See above the ticket...

[new page name]() 

will do it, although the created links are forever somehow other than "naturally" linked pages.

Please reconsider re-implementing this feature. Just consider the time effort here. 

In the past... type clickety type add '[' typedytype add ']'. Publish, click, edit    2 seconds additional effort to link to a new page. Never mind being able to continue authoring the article/page you are currently working on without losing the flow. 

Today: typedi type. curse!. Save current page. Create new page. Add title. save. Go back, edit, find link, publish. 

At least 3 additional steps, probably adds at least 20 seconds to the process. Never mind the frustration every time you consider a link. This is basically taking all the benefits of hyper text out of hyper text. 

this seems like such a core function of creating a wiki

Write text
Select text 
Create link to text to a new page that automatically has the name of the selected text

DONE

Now I can keep going on my current page and know that my new blank page is there waiting to remind me to fill it. 

Why you can't pick - Undefined Page from the Cmd-K menu is beyond me.... yet again another strange  Atlassian decision.

Come on @atlassian, we can do better than this! 

I tried using the work-around and it takes longer to use than the alternative: create a new page, name it and go back to the parent and add the the link to your newly created placeholder page. The work-around also doesn't adopt the link name as the default page title.

My guess is the workaround provided at the bottom of the page IS the fix.  Still seems like a "workaround" to me and not a "fix".  I hope there will be a more intuitive built-in "fix" in the future.

Has this feature been abandoned?  Its a shame if so.  It was an essential feature.  The work around just gives me an error.

Eh.. is this issue really "Fixed" if the solution is to use the rather cumbersome workaround? Is there an issue tracking fixing it in a user-friendly way?

EDIT: the workaround doesn't  actually provide the functionality of future-page-link. If I have multiple such "workaround" links, they will NOT automatically link to the page if it's created in the future. (not even the one I clicked..)

The "workaround" seems to be to link to the create new page?! That does not qualify as a workaround for this feature IMO..

Just noticed it is finally working in our Confluence instance. So roll-out has indeed started. Hope you all get it soon as well!

If the roll-out started 06/Jul/2020, when do we ALL get this feature?  I believe that I was one of the first to complain about this BUG, but I am still waiting for it to be roll-out to our cloud site!

I don't think this works. See https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-68165 .

Doesn't work on our instance any way. What's "the next few weeks"?

@trent murry - I think "regretrospective" is my new favorite word

Great news - thanks for bringing this feature back. Hopefully you have a regretrospective over this one and perhaps don't make decisions in haste based on numbers the data people pull out of the backend. 

Finally and long overdue.  But why would you want someone to put () at the end?  That's so... developerish.  Why not just do what the Server editor does and use the brackets by themselves?

It's official.  
https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-articles/Link-to-undefined-placeholder-pages/ba-p/1412785
You should see this rolling out to your sites in the next few weeks.

WOOOOO!  Thanks for the update Mike, this is great news!

Hi everyone,

This is Mike from the Confluence team. We're excited to let you know that implementation of undefined links for the new editor is in progress.

In a few weeks, we will release a version that has the functionality of creating a link to an undefined page. There are more aspects to undefined links which will be covered in future updates.

Thank you again for your suggestion, and we will provide further updates as they come.

Best,

Mike

Let's learn from history, Atlassian. 

Man it would sure be great if this were fixed.  Making a new page on the fly as you work on a higher level concept is, for me, central to the concept of a wiki.  Having to:

• stop editing the parent and publish it,
• make the child page (possibly a long process),
• return to the parent,
• insert the link

is just unworkable.   Instead, you end up inserting a flat placeholder in the parent and then add a step later where you review it for placeholders and make the child pages and return to place the links.  It's the sort of tedious bookkeeping that makes you think, why can't the computer do this?

This is all super simple to do in the server version, I can't imagine why you guys took

Reading back thru the full set of comments on this ticket, I find a lot of references to alternative products that compete with Confluence.  I am sure that many of these indicate at least one lost customer, especially since I have not seen any additional comments from those people.

I also noticed that Avinoam Zelenko is now listed as (Inactive), his LinkedIn profile (https://www.linkedin.com/in/avinoamzelenko/) now shows him as a Senior Product Manager at LinkedIn...  I wish him better luck at his new endeavor than he had at Atlassian.

