Atlassian Confluence Reviews

When we compared it to other wiki engines, we found the space concept and the hierarchical page.

• Space concept: The space concept was of interest to us since we have the need to filter information by means of authorization on different organizational groupings. For example, when working with loans, we can give access only to those working with loans.

• Hierarchical page: On another axis, there are documentation spaces. This could be a space for Java developers, for example. In this space, only those people working with framework are allowed to make updates. There is also another Java developer space where you “only” need to be a Java programmer to have authorization to update.

We use this tool in the following ways:

• Internally: In IT development, it acts as a support for different development areas with the documentation of tools, manuals, internal handbooks, and best practices.
• Externally: In business areas, it acts a place for the documentation of systems and FAQs.

We also exploit the SOAP API to make automated updates of specific wiki pages, such as z/OS. This is automated by means of a scheduler that triggers when some interesting event has occurred. I can also be trigged by Windows, which is a manual invocation.

The improvement is that this type of information is now found in one place instead of being found “here and there”.

I don't see the need for any large improvements. There are a number of minor improvements that are documented by Atlassian and also some problems waiting to be solved. For us, there are no items that we are sleepless waiting for.

We have been using Confluence since early 2007.

There are no stability issues to my knowledge.

There are no scalability issues to my knowledge. As of now, we run one instance in production and another instance in a test environment.

We had some issues regarding release upgrades, but they were sorted out as fast as could be expected.

We used an intranet based on another product before this solution, and we still use it. However, we never had a wiki engine before Confluence.

The initial installation was on UNIX with Oracle for data storage. I did not have any personal involvement with that installation. As a user, I can say that it worked OK.

As of now, we run it on Linux under Apache Tomcat and with Oracle. The move, which was done at the same time as a release upgrade, did not introduce any problems.

My personal installation experience was a private workstation test installation. It was done without any problems.

We looked at some other wiki engines like MediaWiki. However, the Confluence concept of spaces and hierarchy was the main reason why we chose it.

The product is easy to install and set up. It is also easy to work with as a user, an editor, or as a reader.

Some thought should go into the allocation of spaces and the usage. There are different “types” of spaces, such as documentation team. There is also the possibility to define our own types, which we haven't exploited yet.

In summary, define your use and read the documentation to see what needs to be defined in order to meet your demands.

The fact that Confluence is a wiki that allows near WYSIWYG editing. Having an “easy to use” product means that users have a “low threshold” to use it. This is very important, as the value of any information store is that of the data that is put in to it.

The ease of use makes it accessible for all users. Users are able to insert/edit information without having to have wiki knowledge. We can put any “static” information in Confluence. “Static” meaning that the information does not change on a daily basis. The strong search function let’s us find stored information rapidly.
We store customer information, work processes, to do’s, best practices, etc.

Some things like:

• Being able to (default) sort comments on pages with the last comment first.
• Being able to require “restricted access” permission to view Confluence pages (like JSD).
• The Atlassian cloud pricing model is pretty steep. Confluence should be accessible by a relatively large audience, but the pricing model prohibits this. For example, we like to grant our customers access.
• Inheritable permissions. This enables a “tree” of pages to share the same permissions. Currently, permissions can be set on a space, and altered per page. This is not very handy, as it is easy to forget setting permissions where it is needed or desired.

I have been using Confluence for five years.

We have not noticed any stability issues.

The pricing model is too steep for us to really use it for everything.

Technical support is generally very good. I must say though, that Atlassian’s success has made the company less flexible with respect to responding to users wishes and requirements. I have had several issues/demands that I found I was not alone in. On most occasions, there where one or more support issues in the Atlassian support portal and more and more, people complain about not being heard.

I have not used another solution before.

Having a cloud solution, setup is easy. Being somewhat of an expert from using Atlassian products for years, I know where to look. For novice users, I’ve been told that not everything is easy to find.

My advise to Atlassian is to offer a less steep model and also offer “read-only access” for non-paying users. We currently are looking for a second product to use in a situation where we need to offer access to 40-50 read-only customers.

I started using Confluence when we started with JIRA. Therefore, I did not evaluate other products.

Confluence Cloud is especially easy to get started with. With $10 a month for 10 users, it is pretty cheap. You have to keep in mind, however, that the pricing changes dramatically when the user count goes up. New users should think about what they may need later, when they start.

The valuable features are:

• It is easy to use.
• It is easy for newcomers to start using it.
• It has the “what you see is what you get” functionality of MS Word.
• It is easy to move pages around. There is no excuse for not doing documentation just because you do not know where to add it.
• It has good integration with JIRA. You can really do great things with the two products.

The license part is too flexible.

We have been using this solution since 2008.

There have not been any stability issues.

There have not been many scalability issues.

I would give technical support a rating of 9 out of 10.

We used SharePoint a long time ago, and we will never go back to it.

The installation can be quite complex. You need to know what you are doing in order to install it on your own. The cloud version is very easy to install.

You need to buy a full license for your entire organization, even though you only need a plugin for two people.

