Here are some important notes on upgrading to Confluence 9.3. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, see the Confluence 9.3 release notes.

Upgrade notes

Default time zone setting in General Configuration

We’ve added the option to adjust the default time zone for all users in the General Configuration screen. Changing this setting does not affect individual users who have customized their individual time zones. This setting will persist across restarts and upgrades and allows admins to remove any workarounds previously set up to work around the absence of this feature. If previously you used any workarounds such as JVM arguments, we encourage you to remove them.

Find out how to change the default time zone

Save time and space with more control over data pipeline exportsDMINS

You can now use an opt-out list to exclude CSV files from data pipeline exports. This may save disk space and time, especially if your Confluence site includes large CSV files that you don’t need to export. This opt-out feature was introduced in Data Pipeline version 3.2.0.

For more context, see the Data pipeline page.

For full details, including how to remove files from the opt-out list and get the list of files supported, see the Data pipeline REST API reference. 

Rotate your encryption keys like clockwork

Confluence already automatically encrypts plaintext secrets through default secrets encryption. Now, you can further protect your system through encryption key rotation. Use API calls to re-encrypt your existing secrets with a new key, and to manage your inactive keys. This extra security is available for both single-node and clustered environments.

Details on encryption key rotation

Supported platforms changes

End of support for PostgresSQL 14 and MySQL 8.0

As previously announced, PostgreSQL 14 and MySQL 8.0 are no longer supported. To ensure ongoing database support, upgrade to the following:

• PostgreSQL 15 or 16
• MySQL 8.4

Check out the Supported Platforms page for the full list of supported databases.

End of support announcements

There are no advance announcements this time

Infrastructure changes 

Head to Preparing for Confluence 9.3 to find out more about changes under the hood. 

Known issues

• There are a number of known issues when upgrading Confluence on specific database versions. See Confluence 7.11 upgrade notes if you are upgrading from Confluence 7.10 or earlier.
• If you are upgrading from Confluence 6.3 or earlier, there's a known issue where spaces do not appear in the space directory. You'll need to reindex your site after upgrading to fix this. 
• If you use Apache to limit who can access the admin console, you should update your configuration. See Using Apache to limit access to the Confluence administration interface for our suggested configuration.
• There is a known issue where read-only mode attempts to write to <shared-home>/confluence.cfg.xml , but the file doesn't exist in the shared home directory. This problem affects sites that have been previously upgraded from Confluence 6.0 or earlier. See Could not save access.mode into the shared confluence.cfg.xml file error after upgrading to Confluence Data Center 6.10
• There is a known issue where some fonts that Confluence relies on are not available in older Linux distributions. See Confluence UI shows garbled or corrupt text on CAPTCHA, macros, and/or diagrams due to missing fonts
• There is a known issue where Confluence 8.8.0 and 8.8.1, upon upgrade from earlier versions, will fail to render the login page for instances using custom layout decorators. The decorators could be using the resource './langmacro.vm' that is no longer included in Confluence 8.8 (and later). See After Upgrade , error encountered - ResourceNotFoundException: Unable to find resource '/langmacro.vm' for more information.

If you encounter a problem during the upgrade and can't solve it, please create a support ticket and one of our support engineers will help you.

Upgrade procedure

Always test the upgrade in a test environment before upgrading in production.

To upgrade Confluence to the latest version:

1. From the Administration menu , select Manage apps, and then Confluence update check to verify the compatibility of your user-installed apps with the target application version.

2. From the Administration menu , select General Configuration, and then Plan your upgrade and the version you want to upgrade to. This will run the pre-upgrade checks.
3.  From the Administration menu , select General Configuration, and then Troubleshooting and support tools to check your license validity, application server, database setup, and more.
4. If your version of Confluence is more than one version behind, read the release notes and upgrade guides  for all releases between your version and the latest version.
5. Back up your installation directory, home directory, and database.
6. Download the latest version of Confluence.
7. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.

Update configuration files after upgrading

The contents of configuration files such as server.xml, web.xml , setenv.bat / setenv.sh, and confluence-init.properties change from time to time. 

When upgrading, we recommend manually reapplying any additions to these files (such as proxy configuration, datasource, JVM parameters) rather than simply overwriting the file with the file from your previous installation; otherwise you will miss out on any improvements we have made.