Since I believe that I was the first to file this bug with Atlassian, I thought I'd provide a timeline of its history.  (I have 174 email messages from watching the task, that mention it)

2019-05-15 – Jira Task created (I don't remember when I first filed the bug report)

2019-10-15 – Brought up during the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Pratima Arora (Atlassian's Head of Product for Confluence Cloud) — Only response was to provide the link to the Jira ticket.

2019-11-14 – Status changed from GATHERING INTEREST to UNDER CONSIDERATION

2020-01-17 – Status changed from UNDER CONSIDERATION to IN PROCESS (though no one was listed under Assignee)

2020-04-07 – Kseniia Cherniavska posts a comment to schedule feedback sessions (their schedule fills by 2020-04-08)

2020-04-09 – My "feedback" session (after signing an NDA, so I can't tell you what I said or saw!)

2020-06-10 – Change of Assignee field from unassigned to ME by sai (whoever that is.)

— I think that glaciers move faster than Atlassian!

@La Feu - The [] link notation does not exist in notion.io, you're correct. The capability to create pages that do not yet exist, and build a semantic web of knowledge with an emergent structure is possible, and that was my personal gripe with what has been removed from confluence. YMMV.

Voting to please fix this, along with

Rendering PDFs and word documents

Being able to edit word and PDFs using Atlassian companion (without having to go to the attachments directory)

Well the [] link notaion doesn't work on notion.so. So thanks for nothing.

I recommend anyone else who is frustrated at this takes a look at notion.so as a confluence alternative.

@Trent Murray - eh, that's nothing. I'm tracking issues that are over 14 years old, but still "gathering interest". Soon it will be old enough to drive. 

It's been over a month since I posted asking the Atlassian team two simple questions. Which to date have not been answered. 

The ticket is now "In progress", with no one assigned to it and radio silence. 

Looks like we'll all be celebrating CONFCLOUD-67129's 1st birthday this year! Party time.

But seriously, this is terrible.

Agree with above comments. Many of us have years of experience with wiki conventions, including links to undefined pages. Dropping this feature in the new editor breaks my workflow. Please prioritize this for an upcoming release.

+100 This issue forcing us to evaluate other platforms. Takes us "out of the flow" across dozens of team members which is a big productivity hit over time. That plus the tone deafness from Atlassian's product team on this kind of makes us wonder if we can trust the platform going forward.

Confluence is not a wiki if you can't add links to pages that don't exist yet on the fly. This is extremely frustrating to pull this feature from your product. Please put it back.

+1 Thanks team.

I'd like to echo what others have said above... this functionality should be prioritized by your team, it's hard to use Confluence without it.

As soon as I realised this functionality was gone, I moved back to DokuWiki.  It's just completely counter to my workflow - I used to build a framework of the pages I needed to create in the top-level page, and build the structure that way.  Coming from my previous company's on-premises Confluence to running my own organization I thought I'd be able to rely on the tools I was used to; not so, it seems.

I could not agree more with Yellow Chicken above. Without this functionality, Confluence is just like any other "wiki" and from my point of view, loses the edge against SharePoint and similar. If the feature is not restored soon I will consider migrating.

I'm joining this too, I've been following this topic for some time and I don't even understand what's the holdup and how this was not part of the original new editor release as it's one of the most basic features of a wiki. To be frank, I solely chose Confluence over other wikis for its integrations with the amazing Trello and Bitbucket but the more I use it the more I'm astonished by how terrible it is and "feature-lacking", especially compared to the quality of the previously mention software owned by the same company...

Joining this a bit late but I am shocked Atlassian doesn't just fix this.  It is a core wiki feature. Makes it very difficult to get into the zone and write.  What is there to study here?

Hi - I'd just like to clarify the point here - ...with a wiki what you want to be doing is jumping into it and making quick page edit and structural changes. Lack of this feature to create links to pages makes it really awkward to define or change the structure. It's crucial as unless it's easy and intuitive - people will simply not bother to organise their pages.

Out of all the confluence functionality, we probably use the same 5% of it on an average day, yet we used this feature everyday.

