Enhanced Real-time Avatar Visibility - Coming Soon!

[#1]

Hi Atlassian Community!

I’m Shivani Gakkani, a Product Manager on the Confluence Cloud team.

We’re thrilled to roll out the ability to see users' avatars on published pages for all customers. We've expanded this feature so you can see who is currently viewing a page or blog post, in addition to already being able to see who is editing. 

By April 17, 2025 - all users should have this experience enabled. 

Note: Admins have the ability to hide avatars of viewers on published pages (to accommodate discretion as appropriate).

Enable Collaboration & Provide Teammate Visibility!

We understand that it can sometimes be a struggle to gauge when colleagues are online or actively engaged, causing missed opportunities for collaboration & frustration due to uncertain response loops.

Having real-time visibility of where teammates are working in Confluence and how they’re engaging with content can help minimize these missed collaboration opportunities. We want users to feel the collaborative nature of Confluence - and a step towards that is humanizing Confluence with familiar faces!

Teammate avatars can humanize Confluence by mapping faces to names, facilitating connections between teammates, and reducing the feeling of isolation / disconnectedness to create impactful work.

                     

On Pages – viewers will see other page viewers, while editors of the page will be able to see other editors. On Live Docs (currently in open beta) – both viewers & editors will see other viewers & editors due to the openness of this content type.

If guests and anonymous access are allowed in your organization, you will be able to see those users with clear “guest” and “anonymous person” identification for deeper visibility!

Admin Controls to Hide Avatars

While this feature is intended to help users feel more connected to their teammates and provide appropriate visibility of what teammates are doing, we understand this visibility might not always be needed - especially on sensitive content.

As of now - admins can turn this feature off for the entire site or for individual spaces, but not for specific pages.

Avatar visibility is on by default. To turn it off:

• Site-level admins can visit Settings > General configuration > Avatars on published pages

• Space-level admins can visit Space settings > General > Avatars and status > Avatars on published pages

Note: These settings only control avatar visibility of viewers on published pages. The visibility of editor avatars is a Confluence feature that cannot be turned off.

More guidance here.

We hope you enjoy this addition to the Confluence collaboration experience – let us know what you think in the comments below. Thanks!

[Yatish Madhav]

This is a great update! Thanks @Shivani Gakkani 

[Jared Schmitt]

Hi @Shivani Gakkani 

I just learned about this new feature via email and there it clearly states

By default, it will be enabled for all spaces and sites.

While it's nice that you add features to Confluence (no one asked for), why on earth do you make this an opt-out?? This is a horrible release decision and I really hope Atlassian gets way more feedback in this direction than just my post.

[Martin Cassidy]

This is a really great!

On a side note, any chance we could please get this on Bitbucket PRs as well?

[Ralf Rutke]

Hi, I checked today if there is a possibillity to disable that in advance. I did not find the options described above. Will the options become available when it is rolled out or before?

[Fiona Cunningham]

Hi @Shivani Gakkani 

Will Avatars be visible in a portal that accesses a Confluence Space through Jira Service Management?

Many thanks,

Fiona Cunningham

[Cory Beaudoin]

Please confirm how we can turn off this setting in advance instance-wide.

[Shivani Gakkani]

@Yatish Madhav Hey! Would love to hear what you & your team think when this rolls out :) 

[Shivani Gakkani]

@Martin Cassidy Hey thanks for the feedback - will send this message along to the Bitbucket team! 

[Shivani Gakkani]

@Ralf Rutke @Cory Beaudoin Hey! This feature can be disabled once it's been rolled out (cannot be disabled in advance). Your organization should have this experience enabled sometime between March 31st and April 17th of 2025.

There are two levels of settings - one at the space level & one at the site level. 

• Site-level admins can visit Settings > General configuration > Avatars on published pages

• Space-level admins can visit Space settings > General > Avatars and status > Avatars on published pages

Do you mind sharing why you're interested in disabling this experience? Thanks!

