Confluence - the one-stop-shop for collaboration tool!
March 07, 2017
Confluence - the one-stop-shop for collaboration tool!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Atlassian Confluence
Confluence is used to collect all knowledge articles, meeting notes, ideas worth sharing and so on. We also use it a lot to generally describe new features, collect feedback and refine the general spec of the feature before taking it into action. It helps a lot, mainly in centralizing all the "scattered" information in the company under one, simple, framework.
- Very simple and intuitive user interface.
- Very easy to go ahead and start writing, very low "learning curve", really fun.
- No need for a different authoring tool, compile and publish cycles. Simply edit and save and voila!
- It makes documenting stuff a breeze, and really fun!
- Good import/export functionality to Word, PDF.
- Editing features are quite simplistic and limited. Would love to see more font styles, color selectors, and themes.
- It's not clear how to make confluence a public web site documentation tool.
- No built-in support for placing and showing presentations from the tool. Instead of attaching a PowerPoint presentation, I'd like to prepare pages as slides and show them from the tool. Either an add-on is needed for that, or not supported at all.
- It helped us centralize our intellectual property in one place.
- It's easy to use interface help to bring people on board and share their stuff - which is usually very hard.
- It worked beautifully with JIRA, our work-management tool, so efficiency and visibility was greatly improved.
Other products evaluated: SharePoint, corporate-WIKI.
SharePoint has a clunky user interface, and the resulting websites look poor. It resulted in low acceptance from our users. WIKI was over-simplistic and had a lousy search engine. Confluence was selected because of its great UI, integration with JIRA, and the low effort needed to go ahead and start documenting and publishing. Also, the elaborated security engine with inherited permissions has a great value.
SharePoint has a clunky user interface, and the resulting websites look poor. It resulted in low acceptance from our users. WIKI was over-simplistic and had a lousy search engine. Confluence was selected because of its great UI, integration with JIRA, and the low effort needed to go ahead and start documenting and publishing. Also, the elaborated security engine with inherited permissions has a great value.
Confluence Feature Ratings
Using Atlassian Confluence
200 - They cover the following:
- how-to articles
- meeting notes
- ideas sharing and feedback
- product high-level design and specs
2 - Usually IT-related people, with knowledge on Linux servers, and with good inter-personal skills.
- How-to articles
- Documentation of products
- Meeting notes
- New ideas and high-level designs of solutions.
- The meeting notes templates are a great and simple way to document and collect info.
- It was a breeze to import existing documentation from a legacy system, either by copy-paste or import from MS-Word.
- Publish an on-line documentation
- Centralize all product documentation into one roof.
Evaluating Atlassian Confluence and Competitors
Yes - SharePoint, corporate-WIKI and and internal help site.
Confluence was easier to use and fun, centralized all info in one location, and was quickly and widely adopted. SharePoint was complex and has a clunky interface, and the result was uneven results and unattractive site. out internal proprietary help site was old, and no one updated it anymore. The corporate-WIKI was not adopted, I guess because it was over-simplistic and searching was really bad. Lastly, Confluence integrates beautifully with JIRA which we use for work item management.
Confluence was easier to use and fun, centralized all info in one location, and was quickly and widely adopted. SharePoint was complex and has a clunky interface, and the result was uneven results and unattractive site. out internal proprietary help site was old, and no one updated it anymore. The corporate-WIKI was not adopted, I guess because it was over-simplistic and searching was really bad. Lastly, Confluence integrates beautifully with JIRA which we use for work item management.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Vendor Reputation
Ease of use. Many similar tools failed because users find them complicated, clunky or the other way around - over simplistic. Confluence, in my opnion, offers the correct mixture of simplicity and power in a simple intuitive shell. It has only 2 views: browsing with a sidebar tree and the editor mode, which are quick to learn and explain. The zillion add-ons will allow further functionality should we require it.
No. Confluence is a great tool, simple yet powerful. The community at the Atlassian store proves it has a strong footprint, with great value.
Atlassian Confluence Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
No - because the documentation on the web is excellent, clear and simple. Most answers are there.
There was a time I had a page with inherited permissions, and I saw information. I wasn't sure it was displayed because of my current user, and that other user won't see. I've asked a question on the Atlassian forum and got an answer within 1 hour! And a correct one! This was amazing,Ii was really impressed.
Using Atlassian Confluence
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Editing pages
- Setting permissions, and inherited permissions
- Setting labels, to ease future searching
- Adding and activating an add-on could be simpler.
Yes - very nice, with a similar look and feel - although it may not fit small screens like mobiles, better with tablets.