Scaffolding Forms & Templates Feature Differences

Migration Path

Original Platform	Target Platform	Available App Migration Path	License Migration	Notes/Consideration
Server/DC	Cloud	Migration Path is available	Needed	Understand the feature difference (see below) between the application for Confluence Server and Confluence Cloud. Allocate time for a test migration to understand the steps required to migrate data and complete re-configuration. This guide assumes you have successfully migrated your Confluence Server data into Confluence Cloud, per Atlassian's instructions (CCMA). More Atlassian resources are available here.

Feature Differences

Migration Focus Area

Feature

Platform

Server

Cloud

Versioning/License

Version Support

Min migratable Version : 8.25.0

Migrate to Scaffolding cloud using steps at Migration Path

License Available through Atlassian Marketplace. Available through Atlassian Marketplace only. Monthly subscriptions are the default option, however, discounted annual subscriptions are available upon request to our Atlassian Sales team.

Access/Security Authentication Type Authentication will be based on your current setup Confluence Cloud protects your data with encryption in transit and at rest and provides administrative controls to enforce organization-wide protection such as SAML SSO, enforced 2FA, and SCIM. (Click the link to understand how Atlassian helps with security and encryption angles in Confluence Cloud)

Confluence Differences

Structure editing:

Calling Field macros

Field macros are called directly on a page.
Some macros interact with each other and have to be nested inside other macros.

Field macros are drag-and-dropped after adding a Field Group macro on a page. You build the structure of the page inside this macro by choosing the Field macros from the left-hand panel and drag-and-dropping them into the Editing area.

Content editing:

Filling up the forms

Clicking "Edit Content" will pop-up a separate Scaffolding Edit Content editor.
Depending on the Scaffolding field macro type, editing values can be done on this directly, or on a separate popup editor area.

Clicking Edit Content will change the Page View to become an editable area.

Scaffolding settings

Scaffolding includes an administrator setting, which allows Confluence administrators to set the default setting for the Edit Contents mode.

Accessing Scaffolding's Administrator Settings

All limit settings are handled by the app internally. No further configuration is needed in Cloud.

Previous Scaffolding XML versions

Scaffolding allows users with the proper permissions to view Scaffolding data history on a page that contains Scaffolding metadata. Users may compare versions or restore older versions using this feature.

All changes made to pages with Scaffolding macros will be recorded in Page History, be it Scaffolding structure or data changes. Users are able to restore page data to an earlier version through the Confluence Page History.

Due to the feature difference between Server and Cloud, only the current version of Scaffolding data will be migrated to Cloud.

Integration with other macros

Since Field macros are called directly on a page as macros, this means that users can add any other Confluence macros inside this page along Scaffolding macros.

Confluence server supports nested macros as well which means Scaffolding macros can easily be nested and integrated with other Confluence macros.

Example of how Scaffolding macros are nested with other macros...

Scaffolding supports integration with most reporting macros/apps like Page Property Report macros (Atlassian's Confluence macros) and Reporting (ServiceRocket app).

Field Group macro is a standalone macro that reveals a separate editor where you can build your page structure. While this editor supports most Confluence page functions, it does not support other complex macros and third party macros

Confluence Cloud currently does not support nested macro (See CONFCLOUD-68323) which means integration with other apps by way of nesting will be limited.

Due to this limitation, pages and templates that contain Scaffolding macros nested with other macros (such as the one highlighted in the Server column on the left side) will fail to be migrated to Cloud. We suggest simplifying the page structure and removing any complex third party macros in the page/template before performing the migration to Cloud. Feel free to contact our support team to get further advice about this.

Currently, Scaffolding Cloud does not support integration with reporting apps such as Page Property Report macros.

Availability of Reporting for Confluence Cloud....

We're rebuilding the app for Cloud with better experience and functionality. Sign up through survey if you wish to participate in Beta releases.

Macro Differences Overview

Server Macros

Cloud Macros ( Naming conventions have been changed to suit new macro behavior)

We have simplified our cloud Scaffolding application to focus on some key macros. This means that data migrated will be handled totally differently in Cloud. Review and understand the following:

Look out for icons highlighting how the data will be migrated.
- – Unavailable
- – Partially available
We suggest you thoroughly test all the main data that you are migrating, keeping in mind which category they fall into. Include this as a part of the pre-migration tests.
For macros that are migrated but are unsupported, the following applies
- Overall unsupported Macro
  - You may see a blank space where the macros were originally positioned in the documents
- Unsupported Macro parameters
  - Migration will contain the data.
  - Your parameter values are available in the Content Properties
  - The function of those parameters is not available
  - The macros will behave differently in View & Edit content mode
    - For example, if you have a page with Number Data with Decimal & MinValue set, that data in cloud will lose its Decimal value on View content mode. Upon Edit content mode, there will be no min.value set
Find details of each migratable macro below and the differences in terms of behaviour once migrated to cloud

Macro Differences Breakdown

Supported Server Macro

Cloud Macro (Or closest equivalent )

Key Differences

Server

Cloud

Attachment Data

Allows users to specify an attachment to upload, or to select a previously-uploaded attachment.

Attachment Upload

Accepts required, include and exclude as filter criteria for the attachments

The Required, Include, and Exclude parameters are supported, and work similarly to the Server version.

Attachment Options

Creates a set of list options linking to the attachments on the specified content. Must be contained inside a List Data macro.

Files List

Accepts content, include and exclude as filter criteria for the attachments

Supports the Page parameter: The location of the page with the attachment(s).

Content Options

Generates a set of options linking to Confluence content (e.g. pages, blog posts, etc).

May be filtered in several ways. Must be contained inside a List Data macro.

