Confluence mention returns zero users
Asked by Eldon Wong:

Confluence Mention worked at one point, but it stopped working all of the sudden.

<br />

When I start typing something like @Eldon, the User suggestions shows "No user found".

This used to work. I have tasks that were created to me this way.

We've tried to Rebuilding the Index (Confluence Admin --\> Administration --\> Content Indexing --\> Search indexes --\> Rebuild), but no luck.

I've also made sure that "Notify watchers" is checked by default when I'm editing a page. (This was a solution to someone else's problem here on Answers.

Does anyone know what's going on?


Answers:
author: Eldon Wong
body: We found the solution while trying to fix another problem. There was a bug in the Confluence version we were using. I believe we were on Confluence 5.4.0. It had problems communicating with our AD server through Crowd. Upgrading Confluence fixed this problem.

comments: author: Csaba Vertessy
body: Hey Eldon, where did you find the bug? We have the same problem for one of our users. Could you please add the related ticket to your answer?Thank you!


author: Eldon Wong
body: Sorry Csaba. I can't find the issue... I've been trying to dig for it in my emails, but can't find it. We had a call with Atlassian to figure this out. They are aware of the problem. We upgraded to Confluence 5.4.4 and it has been fixed. Sorry can't help more.


author: AmrtaA
body: Hi Eldon,

Just to let you know, Confluence metion issue is usually related to indexing. You got it right by rebuilding index.

However, since rebuilding index from Confluence Admin page doesn't fix the issue, you might want to try to rebuild Confluence index from scratch.

To remove the index and rebuild it from scratch:

1. Shut down Confluence server.
2. If these folders exist, make a backup of them, as their contents cannot be rebuilt:
   1. `<confluence-home>/index/plugin` - this is where the [Usage Tracking plugin](https://ecosystem.atlassian.net/wiki/display/USGTRK/Confluence+Usage+Tracking+Plugin;jsessionid=436EA28FDC2261B6AC414C73B07F3A8F) stores the usage statistics.
   2. `<confluence-home>/index/edge - t`his is where the index of [Likes and Popular Content](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Likes+and+Popular+Content) are stored.
3. Remove the `<confluence-home>/index `directory.
4. If you made a backup of the folders in Step 2, create `<confluence-home>/index`, and copy the backups in to it.
5. Restart Confluence.
6. If restarting Confluence doesn't trigger the re-index task (troubleshooting issue in the same Confluence version), perform manual index rebuilding as described in [Content Index Administration](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Content+Index+Administration).

Hope this information helps.

Kind Regards,

Amrta Faruqi

comments: author: Eldon Wong
body: Hi Amrta,

Unfortunately, this didn't seem to fix it.

We gzip'd both plugin and edge, removed index, then recreated it and put plugin and edge back in. Started up Confluence again. When we opened up Confluence on our browser, we saw that the recent updates was not populated. Went to the Search Indexes saw that it was 0% built. So hit the Build button. After the Search Index got to 100%, saw recent updates populated correctly. But then tried to @mention someone... still no users show up.

Also, when we started Confluence, we were keeping an eye on catalina.out. We didn't seem to see anything useful in there. Even when we hit Build, it didn't notify us that it was building the search index. Is there another (more useful) log that we can look at?


Tags: mention