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Director of Operations at Armada Cloud
Reseller
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Great tool for document control - try it for QMS

What is most valuable?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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

What needs improvement?

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.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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BH
Quality Assurance Team Lead at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
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The solution has definitely improved our organization
Pros and Cons
  • "We have found limiting permissions and history very valuable."
  • "The roadmap feature should be made easier to work with and modify. It's not really scalable."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution for all kinds of documentation that are part of the testing, product, and development phases and for taking meeting notes. 

How has it helped my organization?

Atlassian Confluence has definitely improved our organization. Before Confluence, we only had documentation on JIRA. Now, the requirements are routinely documented. We use the solution for test planning and documentation-related testing. It is also extremely useful for technical documentation. You can create different spaces for the different teams. Atlassian Confluence has helped the company a lot.

What is most valuable?

We have found limiting permissions and history very valuable. History tracking is good, and so is commenting and tagging somebody when commenting. Other valuable features include linking Confluence and JIRA and having a Confluence cloud on Slack. The roadmap feature in Confluence is very good.

What needs improvement?

The comparing history versions feature could be improved. It's messy and not useful. I remember that it was much better initially. 

The roadmap feature should be made easier to work with and modify. It's not really scalable. Confluence is hard to work with as well. Specifically, you cannot set the dates or choose shorter periods of time, like one day or two days. It looks a bit messy. I kept getting questions about it, so I added a note advising people not to pay too much attention to the inaccurate dates.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using this solution for more than two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product has really great performance. There are no issues with that at all.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The team more than doubled in the last couple of years, and we didn't have any issues with scalability. It was very smooth.

How are customer service and support?

I never had any problems, so I never had any experience with customer service and support, and I don't believe anybody did, or they would've shared it on the channel. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used JIRA, but it didn't work because the tickets became old, and it wasn't easy to tag where the documentation was. So that's why we switched to Confluence.

There were no other options on the table before we went for Confluence because I wasn't on the committee that selected it. But using JIRA as an adapting product probably made the team choose Confluence faster. And some of the team had used it before. I had used a very simple version around five years before. So I had some experience with it. Of course, in five years, the tool had changed a lot.

What was our ROI?

Our ROI is more like something that helps us save money and share knowledge when onboarding new people or introducing existing employees to new processes, products and services and planning, but it doesn't really generate revenue. You could say that our ROI from this product is a monetary and quality-of-life improvement.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Confluence eight on a scale of one to 10.

I'm not sure whether all our applications are available on the same cloud. But one of the clouds we use is AWS. And since the product is on the cloud, we don't usually have any issues. You don't need to maintain it or make backups because you can contact the cloud provider and ask for whatever backup you need if anything is lost.

I never encountered any problem with the solution that required help from support. So I never reported any issue to management, and I don't believe anybody else did, or it would've been shared on the channel. 

It took us some time to benefit from Confluence because we had to create a documentation process, which meant adopting a document mindset to get into the habit of documenting, which was a real challenge. At first, we allocated around two hours a day for documenting, which didn't work. But as the QA team grew, we started documenting their processes, which greatly benefited us. We don't benefit much from the dev documentation, but the product and the QA team do. Though it took us a while to get into that state.

I would say we use about 60 percent of the product's features 

We currently have more than 30 people using Confluence in our company.

My advice to anyone thinking about using or implementing Confluence is to start small and use it more and more as you get used to it. Start using it as part of your process. It's very important not to dedicate all your resources to it. Start bit by bit, and you'll benefit from it the most. That's how your employees get used to it. Start incorporating it into their processes, but don't enforce it, or it won't work properly. Like everything in life, you have to start small, and as you get used to it, you'll know exactly what you want from it and the best way to get it.

Pioneering team members should start using Confluence, showcasing how it benefits the company. They should encourage colleagues and peers to use it. First users should also add articles and documentation so others can use the tool more easily. Without this encouragement, team members will completely ignore the tool, and it will be put down as lost expenses that didn't benefit the company.

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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May 2024
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it_user11370 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Operations at a cloud solution provider with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Confluence 5 brings a fresh UI

Only just recently did I share our experience with migrating our internal custom KB system to Atlassian Confluence. We’ve been using it for a significant period of time, and our team are making good use of the Confluence wiki. Our team is using it for project planning, documentation, setup guides, known issues, bug tracking, reports and more.

