This is in the top 10 most voted confluence tickets, and been untouched by Atlassian for over 15 years. I wouldn't hold your breath

This is such a sad reality.

Hoping this will happen!

looking forward to this

Hi Atlassian, 

whats the current status of this?

Will this feature be available on DC?

Hi Brett, you don't need a ScriptRunner plugin to perform this, all you need is ScriptRunner. 

In the past, it was the case that this functionality was offered separate in a ScriptRunner plugin, but it has now completely ingested in the core ScriptRunner app.

Best,

Andra - ScriptRunner Marketing

Voted this up.

FYI I read in a community discussion that with ScriptRunner you also need a ScriptRunner plugin to perform this. Also, there's a tree-view app that could work but we have not tested any of these options.

Hi All, This can now be achieved using the ScriptRunner for Confluence app (v6.5.0). Users can choose to watch a parent page and all of its descendants and when there are new pages added into that tree, they’ll automatically watch those too. Hope this helps!

What is the current status? The last official information from Atlassian is dated 18 November 2018. It would be great to know if and when this feature will be implemented by Atlassian.
I know that there is an addon which offers this functionality. But in my opinion such a basic function should be part of the standard product. It makes no sense to blow up your installation with such small addons.

@Andreas Purde, Wow! Thanks for pointing that out. I never even noticed that and wouldn't have seen it without your comment.

@Kathy Kurth: your statement is only partly true. Tree View is still free for Server. However you have to use the promotion link provided in the [Marketplace listing|https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1213286/tree-view?hosting=server&tab=overview].

@jenny millman - note that the Tree View app you're pointing us to is no longer free.

That feature would be very great. I'm working at a big project with plenty of components/stakeholders where I'm only interested in some of them.

Would be great to have that feature as some spaces can be huge thus not completely relevant for one.

Arie, since your question is really not related to this Jira issue the best place to ask that question would be the Atlassian Community.

Hi , is there a way to put the Children Display macrooin a page so that the list of childs pages will display in 2 columns?

I have a long list and I prefer to have the list split to 2 columns

you have my vote as well. Unfortunately, our organization wants to stay current, but relying on 3rd party plugins for functionality that should be native to the tool costs us in terms of added testing and delays before we can provide our users the latest and greatest.

Please consider making this native to your product.

But tree view isn't available for cloud users like me...

wow, you are right! Works like a charme, now tree view has officially solved the issue. No need for a native integration anymore from my point of view! Tree view now is a must have plugin!

Tim, I think that Andreas Purde read your comment, because in v 1.3.0 he implemented what you described
https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/de.edrup.confluence.plugins.tree-view/versions
It works:

The tree view add-on is a crutch. It works, but it's not integrated intuitively, so my users don't know about it unless you show them. A native feature within the usual place of watching a page would be much much better. Until then, I can recommend the tree view.

We're using it, and it's doing the job. So I can recommend it until this feature is integrated.

I agree Leos Leos.

This free Add-on "Tree View" should do the trick (Watch pagetree):
https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/de.edrup.confluence.plugins.tree-view/server/overview
(I haven't tested it yet)
The reviews are positive.
Is anyone of you 445 watchers using this "Tree View" Add-on?

445 watchers are not enough for a feature request

+1 for this request...! Really hope to see this sometime soon!

Added My Vote.

Is there any third-party plugin to do this job, as Atlassian is not commenting on this particular feature request?

Any update for the community on this feature? The standard Atlassian answer of "We will not implement this as there is comparable feature available from a 3rd party plugin" would be fine.

Amazes me that more than 10 years have passed and Confluence product managers have not commented on this highly requested feature.

I wonder if the creators of that tree view plugin would be willing to donate it to Atlassian so it can be included in the core product, and if Atlassian is willing to accept it. That plugin is exactly what is needed and seems to be very well implemented.

I totally agree that it would be best if Confluence comes with that feature out of the box. For those ones who don't want to wait or don't want to use the commercial (closed source) plugin you may want to try our free open source alternative:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/de.edrup.confluence.plugins.tree-view

It will remain free and open source.

For our purposes, watching a page is far too restrictive - a lot of useful info relating to the topic will go into a child page (often a new page) so won't trigger a notification when watching the page, and with large spaces (which most of ours are), watching the space means that notifications become so numerous they just become spam, so without this feature, the "watch" functionality doesn't meet the requirements.

But, an all too-common response ... go get it in the marketplace vs spending maintenance dollars to enhance/fix the core product. Plugins are a solution ... but, they are a maintenance issue as there are always concerns about compatibility, and they add to your upgrade testing effort; plus, several cost money (again, why are we paying maintenance) or soon become paid once they get enough interest and see that they can charge. And, if you are hosted, you often don't get this as an option and many executives don't want to pursue plugins because they are not supported and inject risk.

And the commercial Add-On is terrible & costs additional money - double whammy.

But unfortunately Atlassian isn't interested in this issue of it's customers
or
Atlassian has too many advantages from the cooperation with the author of the commercial addon.

Almost ten years open... and 336 votes makes this the 9th most voted issue in Confluence.

These would be the options to pass to the CLI. Then just set up windows task scheduler, or a cron job to run the cli every whatever period you want.

--action addWatch --space "SPACEKEY" --title "PAGENAME" --userId "USERNAME" --descendents

https://bobswift.atlassian.net/wiki/display/CSOAP/Documentation#Documentation-addWatch

Hi Davin Studer, could you show me how to use command line interface to achieve this? Thanks.

Bump, and another vote.

If you want something automatic-ish (not really a word) you could use the Confluence Command Line Interface. You can set up a scheduled task to add watches to a page and its children every hour or so.

I know, Confluence really needs an option to watch all children pages, but at least this might work for some people's use cases.

This really doesn't solve the problem as new pages are added, they won't be automatically "watched".

For those customers using OnDemand/Confluence Cloud, you might try using our recently released addon, Bulk Action Tools:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/bulk-action-tools

It allows you to add/remove page watches from an entire tree of pages, and you can even select the ones you want using checkboxes. You can also use this addon to manage labels and move or delete multiple pages at a time. You can find the documentation here:

https://streamline.atlassian.net/wiki/display/BAT/Bulk+Action+Tools

Try it out, and feel free to give feedback.

Another vote!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE implement this feature request - it would make my life a lot easier! thanks John

Another vote!

Another vote.

Still, this could be a major selling point for Confluence (if it ever gets fixed...).

This issue has been open since 2005, I almost dont expect anything from it anymore.. sadly..

@michaelschwarz 4518 is resolved with resolution type "duplicate", ie. this is still the right issue to watch and it's still open/unresolved.

If this is duplicated by https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-4518 (which has status "Resolved" !)
Why is it's status still "Open" ?

Nudge This would be awesome.

Yes, please give us a feedback about the status of this topic!!!
The commercialization of the adaptavist plugin destroyed our workaround for watching pagetrees.
Thus this functionality is needed in the standard!

Hi, Could you please inform us about its development plan? according to votes this should be planned in near future , right?

HI All, Adaptivist commercialized descendant notifications to "Enterprise notifications" - which is now compatible with Confluence up to 5.1.5. See http://www.adaptavist.com/w/products-plugins/premium/enterprise-notifications/

We are also using the descendent notification plugin...

BUT we updated our Confluence and run into http://www.adaptavist.com/display/community/Strange+Email+Subjects+and+Email+Body

I think we will deacitivate the plugin and have to wait for the core implementation...