Publishing to Confluence

Drafts until you publish

Everything starts as a draft: manual notes, auto-drafts and scheduled digests. Nothing reaches readers until a person clicks Publish to Confluence. Notes made from sample data cannot be published.

Published as you

Pages are created or updated with your Confluence account, not the app's, so you are the author and normal permissions apply.

Choosing where notes go

Each project has one Confluence target: a space and a parent page.

The first time anyone publishes from a project, WhatShipped asks for a space. The parent defaults to the space homepage; use Choose a different parent to pick a top-level page. Then choose File notes here.

Change the target later in Project settings > WhatShipped > Change target.

A tidy setup is a "Release notes" parent page, with each release or digest as a child page.

The changelog index page

After each publish, WhatShipped also keeps an index page under the same parent, called "KEY changelog" (for example "ACME changelog"). It lists every published note, newest first, with a link.

• It only grows. Republishing refreshes a line; deleting a note in WhatShipped leaves its line.
• If a page with that title already exists and WhatShipped did not make it, WhatShipped leaves it alone and uses "KEY changelog (WhatShipped)" instead.
• If the index page is deleted, it is created again at the next publish.
• It stays under the parent where it was first created, even if you change the target later.
• If the index cannot be updated, the note is still published, with a warning.

Page titles and updates

• Release notes and sprint digests are titled with the project name, the versions or sprint and the audience.
• Scheduled digests are titled with the schedule name and the date.

A page with the same title under the parent is updated as a new page version, not copied.

What changes in Jira

When you publish release notes for one or more versions, WhatShipped stores a link to the page as a project property for each version. You do not see this in Jira.

It can also add "Release notes: link" to each version's description. This is off by default. Turn it on in Project settings > WhatShipped. Even then, WhatShipped only fills a description that is empty. It never replaces text you wrote.

Both are best effort. If Jira refuses, the Confluence page is still published.

The pre-flight check

Before publishing, WhatShipped checks the parent page. You may see:

• "You need edit access to space [name]." You can view the space but not add pages. Ask a space admin for permission, or pick another target.
• "The parent page no longer exists." The parent was deleted or moved out of reach. Pick a new target in Project settings.

Either way the note is marked blocked and schedules using that target pause. After fixing the target, turn them back on in the Digests tab.

After publishing

• The note's status becomes published and History shows the page link.
• Your edits are saved as edit memory for that voice. See Review and edit.
• The changelog index page gets a new line.
• After the third publish on your site, a card asks once whether you would like to leave a Marketplace review. It never appears again.

Other channels

WhatShipped publishes to Confluence only and sends no messages itself. For Slack, Teams or email, use the copy-ready formats on the review screen, or Confluence's own watch emails.