The New Confluence – New Beta Features Arriving Soon

[#1]

Hi Confluence community! 👋

Confluence is evolving, and we’re bringing a wave of enhancements to improve the way you work! We’re enhancing the core experiences around navigation & organization, creation & editing, and collaboration & sharing. Some features will be available soon in GA (more on that in separate announcements), while others are launching as opt-in betas starting next week.

Live Docs – Lightning-fast team collaboration

Why: Confluence Live Docs are a new content type for real-time team collaboration, keeping everyone in the flow of decision making, brainstorming, or editing without having to pause to publish. Perfect for capturing meeting notes, group reviews, or idea sessions, Live Docs exist alongside Pages and can be transitioned to a Page if needed or vice versa.

What to expect:

• A new content type that lets you see, engage, and iterate on the work of others as it happens in front of you

• Seamless conversion between Live Docs and Pages or Pages to Live Docs(Convert via the ‘overflow’ menu - 3 dots at top far right)

Simplified access to tools – unified & consistent menus & toolbars

Why: We’re making Confluence more predictable and efficient by ensuring headers, sidebars, and panels are placed consistently across content types. The new layout removes unnecessary clutter, making key actions easier to find and use. Tools only appear when relevant, so you can focus more on your work.

What to expect:

• Redesigned Header & Overflow menus across all content types

• New floating action bar (bottom right) for frequently used actions

• New Details Panel for comprehensive information about your content (opened via floating action bar)

Comments Panel – a streamlined side-panel experience for all comments

Why: Confluence makes it easy to collaborate through comments, and we’re making it even better. The new comments panel provides a centralized view of all discussions, helping teams engage with feedback faster and more efficiently—without having to search for comments across the page. This makes it easier to stay aligned and keep work moving forward.

What to expect:

• Centralized view for both inline and page-level comments

• Quick filters for open, unread, and resolved comments

• Instant navigation to specific comments

How to Opt In

• Admins can opt in their sites through the New Features page under Site Settings once they receive access.

• We’re rolling this out gradually, so not everyone will see the option starting next week and through April 7. Keep an eye out for emails notifying you when your site is eligible.

• ⚠️ Note: Some Marketplace apps may have limited functionality during beta. Compatibility information will be provided before you opt-in, allowing you to decide the best time to opt in. Marketplace partners are actively working to ensure their apps align with these updates.

Get Involved

✅ Try it out and share feedback! Feel free to comment here and/or via the prompts inside the product. Your insights directly shape the future of Confluence.

Cheers,
The Confluence Team 🚀

[Barbara Szczesniak]

So my page is not automatically live so that multiple people can see and edit the page at the same time? Good! I have no need to ever pick that. I don't need someone else seeing my changes, let alone modifying them before I've finished organizing the information.

[Annelotte]

I like the idea of the live pages, especially for pages with status updates across teams.

With a live page, we will no longer have the issue that someone is updating the page in several steps throughout the day but forgets to publish in between, as a result, the published page does not yet show their changes. Someone else publishing would then not need to worry that other changes are also published.

[Avigail Manheim]

@Barbara Szczesniak Though the post wasn't so clear, I think that the functionality is as @Annelotte assumed, meaning pages will continue behaving as they always have: multiple people can edit a page simultaneously and even undo one another's changes before the page is ever published. I think what is being announced is a new feature in which there aren't two states of edit and publish. Rather, everyone is essentially always viewing the page in edit mode and you can toggle on/off whether you are editing at the time or just viewing. I assume that this is why it is easy for Atlassian to provide the ability to have users decide to switch something back and forth between being a live doc and a page. 

For more info about how Live Docs works see:

Create and collaborate in real time with live docs | Confluence Cloud | Atlassian Support

[Barbara Szczesniak]

@Avigail Manheim I was just happy to see that Live Docs is a new content type—in additions to Pages, not replacing Pages.

Mine is not a use case where multiple people should be in a page at the same time. I am documenting an application in Confluence, and I don't need someone else modifying my pages while I'm writing/updating them. I might spend a day (or more if I have a lot of meetings) in several pages to document a new or changed feature, and it wouldn't make sense for someone to see that content, let alone change it, while I'm in the middle of organizing my thoughts and arranging the text.

[Daniel Park]

It makes me think of microsoft loop.