Acknowledge — documentation

Updated: 2 October 2026 · Applies to Acknowledge for Confluence Cloud

Acknowledge asks a Confluence group to confirm they have read a page — a policy, a handbook, an SOP — and keeps the record of who confirmed which version of it, and when. This page describes how to install it and how to use it, and it describes what the app does today. Questions people ask in practice are answered on the Acknowledge FAQ; if something here does not match what you see, write to support@northwick-apps.com.

1. Install

A Confluence site admin installs the app from its Atlassian Marketplace listing with Get it now, or from Settings > Apps > Find new apps inside Confluence. There is nothing to configure afterwards: no admin screen, no template to change, no field to add. Sites with up to 10 users use the app free; larger sites are billed by Atlassian per user per month, and the Marketplace listing shows the price for your user count.

2. Ask a group to acknowledge a page

1. Open a published page. A draft has no permanent page ID for a record to be attached to, so the app shows "Publish the page first" until you publish.
2. Under the title, in the byline, open Acknowledge, then click Settings.
3. The first time, Confluence asks you to let the app act as you: click Allow access. The app uses that to ask Confluence, before every read or change, whether you may see and edit this particular page — page restrictions and space permissions decide, and there is nothing to configure in the app.
4. Under Find a group, type part of a group name and click Find, then pick the group under Group. To require everyone, pick your site's default Confluence access group, usually confluence-users.
5. Choose a version mode:
   • Re-request on every new version (recommended for a policy): a new version of the page puts everyone back to Please acknowledge, and the record keeps which version each person signed.
   • Accept acknowledgements of version N or later: people must have acknowledged version N or a later one, so a typo fix or a broken link resets nothing. You can move that floor to the current version later from the report.
6. Optionally set a due date, and leave Remind non-acknowledgers weekly on or switch it off (section 5).
7. Click Start tracking.

The byline then shows the counts to anyone who can edit the page — for example 3 of 12 acknowledged · current version 4 — with the due date beside them, and a line pointing at ••• → Acknowledgement report.

3. What a reader sees, and what they do

A member of the group opens the page and sees one state in the byline, with a button I have read this (version N):

• Please acknowledge — they are in the group and have not confirmed this version.
• This page changed since you acknowledged it — they confirmed an earlier version and the page has moved on.
• Acknowledged — with the version they confirmed and the date.
• Not required — they are not in the group, so nothing is expected of them.

A click is checked with Confluence at that moment, as the app, against the group's current membership: if the app cannot get a usable answer it records nothing and says so, rather than store an acknowledgement it could not verify. A reader sees only their own status; nothing about anyone else.

4. The report

Open ••• → Acknowledgement report on the page. It has four tabs.

• Report — one row per person in the group: the person, their status (Acknowledged, Pending, Outdated, Overdue), the version they acknowledged, when, and the row actions: Remove acknowledgement for anyone whose acknowledgement counts, and More ⋯ for anyone with a record (a removed one included), which reveals Erase this person's data on this page. The toggle Only people who have not acknowledged is on while anyone is outstanding. In pinned mode a button here moves the required version to the current one. A group of more than 5,000 people, or a page with more than 5,000 acknowledgement records, is read up to that limit and the tab says so in a warning rather than quietly showing you less.
• Settings — the same form as section 2, plus Stop tracking (section 6).
• Export — the record as CSV, one row per person, to select and paste into a spreadsheet. Include names resolves display names; without it people are identified by their Atlassian account ID, so an export can be pseudonymous when your privacy rules ask for that and named when an auditor asks for that.
• History — a log of the page, newest first, in four columns (Time, Who, Event, Whose): who acknowledged which version and when, who removed whose acknowledgement, and a line reading erased a person's data for each erasure. The tab shows the newest 200 events with a Show more button, and it keeps the most recent 50 events for each person and the most recent 50 erasures for the page — so it is the recent log rather than a complete audit trail, and it says that on the tab.

Removing an acknowledgement does not erase it. Click Remove acknowledgement and the button arms as Confirm acknowledgement removal for ten seconds; if you do nothing it goes back by itself and nothing changes. Confirmed, the person counts as pending again and their row shows the Pending status with a muted removed <date> under it, while the History tab keeps who removed it, when, and which version they had acknowledged. They can acknowledge again at any time, and that supersedes the removal without erasing it from the history.

