OMG - the cloud version just got done. A mere 20 years after the ticket was logged...

Any chance of the server version getting this now?

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

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

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.

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...

Aleš, the Descendant Notification Plugin mentioned above is free and works well for us. It adds a "Watch Page Family" item to the tools menu and allows unwatching. Have a look at it. The plugin is actively maintained by Aptavist.

Hello,
is that any time plan about that feature?
Thank you
Best regards Ales

This features is something we would use. Unfortunately, the descendant Notification Plugin has a bug that basically makes it useless. http://www.adaptavist.com/display/community/Strange+Email+Subjects+and+Email+Body

This feature will be cool. I have many questions about this issue (how to watch family of pages). Please do it this feature.

However, as an OnDemand user, the ability to use that plugin is not an option.

I would suggest the Descendant Notification Plugin - https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugin/details/260

A page was accidentally deleted in confluence. When IT restored it I lost all my watches to that page. The page has about 40+ pages deep. I need to watch those pages again and did not find a way to watch a page with all children.

The Plugin can be downloaded here: https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugin/details/260
It works perfectly in our environment (Confluence 3.1.1).

This is definitely a MUST-HAVE for all confluence users !!! Please make it true soon. many thanks.

As far as I am concerned, http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFEXT/Descendent+Notification+Plugin satisfies this requirement. And it is not static as mentioned in the comment above.

Hi Audra,

I believe I evaluated that plugin long time ago. The problem I found is that the notifications are statically assigned when the user signs up for notifications and are not updated when new children are added or old ones are removed (or moved).

/i

We agree that this is a good feature request and popular. We want to revamp the notifications part of the product including the watch functionality, which may be a large effort. This is not currently scheduled in the roadmap, but something we will try to improve in the future. The current workaround is to watch the entire space or watch pages individually. I would also like to know if anyone has used the plugin mentioned by Jim above and any comments on it.

If you're interested to know how we decide on which features to implement, please read this:
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DEV/Implementation+of+New+Features+and+Improvements

A 3rd party plugin to watch a page and decendents was entered in Codegeist. Haven't installed yet bit it looks nice!

Here's the link: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CODEGEIST/Descendent+Notification+Plugin

Any Update on this feature? I can only echo the comments made by others here.
We are using Confluence more and more but this is one feature that is delaying many of our potential users migrating content onto wiki.
Can we expect something in a future release.....?

We're finding that, as we rely upon Confluence more and more, this feature is becoming more important. Due to document size, we have to break documents into smaller chunks.... we now lack the confidence that the correct people are being notified of changes. It's too easy (and painful) to find all the children to try and 'watch' them.

A feature, like mentioned above... would make things a lot easier.

Just hit a scenario today where this feature would have been perfect. Number of child pages that I wanted to watch in a space that contained top level pages covering related but discrete topics. Watching entire space would provide too many notifications.

Has this issue made any progress? I can see a need for this in my current work today.

While a sophisticated scheme like James Mortimer proposes might be useful at times, I'd be happy enough with just the addition of a "watch page plus descendants" option. It looks quite straightforward to implement; start with the watch-this-pagers, then climb the tree and add anyone with a "watch descendants" flag then include space watchers.

Notification on new descendants is a must. What we need is to be able to assign watching briefs for branches of the knowledge base to people so they can stay informed and/or review changes.

We had a dev here submit a helpdesk ticket to our Confluence admin asking for this feature. In general we have a lot of requests for better notifications.

1) We might need to further specify the "DEPTH" of children to watch, or at least (as guy stated but with one addition), cycle or select between:

• Watch this page
• Watch this page and it's children (including new ones)
• Watch this page and it's descedants (including new ones)
• Watch this space
• Stop watching

2) In case it is not obvious, when 'watching a page and all children', you should also by default get a notification for 'new' children created in the sub-heirarchy, plus subsequent edits to that child.

3) Note: Child pages need to have an 'indicator' to show if they are being watched directly, or indirectly through some page heirarchy watch (much like they currently show if 'space-watch' is in effect.

4) As per my previous comment, space, page, children, descendants watches should be independantly selectable. For example, I should still be able to turn on/off a page watch for page B, even if it's parent A is already 'watching all children' and the space is being watched. Then if later the space watch or parent A watch are turned off, I'm still watching page B (but not the rest of the space or page heirarchy).

This could dramatically reduce the number of watches a user has to manage, and is more intuitive to our users that have used other products with 'folder' style notification.

This is a MUST HAVE feature. Our space currently have more than 1000 pages. By the end of the year we expect this will have double. And this is only the beginning. We must absolutely provide to our moderator a more user friendly way to get notified of new pages for their area of coverage

A) This might be greatly facilitated by the new "AncestoryIds" content metadata that has been added to each page once you install the PageTreeSearch plugin (the plugin allows searching of a page and all it's descendents). What before might have been a user interface challenge AND a daunting computational task now may become just a user interface challenge.

B) rather than cycle, why not an AJAX/Javascript popup window that allows the user to select the watch mode. Also, you should be able to toggle space-wide-watch on and off without affecting your individual page watches, or in the case of this enhancement, individual pagetree watches.

C) IF RSS feeds use the leucine search, you can set up an RSS feed that uses the ancestorIds field from the pagetreesearch macro to accomplish this goal.

Absolutely "must have" feature! With a space that consists of 500+ pages it's absolutely necessary.
It would be greate at least to have some comment from Confluence development. Especially if you look how many people have voted for it.

I agree that the link to watch a space is too obscure and hidden - users tend to miss it unless it's pointed out them.
The watch children feature is also something my users have asked for

With CONF-5114 I asked for a very related feature: to be able to restrict a search to a page and all its children. The key issue here is that as spaces grow they become too large to search and/or watch the entire thing. One suggestion that might be satisfactory is if spaces could be broken up into logical sections that could be watched/searched separately. Two ways to do this are:

• add the notion of subspaces (CONF-1095 amongst many others).
• add Guy Fraser's notion of 'space channels' (CONF-5186).

Possibly not the most appropriate place to put this, but....

It would be really nice if a set of options appeared when you click the "watch page" icon:

• Watch this page
• Watch this page and it's children
• Watch this space
• Stop watching

You'd basically cycle through these options. The space watching option should be on there as nobody ever thinks to click "Browse Space" then "Advanced" to get to the watch space option so it would be nice if it had some greater visibility.