How to run a forum or discussion board in Confluence Cloud

Last updated: 4 November 2026 · By Quicksloth

Confluence Cloud has no forum feature. You can still run discussions with what is already there: one page per topic with comments, the space blog for announcements, inline comments for feedback on a text, and voting on whiteboards to pick ideas. A board with categories, a list of topics with reply counts and pinned threads comes from Marketplace apps.

Short version: for a small team, a parent page called "Forum", a topic template behind a Create from Template button, labels for categories and a list macro are enough to start. When you need topic lists with reply counts, pinned topics or a status per discussion, look at the forum apps: on 4 November 2026 the Marketplace listed Community Forums for Confluence (437 installs), Discussion for Confluence (143) and Forum for Confluence (93, not updated since February 2023). If most of your "discussions" are questions with one right answer, a Q&A app fits better than a forum.

Is there a forum in Confluence Cloud?

No. Atlassian's public issue tracker has old requests for one, both closed years ago: "Basic forum functionality" (CONFSERVER-5595, 67 votes, closed as "Won't Fix" in July 2010) and, for the cloud, "Discussion Forum" (CONFCLOUD-24782, closed as "Won't Fix" in July 2012), both read on 4 November 2026.

What Confluence has instead are comments, which Atlassian's help page Comment on pages, live docs, whiteboards, blog posts, and slides describes as "a great way to start a conversation about a page", a blog in every space, and whiteboards with voting. The sections below put them together into something close to a forum, and say where it stops.

What Confluence Cloud gives you, side by side

Everything in this table comes from Atlassian's Confluence Cloud help pages linked in this article, read on 4 November 2026.

A forum without an app: one page per topic

The idea: a parent page is the board, each topic is a child page, and the discussion happens in the topic's comments. Topics are ordinary Confluence pages, so Confluence search finds them once they are published (Create, update, and manage written content).

1. Create the board. In the space, create a page called "Forum" (or "Discussions") and publish it. To add topics under it later, hover over its title in the sidebar and use the contextual create button that appears there.
2. Make a topic template. Atlassian suggests creating your own templates "for any content that you want formatted the same way every time" (Organize your space). For a topic, three headings are enough: what you want to discuss, the context, and what kind of reply you need.
3. Add a "Start a topic" button. On the Forum page, insert the Create from Template macro (type / in the editor and search for it). Set Button text to "Start a topic", pick your template in Template name, and optionally a default Title of template; it accepts the @currentDate, @spaceName and @spaceKey variables (Insert the create from template macro). The help page says the button opens the editor with the template applied, in the space you choose; it does not say the new page goes under the Forum page, so tell people to move it there, or to create topics from the Forum page in the sidebar.
4. Use labels as categories. Agree on a few labels, for example forum on every topic plus forum-hr, forum-it for categories. Labels can be added to pages and blog posts, and a page can have as many as you want (Organize your space).
5. List the topics. On the Forum page, add the Filter by label macro (formerly called Content by Label) with the label forum. In More options, set Sort order to Created or Modified and Display preview to Content preview; the list can show up to 500 items, and a minus sign before a label excludes it (Insert the filter by label macro). If topics are child pages, the Child items macro also works, sorted by content tree, title or creation date (Insert the child items macro).
6. Show what is settled. A space admin can suggest up to five content statuses, for example "Open", "Answered" and "Decided", under Space settings, General, Avatars and status; while editing a topic, select Status above the title (Add a status to your content).
7. Tell people how to follow. Whoever comments watches the page by default ("Watch this content" is selected). To follow the whole forum space, open any page, then More actions (…), Watch settings, Watch all content in this space; for announcements only, Watch new blog posts from the space overview (Watch pages, live docs, spaces, whiteboards, blogs, and slides).

For news rather than discussion, use the space blog: Atlassian recommends blog posts for content "specific mainly to the current timeframe" (Organize your space), and the Blog posts macro can list recent posts on the Forum page (Insert the blog posts macro). On blog posts, comments by the post's author carry an AUTHOR label.