Erasing a person's data does. Click More ⋯ on the person's row (turn off the filter first if they have acknowledged) and Erase this person's data on this page takes its place; click it and it arms for ten seconds in the same way as Confirm erasure, and deletes that person's acknowledgements and history on this page for good; other pages are not affected. They count as pending from that moment and may be asked to acknowledge again, including by the next reminder — so it is the button for an erasure request, while Remove acknowledgement is the one for "this acknowledgement no longer counts". What stays behind is one line in the History tab saying who erased a person's data and when, and nothing about whose it was; the page keeps the newest 50 of those lines.

5. Reminders

With reminders on, the app posts a comment on the page itself that @-mentions people in the group who have not acknowledged the current version. It starts no earlier than seven days after the requirement is set, and the same page is never reminded more than once every seven days. One comment mentions at most 25 people; when more are outstanding it says how many more, and the next reminder takes the next 25, so everyone is reached in turn. After the due date the comment also mentions whoever set the requirement up.

Acknowledge never sends email. Confluence notifies mentioned people the way it notifies them about any mention, under their own notification settings. You can delete the app's comments at any time — it changes nothing about who has acknowledged — and you can switch reminders off for a page in its settings. The check runs once a day; Atlassian schedules the exact time for a daily app job, so there is no hour to promise.

6. Stop tracking

In the report's Settings tab, Stop tracking asks once more — the button becomes Confirm: stop tracking and a line under it reads Click "Confirm: stop tracking" now to stop asking for acknowledgement on this page and erase everyone's acknowledgements and history for it. This cannot be undone; copy the report's Export tab first if you need the evidence. — and then erases the requirement and everyone's acknowledgements and history for that page. That is also the way to delete one page's data on request; there is no undo.

On a page with thousands of records that can take longer than Confluence allows a single app call to run, so it works to a fifteen-second budget. Reminders for the page are switched off before the first record is deleted; if the budget runs out, the app says how many records it deleted and that more remain, and asks you to click Stop tracking and Confirm: stop tracking again to carry on (from the dashboard, Stop tracking on its row again). While a page is in that state nobody is asked to acknowledge it and no reminder is posted, and both the report and Settings say so — until the deletion finishes, or until you click Save, which keeps the page tracked.

7. Who can do what

• Anyone who can edit the page: set the requirement, change it, stop tracking, read the report, export it, remove an acknowledgement, erase a person's data.
• Administrators of the space the page is in now, as long as they can also see the page: read the report, export it, erase a person's data. Both halves are asked of Confluence at the moment of the call, so a page restriction that excludes an administrator closes the report to them as it would to any reader, and after a page is moved it is the new space's administrators who can open it, not the former space's.
• Anyone in the group: see and set their own status on the page, and nothing about anyone else.
• The dashboard (Apps → Acknowledge) lists only pages the person opening it is allowed to read, so two people on the same site can see different rows. Its columns are Page, Space, Audience, Acknowledged, Outstanding, Due, Last reminder and Status. A tracked page that has been deleted appears as Page <id> (deleted) with its counts and nothing else about what the page was, so the requirement can be cleaned up with Stop tracking on its row: space administrators can do that at once, and after 30 days anyone who can see the dashboard can.

8. Your data

The app stores one record per page with a requirement and one per person who acknowledges — page, space and group identifiers, the versions involved, the dates, and the account IDs of the people concerned. The page's own record also holds a trace of housekeeping done to it: the time and the account ID of whoever deleted an acknowledgement record, the newest 50 and nothing about whose record it was, and a mark while a Stop tracking is still working through the page. No page content, no comments, no attachments, no email addresses. Everything stays inside Atlassian's Forge storage in your site's region; there are no servers of ours and no database of ours. The Privacy Policy lists every field and the Security page explains how it is protected. To delete one page's data use Stop tracking; to delete everything, uninstall the app, after which Atlassian holds the app's storage for 28 days before deleting it permanently.

9. Billing

Atlassian bills the app, not us. Up to 10 users on your site it is free; above that it is priced per user per month, and the Marketplace listing shows your exact price for your user count. If a subscription lapses, nothing you have already collected disappears: the report, the dashboard and the export keep working, people can still acknowledge, and you can still stop tracking a page or remove a record. What pauses is setting up a new requirement, changing an existing one, and the reminder comments, until a site admin renews under Confluence → Apps.

Getting help

Write to support@northwick-apps.com. The Support page says what to include and how quickly we reply, and the FAQ answers the questions that come up most. We answer from the code: if the app cannot do something, we say so plainly rather than promising it.