There needs to be an owner of the installation, in terms of the system and the infrastructure.

Built in revision history and document management makes this ideal for companies without a dedicated document controller, and makes life significantly easier for document controllers who are using paper-based systems.

I've used Confluence as a Quality Management System at several companies; traditional QMS’s need pretty dedicated management by a document controller to make sure revision history is maintained, changes go through an adequate approval process, and only the latest approved versions of documents are being used. Confluence essentially handles all of that, which means companies without the means for a dedicated document controller can still implement a QMS, and/or companies with a document controller benefit from the added efficiencies.

Really speeds up creation and approval of policies and procedures and provides a centralized area for users to access current versions of documents.

Sometimes has issues with cron jobs crashing - need to check more recent versions to see if this has been resolved.

I'd also love to see integrated project management with Gantt charts, but I'm a sucker for Gantt charts.

Confluence is very easy to use and a range of third party add-ons to add more capabilities for power users. Highly recommended to any organization as a way of breaking down silos and sharing information more effectively across teams and departments. I often call it "Wikipedia blended with Facebook for the organization".

Prior to my organization adopting Confluence, email was everything. Internal knowledge sharing was always an email, which would get lost in everyone's inbox, along with all the "Reply All" comments. Now, any information worth sharing is posted to Confluence, with threaded comments making future research and referencing far more effective.

I've always found search to be buggy. Sometimes, searching for a keyword or phrase will result in no matches, despite me later finding a posting with that exact word or phrase.

Also, organizing content via folders could be improved. Nested folders only goes two levels deep, while more nesting levels would be helpful. Resorting to using tags for posts is more difficult, as too many tags were getting created by our teams and it became a nightmare.

Categories, document editing and creation, the great permission system, awesome plugin management.

Confluence allows creating new documentation very fast. This allowed us to organize our self-written documentation in a very efficient way.

There are two things which annoy us the most:

(a) It is written in Java and therefore comes with all the overhead and issues of Java applications.

(b) It doesn't allow editing documents with multiple users at the same time.

I have been using it for almost two years.

Deployment can be painful when you have to deal with different Java versions or keystores. The rest is very simple since there is a very good install and upgrade wizard.

No, Confluence turned out to be very stable.

No, not yet.

I didn't get in touch with Atlassian yet. But they have an awesome wiki and Q&A section.

I was using several open source wiki systems, all of them lacked the great ACL and plugin system of Confluence.

It was straight forward.

I implemented it myself.

The more users you have, the more money you will spend. Make sure to give only those users access who really need it.

Make sure to run backups by dumping the database and saving the Confluence home on nightly basis.

The flexibility and scalability of Confluence.

The structure of spaces, pages and child pages allows an easy way to structure content in a way which suits our business.

Confluence has been our central knowledge platform for several years. All of our agent team use the knowledge base constantly throughout their work.

It takes some thought into how to structure confluence in a way which is intuitive for the team to use.

Search only takes you to a page, not an area of a page.

3 years

We had no issues with deployment.

We had no issues with stability.

Just in respects of how we structure our content. Confluence is perfectly scalable.

Responsive and to the point. Also extensive knowledge base which is useful for most queries.

10/10

We implemented in house with (at the time) limited technical expertise.

Hosting yourself allows greater flexibility in terms of extensions and customisation.

1. Its ability to display data from an excel sheet attached to the page. A simple one line code can do this.

2. Allows markers in the page so that they can be referenced in other pages thereby avoiding duplication.

3. Allows creation of random tables when needed for representation.

4. Allows document attachments to be visible as a link whose display text can be user-defined.

This became the primary location where all knowledge documents and other documentation were recorded and held. Its ability to allow creation of child pages helped to nest topics within topics

1. When excel sheets are added for being displayed, it skips document formats and does not recognize merged cells.

2. Supports only MS office 97-2003 formats. Should also support 2010 formats as its a overhead to convert everytime.

3. JIRA and Confluence connectivity needs to be stabilized. We've faced embarrassing situations with stakeholders when the Confluence pages could not pull the list of JIRAs to be referenced on the page.

5 years

Deployment was handled by the client's infrastructure team. I'm unable to comment on this.

Yes. JIRA to confluence connectivity was a nagging issue. To circumvent this, we started using JIRA dumps into excel and uploading them to the Confluence page.

None

I'm unable to comment on this.

I'm unable to comment on this.

Confluence was already used as the primary tool for reporting and documentation.

However, there have been Sharepoint based solutions for holding documents and their version which I did not find as user-friendly as Confluence.

The other option, of course, is to maintain your documents in a configuration management tool like Visual Safe Source.

Deployment and setup was handled by the client's infrastructure team. I'm unable to comment on this

Deployment was handled by the client's infrastructure team. I'm unable to comment on this.

I'm unable to comment on this.

We did not particularly evaluate other tools, but when compared with VSS and Sharepoint based solutions, Confluence would be an easy choice. This depends on what exactly is your purpose of using this tool. My views are based on its use as a tool for documentation and a QA's perspective on it.