Changelog
What’s new in Aura Workflows. Subscribe via RSS.
June 2026
New features
Section titled “New features”Admin state controls New
Section titled “Admin state controls ”Space admins now have an Admin submenu in the page byline dropdown with controls for workflow administration. The new Set state option opens a modal where an admin can move the page to any state in its workflow, including the current state when an approval round needs to be restarted.
The modal shows the current and target states, lists the target state’s configured actions, and lets the admin choose whether those actions should run. Confirming the change cancels any active review round, rebuilds review state for the target state, and records the manual state change in workflow history. The Remove workflow action in the same admin menu now has a short countdown before it can be clicked, reducing accidental removals.
2FA approvals New
Section titled “2FA approvals ”Admins can now require two-factor authentication for selected approval steps. The new Administration 2FA area lets admins add reviewers who may set up an authenticator app, see whether each user is pending or active, and revoke a user’s setup when needed.
In the Workflow Builder, approval transitions have a new Require 2FA option under Advanced. When it is enabled, reviewers enter a six-digit authenticator code after choosing approve or reject. Aura records the review only after the code is verified, preserves the selected option and comment while the code screen is open, and marks successful protected reviews in workflow history with a 2FA verified badge.
Page variable overrides New
Section titled “Page variable overrides ”The Page variables modal now shows inherited values from space variables and Confluence Page Properties in an Other sources column. Users can see which fallback value the page is currently using, enter a page-specific value to override it, or clear the page-specific value to fall back to the next available source again.
Required variables now count as filled when Aura can resolve a value from the page, Page Properties, or the space level. That means a space default or Page Properties value can satisfy a required variable without forcing users to save a duplicate page-specific value.
Rich email message editor New
Section titled “Rich email message editor ”Workflow email messages now use a rich editor instead of a plain text box. Admins can format email bodies with headings, bold text, and italic text, then insert placeholder chips for workflow variables, workflow metadata, and page details such as title, author, owner, version, and last update information.
The editor is available anywhere a workflow email message is configured, including publish and update notifications, approval and expiration emails, approval outcome emails, and Send email actions. Existing plain-text messages continue to work, and Aura renders the configured template when the email is sent.
Turn all outgoing email on or off New
Section titled “Turn all outgoing email on or off ”A new Email sending control on the global Administration page lets a site admin pause every outgoing email from Aura with a single toggle. When it is switched off, no workflow email leaves the app: publish and update notifications, approval and expiration reminders, and Send email actions all stop until the toggle is switched back on. The setting defaults to on, so existing sites keep sending mail and only an explicit switch-off changes anything. Use it during migrations, bulk edits, or testing to avoid flooding people with notifications, then turn it back on when you are done.
Bug fixes
Section titled “Bug fixes”- Fix Fixed hierarchy publishing failing when Aura tried to create a target folder whose title already existed. Aura now reuses the matching folder instead.
- Fix Fixed Publish page actions giving up when publishing as the configured page owner failed. Aura now retries the copy as the app before surfacing a failure.
- Fix Fixed Publish page action failures showing too little context in workflow history. Failed publish actions now identify the publish step that failed, making the problem easier to understand from the action badge tooltip.
- Fix Fixed open tasks appearing for states that advance by manual selection rather than approval. Review tasks now show up only on genuine approval states.
- Fix Fixed the Workflow Reviewers macro always showing X / 1 required approvals when an approval was set to require all reviewers. It now shows the real number of reviewers required.
- Fix Fixed the Page Variables modal letting users without page edit permission click Save only to have it fail. The button is now disabled for those users, with a tooltip explaining that page edit permission is required.
- Fix Fixed emails silently failing to send when a recipient list resolved to more than 90 people. Atlassian’s bulk-email endpoint now rejects requests with more than 90 recipients, so every email caps at 90 unique recipients to comply with that limit. The cap is shown in the recipients picker on every email config and is consistent across publish, update, approval, and expiration emails (the previous 100-recipient limits are now 90).
May 2026
New features
Section titled “New features”Filter and customize the workflow history view New
Section titled “Filter and customize the workflow history view ”The Filter dropdown on a page’s workflow history is now organised into submenus. Show events holds the existing per-event-type checkboxes for hiding categories such as page edits, state transitions, and reviewer changes. A new View submenu adds two display toggles: Page versions shows or hides the version badges and version links on each entry, and Full timestamps switches the timeline from relative times (2 hours ago) to exact dates and times.
Your choices now persist. Save filters stores the current event filters and view options in your browser, so the history opens the same way next time, and Reset filters returns everything to the defaults. Selections you make without saving apply only for the current session.
Workflow metadata fields in the Metadata macro New
Section titled “Workflow metadata fields in the Metadata macro ”The Metadata macro gains a dedicated Workflow metadata value option under Workflow Data, alongside the existing Variable value. The new option reads fields defined under the workflow’s Additional Metadata section (the same fields populated through the Page variables modal) and renders them inline on the page. Variable value continues to surface @-style workflow variables; the new option is the way to put an Additional Metadata field’s value directly into page content.
Behaviour matches Variable value across the board: text, number, enum, date, and user/group fields all render, with users and groups joined by commas. The picker shows a settings panel where you enter the metadata field name, mirroring the existing variable picker.
draw.io diagram support on published pages New
Section titled “draw.io diagram support on published pages ”Pages containing draw.io’s Diagram macro can now be published, republished, and reverted through Aura workflows with the rendered diagram on the published page staying in sync with the source. Previously, the published copy could drift to an older revision of the diagram because Confluence’s copy-page API creates a new attachment version on the target even when the bytes are unchanged, and the macro’s stored revision pointer kept referring to the source-side version. Aura now rewrites that pointer at publish time to match the target attachment, on both fresh publishes and republishes, and works regardless of how many attachments a page has.
