Comala Document Management – Access to Old Published Versions & Status Recog. as Non-Contributor

[Thierry Steiner]

Context

We use Confluence 8.5.15 (Data Center) with several add-ons, including Comala Document Management (7.8.0) for internal knowledge management.

Our workflow:

• At our headquarters, admins create and review work instructions for regional offices (Community).
• After approval, the final version is published.
• The Community has read-only access (not a contributor) and can find published versions via a search dashboard.
• The Community should also be able to view previously published versions.

Our workflow in Comala:

• Blue: Translations of status names.
• Red: Comala status "Draft".
• Green: Comala status "Published".

Expected behavior:

• Draft pages should not be accessible to the Community – this works as expected.
• Published pages should be accessible – this also works as expected.
• The Community should be able to access previously published versions – this is where the problem occurs.

Problems

Since enabling the workflow, we have encountered two issues:

1. No access to previously published versions

• If we edit a page multiple times before publishing it again, the native Confluence Page History creates multiple versions.

• Even though some of these versions were once published, the Community receives an error message when trying to access older versions (doesnt matter if published or not):

• This makes sense since Comala only allows one published version at a time.
• However, the Community can still compare versions using Confluence’s native compare function (doesnt matter if published or not), which seems inconsistent.

2. No way to identify published versions

• Even if the Community could access old versions, they cannot see which versions were actually published.
• The native Confluence version history does not show Comala workflow statuses.
• The only place where this information is available is the Comala Document Activity Report, but this requires Contributor permissions, which we cannot grant to the Community.

Question for the Community

• Does anyone know of a solution or workaround for these two issues?
  • Allow the Community to access old published versions
  • Make the published status of a version visible

A manual workaround for the second mentioned Problem would be for an admin to use the "What have you changed" field in Confluence to note the workflow status. However, an automated solution would be much better. I have experimented with trigger events, but I was only able to add page comments, not modify the version history.

Looking forward to your ideas!

Thanks & best regards,
Thierry

[Jorge Merino]

Hi Thierry,

You're encountering the limitations of what is called "Same Space Publishing" in Comala Document Management. You can find more details about this here: Same-Space Publishing

To address these limitations, you would need to use Comala Publishing, which allows for Different-Space Publishing. This setup separates draft pages (where editors work) from published pages, ensuring that:
✅ Editors work in a Draft Space
✅ Once approved, the page is automatically published to a Published Space
✅ Readers have access to all previously published versions

More details here: Different-Space Publishing

If you're interested in exploring this further, please follow the instructions my colleague Nino posted in this thread.

Best regards,
Jorge

[Thierry Steiner]

Hi Jorge, 

Thank you! I will have a look into that and post whatever solved the challenge.

Best regards,
Thierry 

[Nino Stana]

Hello @Thierry Steiner ,

I am the solution advisor from Appfire for the Document Management category. Would you do me a favor to join me over a call and discuss this further? Depending on some more details about your process, we might be able to solve your current issues.

You can use This Link to schedule a call with me.

If this doesn't work for you, I recommend opening a support ticket directly with us so you can get a faster response.

Regards.
Nino

[Thierry Steiner]

Hi Nino,

Thank you. I have just sent an suitable time for me.

Best regards,
Thierry

[Nino Stana]

Hello Thierry,

Thank you, I'm glad you've found a slot that works.

See you next week,
Nino

[Nino Stana]

It was nice to meet you and your colleague @Thierry Steiner , I hope it was helpful!

[John Funk]

Hi Thierry - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Since no one has responded yet, I suggest you open a support ticket with Atlassian to get their guidance. Please post back here with the results/solution.

https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/

[Thierry Steiner]

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply. I will check the mentioned solutions in the recent comments.

Best regards,
Thierry