Duplicated page drafts appearing in a space after using Confluence Databases to update metadata

Issue Summary

When using the Databases feature to create pages, update page metadata or the content statuses, customers reported duplicated page drafts on the page tree (sidebar), which can't be deleted from the UI.

Either of these options fails:

• Right-click on the draft in the sidebar (the delete option is greyed out)
• Clicking on the draft throws this error:

  We couldn't find what you're looking for
  We looked everywhere, but it doesn't exist. It may have been deleted. Unless, of course, the URL has a typo in it 😉
  

• On the Browser Devtools, the below is observed:

  Request URL: https://<SITE>.atlassian.net/wiki/rest/api/content/<DRAFT-ID>?status=current&status=draft&expand=metadata.frontend.collabService
  Request Method: GET
  Status Code: 404 Not Found
  

Steps to Reproduce

The exact steps to reproduce this behavior are still unclear, but the results are similar to the ones described in the Bug Report:

• AUTO-980: An automation rule that moves a page to the same space it currently is creates a draft that can't be deleted or published

Expected Results

• Drafts for already published pages should not appear on the page tree (sidebar);

Actual Results

• Drafts from existing pages have their current and draft pages appearing on the sidebar randomly.
  

Workaround

• Move a few broken drafts under a temporary parent page, then remove this parent page with those duplicates as a child. After this, all broken drafts should disappear from the page tree (sidebar).
  
• Another option would be to hide those broken drafts from the page tree, as mentioned in this documentation: 'Move, copy, and hide pages'. After moving all these broken drafts, to a specific page, you could then reorder this page outside of the overview page level, which would hide everything.

Notes

• Only the user who "triggered" those draft creations can see these pages on the page tree.
• The content IDs for those drafts are different from the current page content (but exceptions may happen however, they also disappear from the page tree after the workaround);
• After performing the workaround above, the drafts only disappear from the page tree. Those still exist on the database.
• Deleting the drafts directly won't make them disappear from the sidebar; therefore, it's not recommended.

If you have more information about this situation and how to reproduce it, please add a comment below.