See Integrations → draw.io for the supported macro set, the source-revert caveat, and the space-overview limitation.
Publishing status in the workflow byline New
Section titled “Publishing status in the workflow byline ”While a transition into a state with a Publish page action is in flight, the linked-content badge in the workflow byline shows a Publishing label with a spinner. Once the transition settles and the published copy exists, the badge swaps to the usual View published page link. Readers no longer have to refresh the page to find out whether the publish step has completed.
Read confirmations New
Section titled “Read confirmations ”Pages can now require readers to acknowledge that they have read and understood the content. Open the Aura Read Confirmations content action on any page, flip Enable confirmations, and a banner appears at the top of the page asking each viewer to Confirm. Once a user confirms, the banner disappears for them and the confirmation is recorded against the version of the page they read.
The same content action shows the Confirmed by overview: a searchable list of everyone who has confirmed, with the page version they confirmed against. When a new version is published, prior confirmations are flagged as Confirmed an older version of this page so reviewers can see who still needs to re-acknowledge, and the banner returns for those readers with a View changes link and a prompt to confirm the updated version. Disabling confirmations on a page removes the banner without discarding the historical confirmation list.
Limit on-the-fly reviewers to a fixed set New
Section titled “Limit on-the-fly reviewers to a fixed set ”Approvals with Allow adding reviewers on the fly can now restrict the runtime add experience to a curated list of users and groups. A new Limit adding to the following reviewers option in the workflow builder takes a user/group picker; when the option is on, the Manage reviewers modal drops its directory search and renders the configured set as a quick-add list — page editors pick from that list instead of searching the whole org. Anyone outside the set is rejected server-side, so the restriction holds regardless of how it’s reached.
The new flag is independent from Only existing reviewers can add reviewers: the first decides which page editors can open the modal, the second decides which names appear once they do, and both can be on at the same time. Groups in the limited set stay groups rather than expanding to their current members, matching the behaviour of preassigned group reviewers.
Behavior changes
Section titled “Behavior changes”Metadata macro values lock in at publish time Update
Section titled “Metadata macro values lock in at publish time ”Previously, every Metadata macro on a published page resolved its value live on every render, so editing the source page (renaming, transitioning, changing a variable) silently changed what readers saw on the published copy, and scrolling back through the published page’s version history showed today’s values rendered against an old page body rather than the values that were actually live at the time.
Now, when Base value on original page is on (the default), the macro captures its value at the moment of publishing and stores it on that version of the published copy. The published page is frozen until the next publish, and Confluence’s per-version history of the published page becomes a faithful audit record: opening an older version shows the document owner, effective date, workflow status, variable, and so on as they were when that version was published. Turning the toggle off keeps the previous live-resolution behaviour.
The lock-in applies to every macro item except Page ID and Publish link (which have no historical meaning to freeze). Pages published before this change continue to render exactly as they did, so nothing breaks for existing content; the snapshot fills in on the next publish.
Because the published value is now a record rather than a live read, the macro editor opens in read-only mode on a published page: editing only makes sense on the source page, where it changes what the next publish will capture. The source page’s version history is not snapshotted; it always renders live. For audit and compliance use, treat the published page as the source of truth.
Three-tier action execution on transitions Update
Section titled “Three-tier action execution on transitions ”Previously, transition actions ran in two phases: Remove restrictions first, then everything else — including Publish page — in parallel. That meant a page could be published before sibling actions like Modify title, Manage labels, or Set official version had finished applying, so the published copy occasionally captured an in-between state.
Now actions run in three tiers. Tier 1 is Remove restrictions. Tier 2 runs the rest of the actions — Send email, Add restrictions, Manage labels, Modify title, Set official version — in parallel. After a one-second settle, tier 3 runs Publish page actions last. The result is that publishing always reflects the fully applied post-transition state of the page. The actions overview in the docs has a diagram of the new model.
Bug fixes
Section titled “Bug fixes”- Fix Improved the reliability of automatic transitions that run when a page is edited, so the matching email notifications and variable updates fire consistently and are attributed to the right person.
- Fix Fixed the Read confirmations banner appearing on top of the page while editing in Confluence. The banner and its status check are now hidden in edit mode and return as soon as you switch back to view.
- Fix Fixed app users (such as AURA Content Formatting Macros) being unreachable in user pickers. Typing the app’s exact display name now surfaces it as a match, and long user names no longer overflow the input badge.
- Fix Fixed the Space input in page and space variables being briefly unusable on mount and clearing
@-style variable suggestions while space search results were loading. The input is now typable immediately, and suggestions stay visible alongside an inline loading indicator. - Fix Fixed date-type page variables, space variables, and Additional Metadata date fields being stored a day off for users east of UTC. The date picker now persists the chosen calendar day as UTC midnight, so variable-date expirations fire on the day you picked instead of being pushed roughly twelve months out.
- Fix Fixed Metadata macro errors showing the literal text Response returned an error code instead of the actual reason from Confluence, so issues like a missing or restricted source page now surface a useful message.
- Fix Fixed Page ID and Publish link Metadata macro fields returning HTTP 404 to readers who lack permission on the source page. Both now snapshot at publish time alongside the other metadata fields.
- Fix Fixed transitions that fire when a page is edited, and label-based automatic workflow assignment, sometimes running hours late or overriding a manual transition made in the meantime; they now run promptly and only once, and opening the page brings any pending transition up to date.