Confluence isn't necessarily good at collaboration, but it is an inexpensive WIKI and knowledge base generator.
May 14, 2021
Confluence isn't necessarily good at collaboration, but it is an inexpensive WIKI and knowledge base generator.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Atlassian Confluence
Atlassian Confluence was originally used in conjunction with Atlassian's other primary project -JIRA- as a collaborative workspace which fed into JIRA for project management and oversight. It was originally used by our whole organization from creative to dev to PMS etc but we found that the structure and integrations were too limiting to be used so broadly. Primarily it wasn't conducive to a dev workflow with PM oversight. As such we have branched out to using other products as a more collaborative workspace while using Confluence more as knowledge dump as well as various wikis for different departments.
- Functions great as a wiki
- Excellent repository for SOPs and attaching frequently referenced technical documents etc.
- Integration into JIRA if you use that for either project management or change control tracking
- Over the past 6 years the feature set has not significantly expanded
- Integrations with 3rd party apps (DropBox, Google Drive, Slack) is either through 3rd party plugins or rudimentary at best
- Frequent interface upgrades and complicated permissions settings makes getting new employees up to speed fiddly in some cases
- Ease of getting started is useful for non technical users (such as call center operators etc.)
- Ability to create custom forms/surveys/etc. is a useful tool from HR perspective that would normally require a separate product
- Scalable documents and permission based collaboration mean that you can easily assign team specific workspaces to upload SOPs, etc
- Confluence was originally planned to be our go-to collaborative workspace; while it is useful, it doesn't match the real time collaboration and advanced features of G Suite, Office 365 or DropBox which we also use
- Because it is relatively inexpensive it has been positively positioned as our internal WIKI, SOP repository, etc etc.
- Its inexpensive versatility has also rendered it beneficial for new employee training and historical documentation
One of the original intended uses for Atlassian Confluence was for creating rich charts and workflow diagramming and project mapping (with the intent to transfer to JIRA). Unfortunately most of the intended output was reliant on 3rd party plugins or add-ons. Additionally, many of those plugins were retired or deprecated as Confluence moved from on-prem to cloud base. As such, such fluctuations in functionality cause considerable headaches for our time. In time, we found that using outside standalone apps such as Omnigraffle etc and eventually Lucidchart, were a much better use of our resources.
Do you think Atlassian Confluence delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Atlassian Confluence's feature set?
No
Did Atlassian Confluence live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Atlassian Confluence go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Atlassian Confluence again?
Yes