Dropdown List

Accepts space, parent ancestor, labels etc as filter criteria for the content to be displayed as option.

Accepts space as filter criteria for the content to be displayed as option.

Date Data

Allows editing of dates with a date picker pop-up menu, or via keying in directly into the fixed format field.

Date Field

Accepts minDate, maxDate & Display format as Date field criteria.

Accepts no parameter.

Group Data

Allows data to be grouped within a named data set.

Field Group

Acts as a bucket of Field macros to be easily referred to later. The name field is required.

Acts as the main macro to do Structure editing. Field group name is required.

Label Options

Creates a list of labels to attach to the current page.

Must be contained inside a List Data macro.

Labels List

The name field is required.

Must be contained inside a List Data macro.

Accepted parameter: Labels

You can add labels which are currently being used in the Confluence instance by selecting them from the dropdown list.

You can also add new labels to the list by typing or pasting them in.

List Data

Allows selection of one or more options from a specific list.

Must contain option-generating sub-macros (e.g. List Option, Content Options, User Options, Attachment Options or Label Options).

Available as a combination of

Define output to be a dropdown list. Requires other Field macros to work
Dropdown settings are defined here such as Required, Allow multiple, Separator, etc.
List data that contains multiple types of options.

All dropdown macros are called individually depending on their function
Allow Multiple and Required setting is set in each individual macros

Unsupported server scenarios upon migrations.

In Cloud, the type of options is its own separate macros and therefore cannot be combined.
If this scenario happens, only the topmost option will be migrated. In this example, only User Options will be migrated to Cloud.

List Option

Generates a single, simple, list option.

Must be contained inside a List Data macro.

Dropdown List

Accepts text value in the dropdown options, can be modified to output other rich text formats such as Status or Emojis.
Have sorting mechanism

Accepts custom Texts (that may contain emoji) or Statuses as value and output of the dropdown list.

Live Template

Live Templates use either Confluence Global templates, Space templates or even other regular Confluence pages as templates.

Live Template

Accepts Page, Space or Global Templates, and Scaffolding Blueprint as templates
Location of pages are assigned manually with the following format (SPACEKEY:Page_Title)

Accepts Page, Space or Global Templates, and any Confluence Blueprint as templates
Location of Page/Template/Blueprint is chosen from a dropdown field. Space name and Page name field are separated

Unsupported server scenarios upon migrations.

Find Limitations at Limitation for Live Template in Confluence Cloud

Click here to expand for more details...

Summary

Confluence Server supports the Live Template macro with various template types.

However, the Live Template macro in Cloud supports different template types. Therefore, migration of Live Template to Cloud may be limited.

This document highlights the limitations and differences.

Environment

Confluence Cloud
Scaffolding Forms and Templates for Confluence Cloud

Diagnostics Steps

Not applicable.

Cause

Due to differences of the macros and limitations in Cloud, Live Template macros in Cloud can only accept some of the template types used in Live Template macros in Server.

Workaround

A workaround for Global Template migration is available in the Resolution section below.

Resolution

Template Type	Server	Cloud	Notes about Server - Cloud migration
Page			Can be migrated automatically
Space Template			Can be migrated automatically
Global Template			Due to CCMA limitations, Server Global template can't be automatically migrated to Cloud. All Global Template have to be manually copied to Space Template before the migration. Read more about the steps here.
Confluence Blueprint
Scaffolding Blueprint			Scaffolding Blueprint is not supported in Cloud and will not be migrated to Cloud

Number Data

Allows editing of numbers in either a text box or a list item.

Number

Accepts decimal, minValue, maxValue, format display, etc as filter criteria for the number value.

Does not have further criteria for the number value.

Table Data

Allows dynamic addition or deletion of rows in a table.

Table Field

Accepts initialRows and order as parameters for the Table data.

Does not take any further parameters

Unsupported server scenarios upon migrations.

Nesting Table data does not work in Cloud.
- In server the following table appears as a nested table
- Confluence Cloud does not support nested macro related functions.
- If this scenario happens, the data inside the table will not be migrated. I.e Agenda, Notes, Status, and Actions column will not be migrated.

Text Data

Allows editing of free text data.

Short Text, Paragraph

Accepts area, line, or password as Type, and richtext, text, etc as the content type
Accepts language, minLength, maxLength, etc as parameters for the Text data

Text input is divided into Short Text and Paragraph. Paragraph macro accepts rich text while Short Text accepts the shorter length of texts

Text data: Accepts Placeholder to help users input their data
Paragraph: Does not take any further parameter
Migrating Text data with type Area will be migrated as Paragraph while type Line and Password will be migrated as Text Data

Unsupported server scenarios upon migrations.

Text data with type Password will be migrated as Short Text macro and will not have masked view on page view
Rich Text content is only partially supported
- Find limitations at Limitations of Rich Text content of Text Data Macro (Server) migration to Paragraph Macro (Cloud)
  Please click to find more complete details
  Summary
  Confluence server supports the Text Data macro which converts to Confluence cloud Short Text, Paragraph. However, the Paragraph macro in cloud's support of rich text migrating from server is limited. This document highlights the limitations.
  Environment
  All Confluence versions that can support CCMA(Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant)
  Cause
  Due to differences in the macros and limitations in Cloud, Paragraph macro (Text data equivalent in the Cloud) can only accept some of the rich text content features.
  Resolution
  Please refer to our article on the Paragraph macro.

User Options

Creates a set of list options linking to users matching the filter options. Must be contained inside a List Data macro.

User List

Accepts groups, spaces, users etc , to scope the list of users as options

Accepts user groups to scope the list of users as options