We could not open Confluence for this article: the steps, menu names and button names come from Atlassian's help pages, read on 4 November 2026. If something looks different on your site, the help page linked in each step has the current name.

What the no-app forum cannot do

Reading the same help pages, these are the gaps a forum app fills:

• Starting a topic needs more than commenting. "To create a page or blog post, you need the Add content permissions for that space" (Create, update, and manage written content). Everyone who should start topics can then also create other pages in that space, so a separate forum space is often the tidier choice.
• No reply counts or "latest reply" order. The list macros sort by title, creation date or last modified date and show titles, labels and previews; we found no option to sort by number of replies or by the latest comment.
• Comments stay in one order. The comments panel can filter unread, open or resolved comments and sort them top to bottom or newest first, but "It's not possible to delete all comments on a page simultaneously, or change the order of comments" (Comment on pages…). Comments can be liked, but we found no way to rank replies by likes or mark one reply as the answer.
• Statuses are set by editing the page. Anyone with edit permission can set one, so a reader who can only comment cannot change it, and the space admin decides whether statuses are on at all.
• Deleting has rules. You can delete your own comment "only if there are no replies to your comment", and deleted comments cannot be restored; space admins can edit and delete any comment in their space and can turn commenting off.

On the plus side, when a page has enough in-depth comments, Rovo can generate a summary of the unresolved general and inline comments (same help page).

Picking ideas: voting on a whiteboard

When the discussion is "which of these ideas do we do?", a whiteboard with a voting session is the native tool. The steps from Atlassian's help page Voting in whiteboards (read on 4 November 2026):

1. Put the ideas on sticky notes: "You can vote on any sticky note on the whiteboard."
2. Select the voting icon in the right-side toolbar and enter a name for the session.
3. To hide who voted for what, turn on Enable anonymous voting.
4. Choose the number of votes per person ("There is a maximum of 99 votes per person"), then select Start.
5. People select + on a sticky note to vote (more than once if they want) and I'm done when finished.
6. Anyone can end the session with End for everyone, then End voting. Results stay in the Results tab of the voting panel.

A session cannot be restarted, and the help page notes that whiteboards are not available in Atlassian Government environments. In the help pages we read, pages and comments have likes and reactions, not voting sessions.

Forum apps on the Marketplace, compared

Forum apps add a board inside Confluence, with topics, replies and categories. The table also lists the Q&A apps from our Q&A apps comparison, because many teams looking for a forum really want questions and answers. All data is from each app's public Marketplace listing and the Marketplace's public API, read on 4 November 2026.

How to read it: "Installs" is the number each listing shows ("at least … active instances"). Ratings are out of 5, as the listings show them, and can mix reviews from cloud, Server and Data Center. Every review in the table was written before 25 May 2026, when reviews were out of 4 stars and the Marketplace converts them to 5, except the latest review of Questions for Confluence (October 2026). "Cloud platform" comes from the Marketplace data of each app's latest cloud version; the "Runs on Atlassian" badge, which Atlassian's page Runs on Atlassian (updated 24 August 2026) describes as a program for Forge apps that "exclusively use Atlassian-hosted compute and storage", appears only on Questions for Confluence among these listings. No badge does not mean an app sends data elsewhere: check the Privacy & Security tab of each listing. All of these apps are paid through Atlassian; prices are on each listing.

What the forum apps' listings say they do, in short:

• Community Forums for Confluence: forums added to any Confluence page with a Forums macro, for projects, teams or company-wide discussions; pinned topics; reply count, author and latest activity at a glance; search.
• Discussion for Confluence: discussion pages with comments and likes; categories; a status per discussion (new, in discuss, resolved); a dashboard per space with views, likes, replies and contributors; filters by status, date and creator.
• Forum for Confluence: two levels of categories, a Markdown editor with code blocks and images, search, sorting by latest, oldest or number of replies, questions and discussions. Its latest cloud version is from 8 February 2023.