This is the most fundamental function of the editor. You write some content, make links to new content, then edit that content.  How was the existing frictionless functionality of making new pages on the fly not considered the most essential part of the new editor? This is absolute core essential functionality. What was the thought process behind adding this annoying and unwieldy friction to content creation and trying to palm it off as "progress"?

@sweintraub

The problem I have with the "consultation process" is it means they aren't sold on bringing this feature back. Why on Earth would you need to consult on something so cut and dry as this?

It's a fob off, and puts the task into the corporate machine for another washing. 

If you're going to open this up to consultation - tell everyone up front how long that will take, and the honest reason WHY you feel you need to consult on THIS issue.

One of the core values is "No bullshit" - but all you have to do is read many of the 10-15yr old outstanding tickets on here to see the company has strayed so far from that value it should be removed. 

Just put us all out of our misery and tell us 2 pieces of information, be open honest, no bullshit:

1. Are you going to reinstate this functionality in its original form?
2. When will you do it.

Anything less than this is just disingenuous to a loyal base of users that now no longer have "no choice". The alternatives are vast, but we stay because deep down we like Atlassian - we just don't like where it's headed.

Hello everyone, 

We were happily surprised by the quick replies to our invitation to participate in research sessions on this topic!

Thanks to you, we reached our participant goal. If you expressed interest but weren’t selected this time, we definitely have you on our short-list for future sessions if we need more input.

Thank you all for being so interested and passionate about making our products better!

I see the $75 gift card as some minor recompense for all of the irritation and extra work that the lack of this feature has caused me since I first brought it up last July.  

I am more curious about whether this is actually being worked on, since the task remains unassigned.  I guess that Atlassian doesn't want to publicly announce who is actually working on it, either to protect them, to to hide the fact that they haven't actually assigned it to anyone!

I certainly hope this is above board and an honest attempt to find the best solution.  I'm also open to the possibility that there is a better one that what we had before, as unlikely as that appears, as it was certainly quick and easy.  So lets remain suspicious but help?

Having dropped the feature, its clear someone doesn't quite understand why and how this feature is critical, and without us making it clear what makes it critical, and what about it is critical, its likely to fall short.

@sweintraub

I cannot say this for others who have posted here, but I think part of the problem is that it can be seen as dishonest/disingenuous to remove a feature, then when a lot of people complain talk about how you want to improve the situation (instead of bringing back said feature, or at least explaining WHY it can't be brought back).

People haven't been talking about how they're somehow not entirely happy with the new editor - they've been clearly stating that a feature was removed and they want it back.
Talking about "the use case that drives you to use the feature" sounds like "we don't really want to bring it back, so we're looking for reasons why you are wrong".

Which, in turn, reeks of "We know better how to do what you do, so shut up and do it OUR way."

Maybe it's not intended that way - but it can be seen as such. Not everyone thinks the same way.

I think Trent has already addressed that as well; what would have been right would have been not launching a product that wasn't ready, not forcing organisations to move to it and not taking this long to put back basic functionality. I think Trent is also accurate that the aim was to focus on adding things that would broaden Confluence's appeal as wide as possible, at the expense of it's original core base.

I don't think it's an unreasonable objection to make, that they are extending the time even further by consulting on something that shouldn't have been removed. However, I have also offered to follow their process and will say this to them directly, so let's see how long that takes.

They are asking us to participate in a process that helps them get it right.  I get that its been frustrating, but now you are unhappy with how they are trying to help, and its likely unproductive.

What frustrates people the most is this:

Everything we used to be able to do, and can't with the new editor. But hey, there are now HUNDREDS of emojis - because people who write technical documentation and use it as a wiki need those 

Kseniia,

I think Trent's comment is bang on the money. If you're going to use a stock reply and don't incorporate the context, you run the risk of just angering people even more. It's bad support.

You've got people in these comments saying you've removed a fundamental element of the service, something core to what a wiki is and displaying a lot of anger and resentment. Your message has just perpetuated that. You need to restore the functionality that so many have asked you to put back.

Kseniia, whilst it's great you want some feedback. I'd say in this case all you have to do is read about 60 of the 107 comments to see the use cases - it's pretty clear. 

This is one of those cases where you can just apply Occam's razor (the simplest solution - reinstating what was already there is the correct one) and give the community its feature back.

