Confluence is a collaboration and content sharing platform used primarily by customers who are already using Atlassian's Jira project tracking product. The product appeals particularly to IT users.
$10
per month
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM offers the flexibility to deploy in the cloud, on-premises or a hybrid combination. It replaces the Ivanti Service Manager, powered by Heat.
It has a comment option on the page, where you can tag other teammates tagging them. it sends the mail notification. Comment at the page end is pretty good for referring to other stakeholders and future references of the topic on the page. Creating the highlights of the discussions, and meeting held points with highlighted tagging. Easy shortcuts such as to add a date just type "//". The interface is cool and has easy shortcuts for quick page making.
We have been able to integrate our ISM system with Active Directory using API calls to automate user account creation and user Moves, Adds, and Changes. This has helped us make the employee onboarding and offboarding process much more efficient and less error prone. We cut down on mundane work for the account creation team and freed them to do more tier 2 and 3 tasks. Where the system has been less appropriate for us is trying to integrate non-IT service processes. We haven't gotten a lot of buy-in from groups that aren't used to using an IT related system to receive tasks. It will take some time for us to make a more user friendly, non-IT, Support role.
Very good at allowing a service line to configure the product to suit its needs. This is important so as to not have to craft operations around the technology, but the other way around!
A high level of flexibility to implement a great deal of automation. The product gives end users access to pre-defined or custom business rules and workflows as well as the ability to implement other forms of time savers!
There is a very comprehensive Help guide for end users and administrators alike. Quite often I have found the most obscure 'How To's' in this guide rather than needing to call into support or search out information on the Ivanti site.
Navigation. Similar to other Atlassian products, users have complained that aspects of Confluence are difficult to learn right away[.]
An issue that users can face when using Confluence is attempting to edit a document while someone else is editing. Although users can access the document and save it, they are unable to see the changes happening in [real-time] that other users are implementing until they refresh their page. Some users have also noted that this can result in loss of edits.
Another drawback of using Confluence is its specific organizational structure. All information is stored within one page or project, although the page is able to be broken up into sections, some users do not prefer this style. Users can use the ‘page tree’ on each page to organize the different elements of each project.
I am confident that Atlassian can come with additional and innovative macros and functions to add value to Confluence. In 6 months, Atlassian transformed a good collaborative tools into a more comprehensive system that can help manage projects and processes, as well as "talk" with other Atlassian products like Jira. We are in fact learning more about Jira to evaluate a possible fit to complement our tool box.
Confluence can - and in my personal opinion, it will - be a bit hard to use in the first moment. Atlassian is a great company and is eager to help you with any question you have, though. The interface seems to be a bit clumsy at first but the customization options are enough to make it easier and simpler. In general, Confluence is easy to use when you understand what each section does, but this can take a while.
There's two sides to answering this question. From an Agent/Admin perspective, it's great. You can do a lot of really cool things and have a lot of options and tools available to you. From a customer perspective, you're not quite as spoilt for choice. Ivanti has been working on and improving their new mobile-responsive customer interface but in doing so have really limited the features they allow admins to configure. We've found this limiting but not unworkable. I hope this continues to improve.
Pages load very quickly, which makes it useful for quickly obtaining information. The search functionality is also very quick and is able to parse through all of the documents to provide the most relevant results for the query. Other information based software gets bogged down, but so far Atlassian Confluence maintains its performance.
This rating is specifically for Atlassian's self-help documentation on their website. Often times, it is not robust enough to cover a complex usage of one of their features. Frequently, you can find an answer on the web, but not from Atlassian. Instead, it is usually at a power user group elsewhere on the net.
Support has been amazing. They are knowledgeable, respectful, efficient, and friendly. When something doesn't go according to plan, they go above and beyond to make sure your issues are resolved. I have come to think of them as an extension of my team!
We used to use Google Drive to store all of our documentation, but it is disconnected from our every day working environment and it was easy to lose documents and become disorganized within the broad drive environment. [Atlassian] Confluence has kept us more organized and its tight coupling with Jira has made documents more accessible and more likely to be kept up to date.
Ivanti is far more user friendly than ManageEngine, and has more features than Jira Service Management. It takes longer to get used to Ivanti because of the extra features, but once you're on board with how it works and how to make changes, the possibilities and configuration options are almost endless
There are many companies for you to choose from. Many have expertise in specific areas. I highly recommend making sure you find one that can work for your specific project needs and then be willing to go in a different direction if needed. There are a few companies that have the personnel to cover everyone's basis but truthfully not many.
We've gone from folders and folders of Word documents and PDFs into a single system with a search feature to bring all of our data together and trackable
While onboarding took a bit longer for the company (to switch from a Word document centric mindset - to a web-based one), overall the company has embraced the features and power of Confluence within the working stack
However, as costs continue to climb for the Atlassian product, we are forced to continue our evaluation of the product - with replacing it a remote possibility if it begins to outprice its usefulness to us.
In the Classroom Support department, this has provided a quick access system available via tablet for technicians on the go and has improved response time.
In the Helpdesk, this has assisted in the automation of repetitive tasks and assisted with providing better accountability for the completion of an assigned task.
