.

Atlassian has souped up its AI agent Rovo with a neat tweak that seems to be geared towards … writers. Especially documentation writers.

How it works

The idea is that you feed Rovo with specific resources, tell it what to do and Rovo drafts a document for you.

We used it for a couple of tasks, for example:

• Summarize the contents of a product documentation space into a form of product description.

• Update an article with new information, effectively combining two similar articles.

• Write a LinkedIn post based on How to Use Images in Confluence Effectively.

Now imagine that you’re a documentation writer and need to create an article based on your notes, specifications penned by developers in a Jira work item, and your Product Manager’s Confluence page.

Point Rovo to those resources and ask for a detailed, organized summary. Prompt for refinements, edit right there and then. Save the page where it needs to live, Space, parent page.

Our 5 cents

Are we advocating vibe-writing? No. And as with any AI, user discretion is advised. But as any documentation writer knows, gathering and organizing information for new development is one of the most demanding tasks of product documentation authoring.

Try Create Rovo

Create Rovo is available at create.rovo.com. Don’t worry, the URL resolves to your Atlassian organization or account.

To learn more about the feature, see the original post on Atlassian Community.

At the beginning of February, we discovered a new mysterious item in the Confluence menu. Just a single icon.

Use compact density.

It doesn’t do much. It just makes content more compact and dense. In other words, it shrinks everything on a page or in a live document. So far, it’s the only way to change the font size in Confluence (along with reducing spacing).

The compact density feature is extremely useful for anyone who needs to see more content at any given moment - whether for authoring or reading - especially on smaller laptop screens. We think it’s a useful addition to the Confluence editor.

But why was it mysterious, you ask?

Well, it simply appeared in the user interface. No announcement or release notes dedicated to it. Which was surprising because Confluence users have been requesting the option to reduce the font size for years.

At the end, it took some collective effort of the Atlassian Community Champions to dig out the details.

You can read about the entire journey here.

Unread comments on your Atlassian whiteboards now have a blue dot, making it much easier to keep track of new feedback and discussions.

That means you no longer have to guess which feedback is new when collaborating with your team. You can quickly spot comments you have not seen yet, respond faster, and avoid rereading old notes. This keeps discussions moving and helps you stay focused on the work that actually needs attention. It is a simple change, but one that makes day-to-day collaboration noticeably smoother.

Read more →

In Atlassian automation, you can set up rules that say:

“If X happens, then do Y.”

But sometimes, you want to get more specific:

“If X happens, and if Y is also true, then do Z. Otherwise, do something else.”

That’s where this update becomes interesting. Now, you can put an IF-ELSE block inside another IF-ELSE block inside IF-ELSE blocks.

Suppose you want to automate page labels:

IF a page is created
  IF it’s in the “HR” space
    IF the title contains “Policy”
      → Add label “HR-policy”
    ELSE
      → Add label “HR-general”
  ELSE IF it’s in the “Engineering” space
    → Add label “engineering”
  ELSE
    → Add label “general”

Previously, you could only connect actions to the main IF-ELSE blocks. Now, you can connect actions or even more conditions inside those nested IF-ELSE blocks. This means you can build much more complex, flexible automations.

As powerful as this new feature is, keep in mind that adding multiple layers of nested conditions can quickly make your automation rules difficult to read and maintain. The more complexity you introduce, the harder it becomes to troubleshoot issues or make updates later.

Read more →

It’s official: the Legacy Editor in Confluence Cloud is about to take its final bow. If you’ve been holding onto those old editing habits, now’s the time to let go—because come April, Atlassian is pulling the plug for good.

What’s Happening?

Starting January 21, 2026, you won’t be able to create new pages with the old editor. And on April 1, 2026, every last legacy page will be auto-converted to the Cloud Editor.

What You Need to Watch Out For

This isn’t just a visual update. A few things can change in ways you might not expect.

Formatting and macros

That carefully tweaked table or custom macro you built in the Legacy Editor may not come through exactly the same. Some pages will look fine. Others might need a bit of cleanup. It’s worth opening your most important pages in the Cloud Editor now to see what actually happens.

Unsupported content

If a legacy page includes elements the new editor doesn’t support, those parts won’t disappear, but they will become view-only. You can still see them, just not edit them.

Surprise conversions

During the transition, a legacy page can convert automatically as soon as someone views or edits it. If you prefer fewer surprises, bulk-converting pages ahead of time gives you more control.

Tips for a Smooth Transition

• Audit your content NOW: Don’t wait for April Fool’s Day to find out your docs are broken. Start by running a full inventory of your Confluence spaces. You can use Atlassian’s Export List of Legacy Pages and their Eligibility Status to generate a list of every page still using the Legacy Editor.

• Test your docs: Open your most significant pages in the Cloud Editor and scroll through. Check for missing macros, broken layouts, and formatting issues.

• Tell your team: Knowledge is only valuable when it’s shared. So communicate the timeline and what’s changing to your team.

Read more →

Atlassian has released a set of updates for Automation users. The heart of the update is the better action picker.

If you’ve ever tried to build or edit automation rules in Atlassian Cloud, you know that finding the right action can be time-consuming. Over the past year, Atlassian has added a lot of new actions, so many, in fact, that the old picker was starting to feel overwhelming.

What’s New?

• Faster navigation: Quickly locate actions without scrolling through long lists.

• Clearer organization: Actions are grouped and labeled for easier discovery.

• Future-ready: The new design will scale as more actions are added in the future.

By reducing friction and making it easier to discover the right actions, Atlassian is helping teams unlock more value from automation and adapt their workflows as needs evolve.

If you’ve been hesitant to build automation rules because the process felt overwhelming, now is a great time to give it another try.

Read more →

There’s a new feature to help you manage inline comments in Confluence!

