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
M‑Files
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
M-Files is a platform for knowledge work automation, that helps knowledge workers to find information faster. M-Files features a metadata-driven architecture, embedded workflow engine, and advanced artificial intelligence. This helps customers to eliminate information chaos, improve process efficiency, and automate security and compliance.
The vendor's value proposition:
EASE OF USE: M-Files increases productivity and
improves work quality by making…
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.
M‑Files is great for companies with multiple locations. Drive letters can become cumbersome to use and collaborate with colleagues and M‑Files fills that gap. The check out/check in system is great and allows only one editor at a time. This can be good and bad depending on the situation.
Reliable: Our M-Files system has only gone down one time (for a very short period of time) at the beginning of the two years that we have been with M-Files. Our previous vendor's system had so many downtimes that our IT Department had to assign an associate to work with me for sending out notifications to associates etc. With our last vendor, one day I came to work and only 60 of the 260 consent for surgery forms were available to our end users although they were visible to me as the Administrator but weren't showing up for the end-users!
Our M-Files system was created for us. It was created by working with developers to only have on our system what we required, and I must say, there were so many extra features that M-Files offered in our program that weren't available with our previous vendor. As mentioned previously, we can have two policies or forms visible to the end-user so one can be listed as "draft" or "training only" so our end users can read and use for training as we get ready to roll out a new medical record system. I can also preload policies and leave them in the working stage until they are approved and go back and publish them the day they are approved. The list goes on with so many great features.
Our end users would say the greatest asset of this product is the search function. It's amazing how fast it is. There are many ways to search out a form or policy which makes it a true asset for our associates.
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.
If you are new to Electronic Document Management, this can be a really difficult product to roll out. Since it is infinitely versatile, there are infinite ways to configure it wrong. I highly recommend the M-Files admin training offered by M-Files as it will set you in the right direction.
Many options are paid add-ons. So while you are not paying for what you don't need, many great features will come at a cost.
If you don't have a technical person on staff, this will be tricky to maintain. Not impossible. If your processes do not change, once setup it will be fine.
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.
M-files meets our almost all needs, we dont have other option to replace m-files. it saves lots, like Hardware because of Vault Feature means we can create many vaults (mini-servers) in m-files in other solutions we need more hardware for more installations.
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.
It is a powerful system that can locate content fast and effectively. The system takes quite some time to setup initially. It can be hard for M-Files support to know how businesses operate and how they want to use the system in a way that works for them. The customization makes it great for companies to cater to their own needs. Once the system is set up in a way that makes sense for the business, the user experience is positive. There is room for improvement in the notifications, workflow, and support areas.
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.
I noticed some lagging with the integration with Microsoft Office but not so much that I would not use it. It has gotten better with updates. to be fair the issues were when Office 2013 first came out.
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.
Usually when I need help from them I got support and it was very good and focused to solve my problem. I didn't have so many problems, but when used it worked. I just would like to have a support in my native language, but I can understand that sometimes is hard for the companies.
The key insight is that the most important thing is to have a open mind. The application is easy to use, but if you have a company with different views and it is not aligned could be a huge problem. So the company transformation is required together with the application. Ensure to use as much as possible the capabilities of the application helps to have best ROI.
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.
The customization ability seemed to be a level above and easy to navigate and available options are constantly being reinvented. We have used OnBase for years and now desire to move away from this option for a number of reasons.
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.
M-Files allows us to track important milestones and expiration dates. We are now able to easily track revisions to contracts with community partners and record comments and history in one place.
We are able to track all contracts that come through our District and to create monthly reports to present to our Board.
