Managing draft and published content visibility in the Comala Document Management app (Data Center)
Problem
Organizations using Comala Document Management for Confluence Data Center often need to:
Clearly separate draft content from approved content.
Define distinct user roles: contributors (editors), approvers, and viewers.
Ensure that only final, approved versions are visible to general users.
Prevent notifications from being sent to viewers about draft content.
Maintain stable URLs for published content, even when edits are underway.
There is also a related concern: users who watch an entire space might receive email notifications about draft changes, even if they cannot access the content directly. This can lead to unintentional information exposure.
Solution
App configuration of user access to draft and approved content
Comala Document Management supports workflows that distinguish between contributors, approvers, and viewers.
Contributors can edit and view draft content.
Approvers can review content changes and determine if they should be published.
Viewers can be restricted to only seeing the most recently approved version of a page.
Use the Workflow Activity and Drafts Visibility configuration setting to define who can access draft content. This setting is available in the space tools section.
Options include:
Space administrators and page editors only
Anyone with view permissions
Further details are available in the following documentation page:
Approved pages remain published while edits are in progress
Once a page is approved and moved to the final workflow state, it remains published and accessible at its original URL. If a contributor edits the page, the changes are saved as a new draft. These changes are not visible to viewers until they are approved (when using the default Workflow Activity and Drafts Visibility setting).
This ensures that approved content remains live and visible while allowing contributors to work on updates in the background.
Suppress notifications to prevent draft disclosure
By default, Confluence sends email notifications to users watching a space or a page when content is updated. Comala workflows cannot control this behavior.
To reduce the risk of exposing draft content from email notifications:
Manually clear the Notify Watchers checkbox when editing pages.
Optionally, configure Confluence to clear this box by default.
You can add a script to your Confluence site’s Custom HTML settings:
<script> function disableWatchers() { setTimeout(disableWatchers, 1000); if
($('#notifyWatchers').attr("mz") != 1) { setTimeout(function() {
$('#notifyWatchers').removeAttr('checked'); }, 1000);
$('#notifyWatchers').attr("mz", 1); } } disableWatchers(); </script> Instructions for setup:
Automatically control page access using workflow triggers
Use Comala workflow triggers to restrict access to pages while they are in a draft state and automatically remove restrictions once approved. For example:
{trigger:pagecreated}
{set-restrictions:type=view|group=editors}
{set-restrictions:type=edit|group=editors}
{trigger}
{trigger:pagestatechanged|state=Approved}
{remove-restriction:type=view}
{remove-restriction:type=edit}
{trigger}This ensures only contributors can access draft content and that restrictions are lifted when the page is approved.
Workflow trigger documentation:
Use the Comala Publishing app with a Comala workflow to publish to a different space in the instance
For stricter control, consider using Comala Publishing alongside Comala Document Management.
Draft content is created in a private (draft) space.
Only approved content is published to a separate, public space.
This approach ensures that only contributors can view and edit draft pages. Viewers only access content in the published space, eliminating the risk of seeing draft page content using Confluence search or Confluence notifications.
Comala Publishing product page:
You might also consider using the Comala Remote Publishing app alongside Comala Document Management to publish pages to a remote Confluence instance.
Comala Remote Publishing product page: