I use the solution for my company's customers, who are mainly in the knowledge management system. The tool is also useful to deal with any kind of project documentation or team documentation.
On the reporting front, if Atlassian can bring in more Jira inside Confluence, it would be good since it fails to do so currently. When it comes to the UI with respect to the functionalities, Confluence cannot replace Microsoft Word at the moment, so even though it can be used as a document management system, it is not meant for document creation, which adds a lot of limitations to it. Users will not be able to provide Confluence as a standard document. The aforementioned aspects are areas where Atlassian can have a look at and slightly refine the product.
In terms of reporting, the tool provides a very limited aspect when it comes to its ability to allow users to pull data from Jira and give a report. Reporting works in many ways when you want to present something with respect to a project or status to C-level professionals. Putting reports to be presented to C-level professionals in Jira is a very tough task, but instead, if you can make it inside of it as a document, then it would be easier, printable, and convertible into PDF, or else, you can embed it elsewhere as well, helping provide more clarity to users on what exactly is happening, after which it can provide real-time reporting of the project.
I have been using Atlassian Confluence for six years. I am a user of the tool. My company also has a partnership with Bitbucket.
Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Around 20 to 30 percent of my company's clients are enterprise-sized businesses, while the rest of our customers consist of medium-sized businesses.
Customer support through Atlassian is good since it offers a ticket-based support system. The product's customer support also does allot the relevant solution engineers when the problem is too technical, or they need an immediate resolution. Atlassian's support is pretty good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.
I rate the setup phase a ten on a scale of one to ten, where ten means that it was a very easy setup process.
The solution is deployed using the cloud services offered by Atlassian. The tool cannot be deployed on an on-premises model.
The solution can be deployed in a matter of minutes. The moment you are okay with the domain and other stuff, it will just take two to three minutes for you to initiate or spin an instance for you.
The product is neither cheap nor expensive, meaning its price falls somewhere in the mid-range zone. I am not sure about the price of the product, but I know that the pricing-related information is available to the public on Atlassian's official website.
The product is mainly used as a knowledge management tool in the service industry, where some service management products are used. The tool is also predominantly used in the IT industry, where there is a need to maintain some documentation and databases.
The tool supports remote team collaboration and communication since it allows us to create team spaces where a team can collaborate to indulge in brainstorming or for any kind of idea-sharing session. The tool also provides the functionality that allows you to collaborate on the same document with other team members simultaneously, and such features help users in co-creating ideas and documents and in reviewing them.
The most useful features of the product for team productivity include areas like whiteboarding, which is a very awesome feature as it allows users to create Jira tickets right from Atlassian Confluence. You can also hold brainstorming sessions in Atlassian Confluence. The anonymous access to pages and its ability to allow you to extend something like your troubleshooting article that provides guidance related to your applications or services to the external world without even having the need for Atlassian Confluence is possible since the tool is helpful in areas like page versioning and history feature.
When it comes to the integration capabilities of Atlassian Confluence with other Atlassian products and third-party solutions, Confluence integrates with Atlassian Suite and, most importantly, with Jira Service Management and Jira Software in a pretty straightforward manner. You just need to put your domain URL and basic credentials for Atlassian Confluence's integration features, after which it becomes available for you in Jira as well as in other tools.
I do manage permissions and access control in Confluence for different team numbers in our company. The product's permission schemes are solid and granular, so in our company, we can do it at a space level or at a page level as well as to who can do what kind of activities, and it can be a group-level approval that you can deny it at a user level, making it a helpful product.
Atlassian Confluence can be used to deal with software documentation and even meeting notes, so HR departments can use it for one-to-one discussions. Organizations can use the tool for their 90-day plan and for top priority lists. The tool can be used for brainstorming. The tool can be used in a lot of cases in any organization.
I rate the tool an eight out of ten.