Plus, save the company a whole bunch of $75 vouchers - this one is cut and dry. 

Update: The sign-ups to the research are closed now. 

We were happily surprised by the quick replies to our invitation to participate in research sessions on this topic!

Thanks to you, we reached our participant goal. If you expressed interest but weren’t selected this time, we definitely have you on our short-list for future sessions if we need more input.

Thank you all for being so interested and passionate about making our products better!

Hi everyone 👋

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about this feature.

We’re currently working to bring this feature to the new editor, and we’d love to schedule some time to get your feedback. If you're interested in taking part, please send an email to kcherniavska@atlassian.com with a few possible session times between 9am PDT and 6pm PDT during the work week. We’ll schedule a session at your convenience.

What’s involved?

• Sessions are 30 minutes long and are conducted over video-conference.

• After scheduling, you'll receive a calendar invite with a video-conference link.

• During the session, we'll chat and get to know you and the work you do in Confluence. Then, we may share a prototype.

• As a token of our appreciation, you'll receive an e-gift card worth $75 USD within 5 days of completing your session.

We know this feature is important to many people. Rather than just replicating what was there before, we want to make sure we fully understand the use case that drives you to use the feature.

We look forward to meeting you!

I'm new to Confluence, and I'm disappointed that this functionality isn't available. I'm creating a knowledge base from scratch, and I desperately need placeholders  for future articles.

Neat.  Thanks Avinoam.

For everyone watching this issue, looking at Avinoam's comments today also led me to the confluence cloud editor roadmap:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html

And that gives me some hope that this will get fixed soon-ish.  Thanks for working on this Avinoam, I am super excited to get this feature back.

Hi all,

As we're working through this feature and others, we wanted to address a lot of your concerns as to the future of the new editor and legacy editor.

Please read our recent community post here: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-Cloud-articles/Change-to-your-content-is-in-your-hands/ba-p/1324476

Thanks,

Avinoam

For those looking for alternatives, take a look at https://www.xwiki.org/

I've just given up.

It's clear to me that Atlassian have a narrative and they intend to focus on it at all costs, pretending nothing else is import and using JIRA as shielding -  to systemically ignore and attempt to distract users from their legitimate complaint. (Their valuable feedback as actual USERS of the system)

The call has been neglected for so long, misdescribed, re-framed and there've been so many cynical and obvious attempts to gaslight the large community of users who've bothered to articulate the problem and its impact in detail. My impression is it's just willfully arrogant vandalism of something that was a distinctive and valuable product.

I cannot believe this is purely a matter or ignorance or millenialization of the Atlassian core offering, but actually just arrogance and willful disengagement from the userbase.

Without this feature we don't have a wiki but some sort of wix-clone. It's not what we signed up for and it's not useful.

I feel foolish for having championed Atlassian and this is clearly the case for many who have contributed perspectives to the outcry on this negligently handled problem.

I have never in my career seen a more essential product issue, more frustratingly and my ineptly handled.

If you are from Atlassian and reading this (and I very much doubt it will be read) and you'd like me to be less inflammatory and more measured, how about a proper followup and committment to a date. How about fixing the downright weird misdescription of the problem? That would even be a start.

For now, this page is the link I send people to now when they ask 'that Atlassian software.. is it good?'.

I think more priority needs to be given to re-implementing this. We recently evaluated alternatives to Confluence and I ultimately decided to reinvest in Confluence Cloud, moving off of our old 6.x on-premise version after I had read in the documentation that this feature was available. Now, we are on Confluence Cloud and have found that the feature has been removed.

As others have mentioned, this is a key feature for wiki functionality. Now, after a new page is created, we have to go through and find every page referencing the new page and inserting links to it manually. This seems unacceptable to me that this feature was left out and more so that it still hasn't been addressed with a higher priority. This is going to cause a huge loss in productivity with my team now.

Just chiming in to say that I too hope for someone to find a good alternative. I've started to look myself, but it doesn't seem easy - lots of Wikis that I'd use, but none that my coworkers would accept.

It's too bad, I was starting to like Confluence...

I wonder what other things have gone wrong, that a feature as important as this is not fixed...

We have started to evaluate other products to move away from confluence, because of it's unreliability. Every day you just hope, that they did not remove yet another feature.