Migrate to Cloud

Learn more about migration to Cloud and what to expect for your content and macros.

Moving to Confluence Cloud is a big step and understanding how the move will affect your content and users is important. These pages will take you through what you can expect when you migrate a DC Confluence instance that contains Mosaic macros to a new Cloud instance.

Depending on where you are in the process and the size of your instance you may have different questions. The following pages cover the most common questions and concerns, but if you require more assistance or information please contact us for more assistance.

Understanding what to expect

Key changes

For long-time users of Confluence DC the experience of using Confluence Cloud can feel unfamiliar. Confluence Cloud offers a lot more features as part of the standard experience but at the same time limits how macros can be used. It’s important to be aware of these limits as they impact what is possible to do as part of your migration.

Nesting in Cloud

Nesting macros inside each other is extremely limited in Confluence Cloud. The changes to the platform mean that it is no longer possible to combine layers upon layers of macros to build highly custom functionality. Actions that were simple in Confluence DC are no longer an option.

eg Tabs inside Tabs

CSS

Because Confluence Cloud works so differently it is no longer possible to apply CSS to all the macros on a page. When you first migrate your content your existing stylesheet settings will be respected as far as possible.

When you convert your pages from the Legacy Editor to the Cloud Editor macros that are combined with the CSS Style Sheet macro may not successfully convert, even if they would convert on their own.

When working on new pages in the Cloud Editor individual style settings will need to be applied to each macro, or section of content. Many options are available as standard from the Confluence editor. Inside Moasic macros, there are user-friendly color and style options.

Native functionality

Confluence Cloud has more built-in options for organizing and styling content. This means that many core Mosaic DC macros are no longer required. eg. the iframe macro is now part of Confluence natively. This means that our macro list for Confluence Cloud is much reduced. However, the experience of using our Cloud macros is significantly improved allowing users with lower levels of technical knowledge to easily create well-styled and easy-to-consume content.

Possible challenges

Due to the flexibility that Confluence DC offers users, it is not always possible to smoothly migrate all content to Cloud. We are continuing to work on the migration process but some types of content or layouts present more challenges.

Many layers of nested content

Due to the limitations of Confluence Cloud, it is not possible to place many macros inside each other. If your instance has many macros inside other macros the migrated results will not look the same as the original. The results will depend on which macros are placed inside others and how many layers of macros are combined.

It may be necessary to separate macros or consider options to rebuild the functionality using Cloud macros instead.

Nested third-party macros

If the content you are migrating combines macros from other developers inside our macros then we can not predict how these will appear after the migration. If you are having issues with this you may need to separate the third-party macros from your Mosaic macros.

Extensive use of the CSS Style Sheet Macro

When you migrate content to Confluence Cloud a best effort is made by Atlassian to preserve your existing CSS. However, more complicated applications often fail and can have unpredictable results.

In cases where the results are preserved in the Legacy Editor, they still may not survive the conversion to the Cloud Editor. Macros that have the CSS Style Sheet applied to them can also become unsupported in the Cloud Editor.