Atlassian Confluence Reviews

The flexibility, well-rounded features, and capabilities to support the different needs of the organization.

JIRA has allowed my organization to aggregate our entire portfolio into one system and to eliminate five other disparate solutions.

The addition of Confluence allowed us to take the aggregation a big step forward by adding project and support documentation into one central holistic repository.

There are certain features, like AD FS and workflows, that don't appear to be mature enough for Enterprise use.

JIRA and Confluence (latest): Two years.

We started on cloud and moved to server. This caused some big errors with database issues and macros not working due to leftover items from the cloud. I recommend the server version overall. It is more fully-featured and scalable.

We ostensibly moved from cloud to server, because of functionality not being available on cloud, but also because there are storage limits that don't support enterprise level usage on the cloud.

Atlassian technical support is responsive in terms of communication, but is slow to address issues. You often have to constantly advocate for your needs to get them addressed or triaged.

Our organization had many different solutions for PPM. We switched to Atlassian to consolidate our PPM as well as to support the introduction of Agile into the organization.

You should initially use consulting to make good decisions about architecting this product. Also, designating at least two SMEs to be dedicated to the setup and enhancements is key.

Make sure to have passion for solving problems. Atlassian has solutions, you just need to figure out which ones to apply. Also, try to keep your admin group small, don't open it up to more than a few people. Finally, start with a pilot and get it working before rolling it out to everyone.

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.

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.

Confluence works as a trunk for our documentations and instructions, and a help centre for our telephone contact centre.

One and a half years.

No, Atlassian's documentation is very good.

No, the product works stably.

No, the product has scalability up to 2000 users.

Atlassian's service desk is very friendly.

They quickly resolve all of our problems.

We used IBM Connections. It is a very interesting solution, but Confluence is more flexible (maybe because it has many add-ons in its ecosystem).

Some of our installation work was "from the box", when the business requirement was standard. If the business requirement wasn't standard, we customized Confluence and added add-ons to it.

Atlassian has powerful documentation, and even a weak sysadmin could implement Confluence.

Pricing and licensing is friendly, but every year the price increases 5-10%.

• Provides wiki features such as file collaboration.
• Allows us to get feedback from user to approve or edit the documents we create and use daily.
• Allows employees to share relevant information within internal Confluence spaces.
• Allows developers to organize their specifications and record their design decisions.

We can share solutions for various problems between people who work in the company. The next logical step is to use Confluence to manage support documentation. Documentation is a focus of our company for development.

All of the departments need improvement.

I’ve been using this tool for two years.

We have not had any stability issues.

We have not had any scalability issues.

Technical support is good.

We were using Microsoft SharePoint. We switched because it didn't have wiki features.

The setup was easy.

We looked at SharePoint.

Be active in the development of the knowledge management features in your company.

I like the macros (formatting, PDF, images, etc.), tags, tables (with autonumber), @user for citing another user, comments, and the access control in content using groups and users.

Meetings are registered in Confluence, allowing easy access on what had been discussed and the to-do lists. Information, knowledge and users of many areas are integrated in one place.

I would like to see the ability for each user to config his own home page,

We’ve been using Confluence for 3 years.

We rarely encountered issues with stability. But when it happens, generally Atlassian is pro-active and send infos about any issues encountered and how it's beeing handle by support team.

No issues with scalability.

I have never used technical support.

I never used a different solution.

Initial setup was kind of straightforward. We learned how to use it as the issues/necessities appeared.

In-house.

It´s affordable.

No.

I advise to start small, then go for the whole company. We started in IT and then expanded to the company using IT as an example.

Makes integration with other softwares or plugins easier.

User interface (UI) could be improved.

Began using it in the last year.

No, we did not face issues with deployment.

No, we did not face issues with stability.

No, we did not encounter any issues with scalability.

Their customer service is good.

A nine out of 10.

We were looking for comprehensive solution, so we tried Confluence.

We implemented the solution in-house. It was implemented with limited expertise.

No. We did not evaluate other options.