Atlassian Confluence Reviews

Overall, I love the ability to quickly upload and preview documents. The navigation is quite easy and intuitive once you grasp the file hierarchy. I use the template pages often to produce clean consistent spaces for clients.

It allows collaborative functionality across documents, meeting notes and project requirements.

I think the user interface could be more graphically pleasing, as well as establishing permissions across various spaces and user levels a bit clearer.

I have used this for approximately four years.

We have not had stability issues.

We didn’t have scaling issues once our company established its best use of the system and scaled from there.

We have not had to use them.

I used Basecamp previously. However, Confluence just fit our workflows better and at a better price.

Setup was very easy once the we established our goals in using the system.

Nothing more than the time spent previously using Basecamp.

Understand the permissions. We provide a login for clients with access to certain areas. With multiple clients ensuring data security, this was huge for us.

It's relatively easy to use, and has a lot of functionality with regard to formatting wiki articles and embedding content.

The search is pretty terrible. You can search for something that is quite close to text that appears in an article, and nothing will come up. I consistently have a hard time finding the things I care about on our wiki.

Overall it's a fine tool, but I don't think it provides a whole lot of advantages over other similar options. We use it primarily because we also use JIRA, and working with one vendor makes things easier.

My primary use case is for processes in project documentation.

The best feature is document management.

An area for improvement would be the intuitiveness of using the features, especially if you want to customize. In the next release, I would like to see an instant messaging feature for document collaboration.

I've been using this solution for eight years.

The stability has improved and is now good.

This solution is very scalable.

The initial setup is straightforward, though the time it takes depends on the size of the project.

Atlassian is trying to push the license for their online version, but our customers are not ready for that yet. Its licensing is also quite highly-priced.

I would give this solution a rating of eight out of ten.

On-premises

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.

Customer Service:

Atlassian's service desk is very friendly.

Technical Support:

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%.