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FAQ

1 - Why doesn't the content status of my page reflect a recent change?

Better Content Archiving uses CQL searches to determine content status. Confluence's CQL indexing service updates those search results. It normally picks up changes within seconds, but under load it can take several minutes. While indexing is delayed, a page's status may not immediately reflect recent changes.

For example, if a page is currently "Expired" and you update it, it may still display "Expired" immediately after the edit. After the CQL index catches up (from a few seconds to a few minutes), just force a status refresh by opening the Content Status Indicator, and the status will change to "Up-to-date", as expected.

This latency is a technical limitation of Confluence's CQL indexing service, not an issue with Better Content Archiving. You can test this yourself without using the app:

  1. Add a label to any page.
  2. Immediately search for that page using the CQL query label="your-label".
  3. If the page doesn't appear right away in search results, it means CQL indexing is delayed.
  4. Keep trying the search. When the page appears, that means the CQL index has updated.
  5. (The time between 1 and 4 is the current latency.)

Ultimately, minimizing such delays depends on Atlassian improving the CQL indexing service. You can indicate its importance by voting for and commenting on AI-920.

2 - Why can't I see the content status on space home pages?

According to Atlassian, space home pages are designed as simplified landing pages for quick access and general overviews. They intentionally omit detailed page information (e.g. author, last updated date, commonly known as byline items) shown under the page title.

However, you can still access the Content Status Indicator with a few extra clicks.

3 - What's the difference between the Midori owner and the limited owner (Atlassian owner)?

Brief history first. Better Content Archiving introduced the "content owner" concept in the 8.8.0 release in 2020. Atlassian added a limited "owner" feature in Confluence Cloud five years later, in 2025. Because Atlassian used the exact same term "owner", this can be confusing.

There are two major differences between the Midori owner and the limited owner:

  1. A content can have zero, one or multiple Midori owners, but it always has exactly one limited owner.
    Adding multiple Midori owners is an option to represent shared content responsibility. Adding zero Midori owners is an option to mark the content "ownerless".
  2. Midori owners can be inherited from a parent page to its descendants, while limited owners can not.
    Inherited Midori owners make ownership management more consistent in large hierarchical content trees.

How does it affect you in practice?

  1. When you use the Set owners quick action, you are setting the Midori owner.
  2. When you use the Change owner button, you are setting the limited owner.
  3. When you see "owner" on the app's user interface (e.g. on the Content Status Indicator or at the notification recipients), it means the Midori owner.
  4. When running CQL searches, you can search for both using two separate CQL fields:
    1. Midori owner: arch.anyOwner = currentUser() (more examples)
    2. limited owner: owner = currentUser()

Learn more about managing content ownership in this blog post.

4 - Are archived contents moved to a separate archive space?

In short: no. Below is some historical context.

In on-premise Confluence versions, content could only be archived by marking entire spaces as “archived”, which hid the content from the page tree, search results, and other core features. Better Content Archiving for Server and Data Center followed this model by using separate archive spaces and moving archived content there.

In Confluence Cloud, a newer approach was introduced where contents are archived without moving them out of their original space. Marking spaces as “archived” is still supported, but the preferred method is this in-place archiving model. To align with this, the cloud app's archiving automation action uses Confluence's built-in archiving capabilities under the hood instead of moving content to separate archive spaces.

5 - Are content views prior to app installation tracked?

Since around 2020, Confluence has tracked page views internally, but this data is not exposed at a record level to external apps. (More detailed built-in analytics features are also limited to Premium and Enterprise plans.)

As a result, the Better Content Archiving app cannot access information about who viewed a page before installation. Tracking only starts from the moment the app is installed.

To provide an initial estimate, the Initialize content events job sets a baseline last view value for each page using its last update timestamp and author. Over time, real page views replace these initial estimates, resulting in an increasingly accurate view history.

6 - Can personal information, such as user data, be hidden to comply with GDPR or other regulatory requirements?

Better Content Archiving offers a global setting to protect personal information. It does so by hiding the identifiers (usernames) of the users whose interactions (page updates and views) are tracked by the app.

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