Migrating to Workflows for Confluence

Workflows for Confluence is an all-in-one document management tool that enables teams to make their entire document lifecycle in Confluence with just one app. That’s right. There’s no need to purchase additional apps to bring publishing features to Confluence; we’ve covered it all in just one product.

Migrating to Workflows for Confluence

As more teams move towards the cloud, we are often asked about the migration pathway in place with Workflows, and this page will guide you through everything you need to know.

Whether you are moving from a document management solution on Confluence Server/Data Center, like Comala Document Management (see our dedicated guide on migrating from Comala Document Management), or are looking to move from another document management solution on Cloud, we’ll cover everything you need to know below.

Important: the Workflows migration process is currently manual but our team plans to automate this in the future.

Pre-requisites

Before migrating to Workflows for Confluence, it’s important to evaluate the product first and ensure it contains all the functionality you need.

If you prefer to be hands-on and try products out for yourself, you can get a free 30-day trial through the Atlassian Marketplace or book a demo with our product team.

Alternatively, we do have user guides available that will walk you through every piece of functionality in Workflows for Confluence.

Things to keep in mind

When migrating across to Workflows for Confluence you should treat this as a blank slate. Any existing workflow history, metadata, or approval audit logs will not be migrated across to Workflows.

Once you are up and running with Workflows for Confluence, you will get access to page-level workflow history, metadata macros, and approval audit logs going forward.

Before the migration

Step 1: Create your document workflows in Workflows for Confluence

The first step in the migration is to re-create your workflows within the Workflows for Confluence app. The no-code, drag-and-drop workflow builder enables you to easily create highly customized document workflows.

We recommend taking time to familiarize yourself with the workflow builder and the breadth of functionality it offers.

Use the Approval Stage to add an approval round to your workflows. You can have multiple Approval Stages within a single workflow and there are no limits on the number of steps that can be included.

Once you have re-created the workflows needed, it's time to move on to step 2.

Are you migrating from Comala Document Management? We’ve got you covered. Our team has put together a guide that will help you recreate the workflows in Comala Document Management.

Download your copy >

Step 2: Check out the metadata macros available in Workflows for Confluence

For many of our customers, document metadata is an essential part of their document management process.

Workflows for Confluence provides a wide range of metadata macros for you to use, including:

• Workflow Status

• Approvers for Current Status

• Transition Date

• Unique Page ID

• Current Official Version

• Current Official Version Description

• Expiry Date

It is recommended to make use of these workflow metadata macros when you migrate to Workflows for Confluence as they will elevate the quality of your Confluence pages.

With all those tasks complete, its now time to move on with the migration!

After the migration

Now that the migration has been completed and you are ready to configure your pages using Workflows for Confluence, its time to add the right workflows to the right pages.

Step 1: Add workflows to your Confluence pages

To add workflows to your Confluence pages, there are several options available. First, you can add a workflow to individual pages by accessing the page and selecting the Apply Workflow option at the top of the page itself. If you have a large number of pages, we do not recommend using this option as it will be time consuming.

Alternatively, you can use the Bulk Apply option available within the Site Administrator settings. This can be accessed by navigating to Site Administration → Workflows for Confluence → Configuration → Bulk Change, as shown below.

Important: you can only bulk apply workflows to 200 pages at a time. If you have more pages than the 200 limit, you will need to run the bulk action several times.

Step 2: Move your Confluence pages to the correct workflow step

Once the workflows have been added to your Confluence pages, you will need to move this to the correct step within the workflow. You can do this by accessing the workflow within each individual page and clicking through to the next stage of the workflow, as shown below.

Support

If you have any questions or require assistance during the migration process, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Customer Support team.