Error with Confluence Questions when Ordering by Recent

Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.

Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.

*Except Fisheye and Crucible

Summary

Symptoms

When clicking the 'Recent' filter in Confluence Questions, an error page is displayed.

The following appears in the atlassian-confluence.log:

1 2 3 4 5 6 java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: author is required at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.questions.model.QuestionImpl.<init>(QuestionImpl.java:51) Stack Trace:[hide] java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: author is required at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.questions.model.QuestionImpl.<init>(QuestionImpl.java:51) at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.questions.model.QuestionImplBuilder.build(QuestionImplBuilder.java:118)

Diagnosis

Updating Confluence Questions to version 1.0.294 doesn't fix the issue, so this is not the same problem as CONFSERVER-48036 - Can't view question when the author has been deleted

Cause

After migrating the Confluence server, some users that have authored questions never login. The cause is unknown as there might be a flag in Confluence Questions checking if the last-login is not null.

Solution

Resolution

  • Login using the users that are the authors of Questions to ensure the last-login field is not empty

Updated on April 8, 2025

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