From now on, any comments attached to deleted or changed text, known as “dangling comments”, will be moved out of your main comment streams and into a new “Deleted content” filter.

This means your “Open” and “Unread” comments will be less cluttered, and you’ll still be able to see the historical context for those old comments. To check it out, open the comments panel on any Confluence page and select the “Deleted content” filter.

Atlassian just rolled out an update to its automation builder: the Enhanced Smart Values Panel. If you’ve ever built automations in Jira or Confluence, you know that “smart values” are those handy placeholders (like {{issue.summary}} or {{now}}) that pull in dynamic data. They’re powerful, but using them hasn’t always been the most user-friendly experience.

But with this update, you can now insert smart values straight from a panel, instead of hunting through documentation or guessing the right syntax. And if a value is being changed or replaced somewhere in your automation, you’ll see it right away.

So, if you’ve ever felt lost in a sea of curly brackets and cryptic values, this update is for you.

Read more →

You can now set up automation rules that trigger when someone is added to or removed from a team.

Before, you could automate things based on page edits, comments, or other events. Now, you can also automate actions when team membership changes.

For example: If someone joins your team, you could automatically send them a welcome message, assign them onboarding tasks, or give them access to certain pages. If someone leaves, you could remove their permissions or notify the rest of the team.

This is a feature that will help many, especially bigger, teams, but double-check your rules to avoid accidentally removing access or sending sensitive info to the wrong person.

Read more →

For too long, teams have had to trust their AI agents without much visibility into what’s actually happening behind the scenes. Now, Atlassian has rolled out a new analytics feature for Rovo Agents in Studio, aiming to give teams a clearer picture of how their agents are performing.

The update, now available to all customers (but still in beta), introduces resolution and deflection reporting, conversation insights, and user engagement data.

What’s Included?

• Resolution and Deflection Metrics: See how well your agents are solving problems and preventing unnecessary tickets.

• Conversation Insights: Spot trends and patterns in agent interactions.

• User Data: Understand how many people are actually engaging with your agent.

You can follow the progress here: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/ROVO-398.

Atlassian just opened sign-ups for the brand new Rovo Skills Early Access Program (EAP), and they’re looking for 20 community members to help shape the future of AI-powered workflows in Jira and beyond.

If you’re the type who loves to be first, shape new features, and maybe even brag a little, this is your chance. You’ll get hands-on access to a library of “Skills” that promise to automate redundant Jira work, draft release notes, and pull insights from your Atlassian data. Your feedback will directly influence what gets built next.

But … EAPs are for the adventurous. Expect bugs, missing features, and the occasional “why doesn’t this work?” moment. If you need rock-solid reliability or don’t have time to give feedback, you might want to wait until things are a bit more polished.

If you’re up for experimenting and don’t mind sharing your thoughts with Atlassian, sign up here. Spots are limited.

Atlassian just dropped something unexpected into Confluence: “Race Mode,” a Formula 1-inspired mini-game built right into whiteboards. They created the game to celebrate their partnership with Williams Racing and showcase recent speed improvements in Confluence.

The entire racetrack is built using whiteboard features like stamps and sticky notes. Moving along, you will uncover a few fun facts about Williams Racing bit by bit.

To start playing, open a Confluence whiteboard, look for the gear shift icon, and hit “Start time trial.”

Use your keyboard arrows to zip around the track, while the big challenge is to beat Williams Racing driver Alex Albon’s lap time of 31.3 seconds.

Now you can either invite your teammates to play against you and beat your high score, or show off a little on social media. Use the hashtag #ConfluenceRaceMode for a chance to win nice swag. Sweepstake ends at 11:59 PM PT on December 18, 2025. The winners will be announced on December 19th. Read more about the raffle rules.

Atlassian just rolled out the next phase of their Confluence roles update, but the core roles system isn’t new. What’s actually new are some admin tools: a “Roles Central” dashboard and the ability to export your current permissions' data.

These are meant to help admins untangle their existing setups and get ready for the full switch to roles. Also, if you create a new Confluence site, you won’t have a choice, roles are now the only way to manage access.

Cloud migrations will also move you into the roles' system. In short, Atlassian is clearly shifting Confluence toward a roles-based model, and this update is meant to make that transition smoother. If you haven’t started preparing, it’s a good moment to take a look, since roles will apparently gradually become the standard way to manage access in Confluence.

Read more →

Heads up: Atlassian is ending the Rovo Dev beta on January 13, 2026. If you want to keep using it, you’ll need to switch to the new Standard plan, which will set you back $20 per user, per month. That’s a big shift from “free,” so now’s the time to give it a proper test and see if it’s really worth it for your team.

Also, don’t forget to save your custom prompts and automations before the beta closes, or you’ll lose them. We recommend taking a close look and deciding if Rovo Dev fits your workflow (and your budget) before the new pricing kicks in.

Try Rovo Dev

Create with Rovo is now in beta, making it easier to turn ideas into polished Confluence pages, live docs, or whiteboards with just a prompt. While it won’t replace your expertise or team’s unique voice, it can help you get started faster and reduce blank page anxiety. As with any beta, expect a few rough edges, but it’s an exciting step forward for working smarter in Confluence.

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Atlassian just made a change that’s actually worth your attention. Starting this week, when you hit ⌘P (Mac) or Ctrl+P (Windows) on a Confluence page, you won’t get your browser’s print menu anymore. Instead, you’ll be whisked straight to Confluence’s Export PDF feature.

Read more →

Rovo is now available in Slack, bringing AI-powered answers, thread summaries, and cross-tool search directly into your team’s daily workflow. It’s a great boost for productivity, though getting started does require some admin setup, and it’s always wise to review privacy settings before connecting new tools. Overall, we’re excited to see how this helps teams find information faster and collaborate more smoothly!

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