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Moving Confluence Q&A to Cloud: export, migration and the Connect deadline

#atlassian #confluence #productivity #devops

If your team uses a Q&A app inside Confluence, two dates are worth knowing about before you plan anything else:

  • Data Center: Atlassian stopped selling Data Center to new customers on March 30, 2026, and DC goes read-only on March 28, 2029. Most teams will move to Cloud before then.
  • Connect apps: Atlassian's older app framework (Connect) reaches end of support on January 31, 2027. Admins already see "This app might stop working soon" banners on apps that haven't moved to Forge.

Q&A content is easy to forget in a migration plan because it isn't pages. Here's what we learned while building a Q&A app for Confluence Cloud.

1. Questions for Confluence on Data Center: export before you switch off

Atlassian's own FAQ is clear that Questions for Confluence Cloud has no export. Data Center is different: it has a REST API and documented database queries.

  • REST: GET /rest/questions/1.0/question?limit=700, then GET /rest/questions/1.0/answer/{answerId} per answer
  • Database: the queries in Atlassian's KB article "How to export Confluence Questions data"

Turn that into a CSV with one row per question and one row per answer (linked by the question's id), and keep it, whatever tool you pick next. Once the DC instance is gone, so is the only export path.

2. Q&A apps still on Connect: check now

Open Manage apps in Confluence admin. If your Q&A app shows the "might stop working" banner, ask the vendor for their Forge plan and an export. Apps keep running after Jan 31, 2027, but only with critical security fixes, so "it still works" is not a plan.

We built a free checker that looks up any Marketplace app and tells you whether it is on Forge, moving, or at risk: https://surfaced-srzj.onrender.com/guides/connect-end-of-support?utm_source=devto&utm_campaign=askbase_launch

3. What to look for in a Cloud Q&A tool

From reading a few hundred reviews of Confluence Q&A apps, the complaints repeat:

  1. Search only matches titles, so answers are hard to find
  2. No import or export, so content is locked in
  3. No way to stop duplicates, so the same question is asked five times
  4. Everyone can answer, even for HR or legal questions where only experts should
  5. No way to ask from the page people are actually reading

Whatever you pick, test those five.

Disclosure

I'm on the team that makes Askbase, a Forge-native Q&A app for Confluence Cloud. Version 2.5 (out this week) does CSV/JSON import and export, searches answers, suggests similar questions while you type, lets moderators merge duplicates, can limit who answers, and adds an "Ask a question" box to any page. It's free for up to 10 users.

Questions or migration stories welcome in the comments.

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