[Shivani Gakkani]

@Jared Schmitt Hey thanks for the feedback! Just to make sure I'm understanding you correctly - do you wish this was a feature that cannot be disabled?

[Shivani Gakkani]

@Fiona Cunningham Hey! Avatars will NOT be visible in a portal that accesses a Confluence Space through Jira Service Management. 

Is that something you'd be interested in?

[LB]

For our client-facing spaces, this is an unwanted feature as we have hundreds of viewers simultaneously and some clients have requested to be anonymous.

Because this feature cannot be disabled in advance, it is a burden to arrive early to work every day starting March 31 to check if it has been enabled yet so I can turn it off before clients see it.

Please consider making this feature disabled by default or at least giving admins the ability to turn it off before it is rolled out. Thank you for your consideration!

[Ralf Rutke]

Hi @Shivani Gakkani , because this feature might (for example) be used for measuring reaction time to posts for individual employees. As such it is currently unclear if this falls under the co-dertimination right of the works council in germany. To avoid this unclear situation we decided to disable it.

I hope this gives you the answer why people want to disable it in advance or asking for turning it off as the default.

We expect that tracking and showing the readers is totally different legally wise from showing the editors.

Best regards

Ralf

[Jared Schmitt]

@Shivani Gakkani 

Just to make sure I'm understanding you correctly - do you wish this was a feature that cannot be disabled?

OK, now I understand how this release decision was made.

NO, I wish this feature was disabled on release and site admins/space admin need to enable it.

[Fiona Cunningham]

Hi @Shivani Gakkani 

Thanks for coming back to me so quickly.

In response, no, visibility of Avatars in a JSM portal is probably not something we would be interested in currently - however if it is a feature that can be disabled/switched-off we wouldn't have any issue in it being developed.

Many thanks,

Fiona

[Jana Baldermann]

Hi @Shivani Gakkani

I agree with @Jared Schmitt and @Ralf Rutke previous comments. Please make this an opt-in feature or give admins the ability to disable it before it's rolled out.

This must be disabled for my organization for the same reasons @Ralf Rutke already stated, and I don't want to spend the first two weeks of April constantly checking to see when it's been rolled out to then quickly disable it.

You stated yourself that "(...) we understand this visibility might not always be needed - especially on sensitive content." so why add this as an opt-out feature that admins can't even disable before rollout? 

Best regards,
Jana

[Marcus Jacobs]

@Shivani Gakkani Even if it is a good feature, I can only agree with the previous speakers.

Rolling out features that may violate customer regulations without being asked is an absolute no-go. We support a number of companies that have called very frantically out of concern about conflicts with works councils and data protection officers.

[Shivani Gakkani]

@Ralf Rutke @Jared Schmitt @Jana Baldermann @Marcus Jacobs @LB

Thank you for all your feedback - super helpful! Completely understand why your organizations want to disable a feature like this ahead of release, so this is certainly something we'll keep in mind for future releases. As a way to mitigate concerns, we wanted to give you all a heads up about this upcoming feature via various channels (this post, email, etc). 

Once your organization does have this experience enabled, feel free to reach out here or at sgakkani@atlassian.com if you need any support in turning this experience off! As a reminder, this feature can be disabled at the space level or at the overall site level.

Your feedback is very much appreciated :) 

[Christina Eggel]

Hi

We’d like to disable this feature before it goes live, as it creates a serious privacy concern for us.

We have customers from different companies accessing our documentation spaces, and this feature would allow them to see each other’s avatars. I’ve looked into the settings but couldn’t find a way to turn this off at either the site or space level. Can you confirm whether this can be disabled, and if not, let me know if there’s another way to manage this.

Thank you.

[Jared Schmitt]

@Shivani Gakkani 

May I ask what's so difficult about releasing this feature turned-off as default?

As a way to mitigate concerns, we wanted to give you all a heads up about this upcoming feature via various channels (this post, email, etc). 

It's not about "mitigating concerns", it's about whether you have a GDPR violation or not. It's not considered not a GDPR violation just because you received an email before it happened.