📣 Beta: Folders in Confluence!

[#1]

UPDATE 9/18/24: WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF ROLLING FOLDERS OUT TO EVERYONE. SEE HERE FOR THE LATEST.

👋 Hi Confluence Community,

We’re super excited to announce that we’ve started our beta rollout for one of the top-requested features in Confluence, 🗂️ Folders!

We're starting with a limited release to a set of customers in order to get feedback on key user journeys and iron out any wrinkles.

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Folders FAQ

Can I still use parent pages?

Yes! Folders are purely additive — nothing will change about your ability to create parent pages.

How are folders and parent pages different?

A folder is a simpler kind of container — it’s just a place to store your content. In contrast, a parent page is a container with a “Read Me” built into the container itself. Use a parent page when you want to provide additional information or context on what’s inside the container. Use a folder when you simply want to group similar content.

When should I use folders?

Using a folder likely makes more sense than a parent page when you need a simple container to organize related content. In other words, if you would have created a blank parent page or a parent page with only the Child Pages macro, then a folder likely makes more sense.

Based on customer feedback over time, parent pages seem most useful in traditional knowledge base / wiki spaces, whereas folders seem more useful in project, team, collaborative, or hybrid use-cases.

Try folders today! Beta sign-up process

NOTE: Due to super high interest, we have met our target enrollment size for folders way more quickly than expected. Thus, we've closed beta enrollment for the time being.

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

Ned, on behalf of the Confluence team

UPDATE 9/18/24: FOLDERS IS IN THE PROCESS OF BEING ROLLED OUT TO EVERYONE! See here for the latest.

UPDATE 9/18/24: FOLDERS IS IN THE PROCESS OF BEING ROLLED OUT TO EVERYONE! See here for the latest.

[Kristian Klima]

That's interesting... takes me back to "this page is intentionally left blank" days of printed manuals :D

One of the reasons I hate dislike git-based CMS tools is the inability of most, if not all, to have a parent page with meaningful content :) 

Having said that, people migrating to a sensible CMS ;) do miss that and I have to admit it does work for certain types of content and use-cases.

[Ned Lindau]

@Kristian Klima Thanks for the response!

To this point:

"One of the reasons I hate dislike git-based CMS tools is the inability of most, if not all, to have a parent page with meaningful content :)"

This is precisely why we are still allowing users to create parent pages. Folders is simply an alternative for those cases where your container doesn't need meaningful content.

[Kristian Klima]

@Ned Lindau - that 'we're still allowing create parent pages' sounds ominous :)

Please, don't take the parent pages from me!

[Ned Lindau]

Haha definitely not intended to be ominous. Let me try again: Folders are purely additive and give users another way to organize their content. If folders don't make sense for your use-case, you will certainly be able to continue using parent pages. Or, you can use both!

[Kristian Klima]

[sigh of relief]

[Luis Andino Rodriguez]

This is really exciting love the idea of organizing my confluence spaces even more 

[Scott Beeson]

So a folder is just a page you can't view, right?

[Steven Rhodes]

This feature looks promising and its one step further to making Confluence into a document management system. I'll play with it in our test environment and provide feedback if necessary.

(While the feature in beta is open to all subscription types, I hope that I am not going to get burned by participating in this when Atlassian inevitably say this feature is only for premium and enterprise, thereby treating Confluence Standard users as 2nd class citizens again for the n-th time despite paying them a six figure sum per year to use it. Its getting to be quite a drag).

[Scott Beeson]

I have requested to join the beta community group, but meantime I have a problem:

You cannot use Folders as a filter for macros.

I commonly will use a "parent page" filter for a page properties report. I thought I could replace my "Active Projects" page with a folder. Nope. :(

[Ned Lindau]

@Scott Beeson thanks for calling this out! Would love to chat more about how this would work in your eyes — will also see to it that you get added to the beta.

[Ned Lindau]

@Steven Rhodes don't worry — folders is available to all Confluence editions.

[flex]

Good bye~! 'Archived' parent page

[Martin James]

Nice little feature. Please please pleaaaaase can you ask whoever looks after the permission tools to have a dedicated tab for app permissions. Blending app permissions with user permissions on Confluence Cloud is confusing and just gets in the way.

[Mark Gillespie]

Further complicating and diluting the product :-(  It's bad enough explaining the current stuff to users, now we have to explain the different between child pages and folders.

[Matt Reiner _K15t_]

At K15t, we used to add this as a Confluence Server customization for our customers, back in the day.

@Ned Lindau, it was nice seeing this demoed live at the NYC ACE. 😁

Nice to see that it's here to stay.

Made a sharable video for everyone!

[Zachary Howard]

I'm liking this new option, however I have noticed one issue already:
When linking a Confluence Space to a Jira Work Management project, it will NOT show any folders in that space in the nav menu:

I've not tested this with other Jira projects, but this could be a big issue for some people. 

[Mir O_]

Is it possible to personalize the folder icons? I mean, like this:

[Matthias Born]

What's wrong with the less simple container called parent page?

I think, adding some description (instructions, guidance, excerpt macro), children, contributors-summary (mode page), page properties or a search result macro to the parent page is just good information design...

I can't understand Atlassian here: Aren't there more pressing issues than a feature, that already exists in a much better version?

(BTW: What happens if I click on such a folder in the sidebar? What's displayed on the right side?)

[Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_]

Do page restrictions work the same with folders?

[Ned Lindau]

@Mir O_ We're working on it! It may be a bit before we roll something out though.

@Matthias Born You're welcome to continue using parent pages if they work better for your use-case!

@Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_ Yes, restrictions work the same way with folders.

[Daniel Rykheer]

What is the typical turnaround time within Atlassian/Confluence, to roll out a feature of this scale/complexit (or not). Yes, I know it depends... But I'm after a very vague guestimate. Please.

[Daniel Rykheer]

A very welcome feature. I've always wanted it, but also could manage without it, using the top parent page as a folder. I'd love to see attention to those much wanted nested toggle expands instead though.

[Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_]

I feel like for "normal" Confluence use cases this is a nice add on but parent pages worked fine. 

HOWEVER, if you use a Confluence space as JSM Knowledgebase, empty parent pages are super annoying as they are displayed as "normal" knowledge base articles as well and clutter the simplified view in JSM.

So i am wondering: Will folders be displayed in the JSM view of a linked knowledge base space? If not - sign me up!

[Gerald Yong]

Is there a way to convert empty parent pages to folders across multiple spaces?

[Ned Lindau]

@Gerald Yong we're working on this feature right now!