More than a collaborative tool: a new way to work effectively and efficiently across the organization
August 13, 2014
More than a collaborative tool: a new way to work effectively and efficiently across the organization
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
5.5.2
Overall Satisfaction with Atlassian Confluence
Atlassian Confluence has been selected and used first by the University's IT department. Other services of the University started to used it as well and the Advancement group started using it about a year ago. We first used it a central repository for shared documents with the desire to replace our shared drive. Then, each sub-group has created its own page to share information to the rest of the Advancement staff. We are now using it a s a project and event management tool.
Pros
- Everybody can be trained using Confluence in one hour, start editing pages right away and contribute in sharing information.
- The version management is automatic and reduces the risk of lost data. It is easy to go back to an older version.
- The extensive library of macros helps be creative and efficient in building pages and doing cross-references.
- Editing and viewing rights are easy to manage and allow to separate public views from internal works.
Cons
- As we are using Confluence more and more to manage projects, it is lacking some key functions related to project management, such as a visual Gantt chart. It has made progress though with the Page Properties macro and related report to identify projects.
- It would be nice to edit a spreadsheet within Confluence and use the basic functions of Excel (sum, ...)
- Links to PDF files are a 3-step process with an automatic download; a option to preview the file (like an image) would be useful (specially on mobile devices)
- Email reminder/notifications for task due in a day or two could be useful for some users.
- Increased collaboration among staff (easy to use)
- Increased employee efficiency (advanced search capability)
- Better meetings' action item follow-up (superior task management)
- Constant Atlassian upgrade with new useful and effective functions
I have used SharePoint at a prior employer, for file sharing and workflow. Usage is a bit different, but feel that Confluence can do a similar job and more and is much easier to learn and use. Same with right management: SharePoint required an administrator, while every manager at Lehigh University can control who can view/edit Confluence pages.
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