One newer app, Converse Discussion Forum & chat for Confluence and Jira (Churrie Works, version 3.5.0 of 13 July 2026), showed no install count and no reviews on its listing on 4 November 2026; it describes threaded conversations anchored to pages, with optional Jira links, and says it is "Built natively on Atlassian Forge".

Forum or Q&A: which one your team needs

The two look alike but answer different needs:

• A forum is for open-ended talk: announcements, proposals, "what do you think about…", decisions that need several voices. Replies follow each other in time and nobody "wins".
• A Q&A is for questions with a right answer: one question, several answers, votes that rank them, and one accepted answer that the next person finds first. It shines when the same questions come back and the people who know the answer sit in different teams.

If you are not sure, look at the last twenty messages in your team chat that you wish were findable. If most of them end with "thanks, that fixed it", you want a Q&A; if they end with "agreed, let's do that", a forum or the page-per-topic setup above. For questions that a small team answers in advance, a curated FAQ or knowledge base may be all you need: see how to build an FAQ in Confluence Cloud without an app and knowledge base vs Q&A.

Two things to check before installing any app: whether it still runs on Connect, which Atlassian stops supporting on 31 January 2027 (how to check which Confluence apps are affected), and whether its content appears in Confluence search. Content of an app's own type (what Atlassian calls "custom content") created by Forge apps does not appear in Confluence search results today, a known issue Atlassian tracks as CONFCLOUD-84122 ("Gathering Interest", last updated 18 October 2026, read on 4 November 2026); apps that store posts that way rely on their own search.

We make a Q&A app, not a forum: Quicksloth Q&A for Confluence, on Forge for Confluence Cloud. It adds questions, answers, comments, up and down votes, accepted answers, an "Unanswered" filter and a search that covers the text of answers; because of the issue above, its questions are found with the app's own search, not Confluence's search bar. It groups questions by topics and spaces; it has no pinned threads and no notifications. It is coming soon to the Atlassian Marketplace; the overview will link to the listing as soon as it is live. If you need a forum, the apps in the table above are the ones to look at.

Questions and answers

Does Confluence Cloud have a built-in forum or discussion board?

No. It has page and blog comments, inline comments and whiteboard voting. Requests for a forum in Atlassian's issue tracker were closed as "Won't Fix" in 2010 (Server) and 2012 (Cloud).

Can people post anonymously?

The only anonymous option we found in Atlassian's help pages is Enable anonymous voting for a whiteboard voting session. We found no option for anonymous pages or comments by logged-in colleagues.

Will Confluence search find forum topics?

With the page-per-topic setup, yes: topics are pages, and published pages can be found through search. With an app, it depends on how the app stores its posts; see the note on CONFCLOUD-84122 above.

Is Questions for Confluence a forum?

It is Atlassian's own Q&A app on the Marketplace, paid separately: questions and answers grouped by topics. Our comparison puts it next to other Q&A apps with prices and reviews.

Which forum app is maintained?

On 4 November 2026, Community Forums for Confluence had a cloud release that same day and Discussion for Confluence one on 16 October 2026; Forum for Confluence had not been updated since 8 February 2023. A release date is not a promise: read the latest reviews and ask the maker before you commit.

Steps, names and quotes come from Atlassian's Confluence Cloud help pages "Comment on pages, live docs, whiteboards, blog posts, and slides", "Create, update, and manage written content", "Organize your space", "Insert the create from template macro", "Insert the filter by label macro", "Insert the child items macro", "Insert the blog posts macro", "Add a status to your content", "Watch pages, live docs, spaces, whiteboards, blogs, and slides" and "Voting in whiteboards", Atlassian's developer page "Runs on Atlassian", Atlassian's issues CONFSERVER-5595, CONFCLOUD-24782 and CONFCLOUD-84122, and the public Atlassian Marketplace listings and API, all read on 4 November 2026. Installs, versions and ratings change: check each listing before you choose. Written with AI tools and checked by Quicksloth. Quicksloth is an independent developer and is not affiliated with Atlassian or with the makers of the apps above. Atlassian, Confluence, Jira and Rovo are trademarks of Atlassian.