I also personally run my own starter edition wiki for my own personal use, plus I can generally trial new plugins and new releases quicker on my own personal wiki.

I also recently wrote an article about the Evernote plugin and during my research I was aware that Confluence 5 was close to being released. Then just recently I got an email from Atlassian announcing the release of Confluence 5, I quickly added a task to get my personal wiki upgraded to Confluence 5 ASAP, so I could check out the new features.

The email Atlassian sent out made it clear that a new user interface had been rolled in to this release, so I was interested to see what had changed.

Today I am just going to take you through a quick introduction to some of the new features in Confluence 5.

UI Improvements

One of the main focus’s of this upgrade was an overhaul of the user interface (the look and feel). On first login after the upgrade you can not miss that changes. I was greeted with the new ui and a welcome message with a link to a video about the new confluence ui.

blog-conf-1

There is always going to be some issues when changing that UI mainly for the end users. I think the video is a great touch to bring people up to speed.

Worth noting is if you read through the Upgrade Notes for this release, Atlassian have taken the time to create a whole section on how to prepare your end users. This is a great touch. As with all new things, sometimes change can be scary.

Atlassian have provided video’s and notes on these big changes. Giving you (the person in charge of upgrading / training) the content necessary to educate your team. Planning for Confluence 5 - https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Planning+for+Confluence+5

Create Button

Previously with prior releases of Confluence if you wanted to add a new page, blog post etc, you browsed to the particular space, then selected the Add button and chose your options.

This has now been replace with a single “Create” button in the top banner. From here you can create a new blank page, page from template, blog post etc and choose what space / page to put it under.

blog-conf-2

I think this is a great idea. A one stop location for getting your creating content. Simpler and more efficient.

New Side Bar

Confluence 5 has introduced a side bar when you are browsing spaces or pages. The side bar can be customized to include shortcuts to your favorite or frequently used space’s or page.

It also provide a navigation for child pages depending on what space / page you are viewing.

blog-conf-3

So when I am browsing my setup notes space, you can see that it provides quick access to some of the pages that are available.

They have moved the space options to the side bar as well instead of cluttering up the top bar, this is a positive move to reduce the clutter in the top bar. This side bar has replaced the older “Browse” men option.

Editor Improvements

Although I have not heavily tested this yet, when editing a page I noticed the load time once you hit “Edit” has improve dramatically.

Atlassian have got some serious speed improvements for the Editor in Confluence 5. The editor has also experienced some UI changes to maximise screen space.

Conclusion

Though this is early days getting familiar with Confluence 5, I have no major complaints just yet. The new UI is fresh and so far easy to use. The speed improvements are noticeable and my current favorite plugin (Evernote Plugin) still works in Confluence 5.

I have one little gripe so far though, Confluence 5 introduces “round” space logos. So if you are upgrading an existing Confluence install, you may need to review your logo’s for spaces, as they may get a little ruined or look a bit funny after they have been “rounded”. Not sure why Atlassian chose the round logo approach, it is a minor issue though, but some logos do not fit in a round shape, so would of been good to “choose” the shape.

From reading through the Confluence 5 release notes, there are a large number of other changes. If you are curious to see them all here are some useful links,

Now I have to start planning the upgrade of our Crucial Confluence Wiki, so the team can benefit from this new release.

I would love to hear from anyone who has upgraded already. Feel free to share your thoughts on the new release.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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it_user4401 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user4401Developer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
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I used Confluence 5 and I enjoyed its new features. From my point of view, the best feature is the intuitive space sidebar, which appears on every page and is intended to display the most likely content users want to access. The aim is to reduce the need for searching and to help orientate users. I also like the real-time updates, which are pulled into the page automatically rather than requiring a page refresh, and the responsive design, which adjusts to the size of the browser. Let's not forget about the new global header, which provides speedy access to other Atlassian apps, spaces, calendars ans settings.

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it_user11370 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Operations at a cloud solution provider with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Our shift to Confluence

For a long, long, long, long, long time Crucial has operated a custom made web based internal knowledge base / documentation area which has fallen well out of date. Though web based and coded in PHP we have since out grown its simplicity.

Our team regularly felt the pain of trying to locate, update or add information.

Finally we hit a point where we had to take action, so we put the word out to our team to come up with some possible third party options to replace our internal kb area.

We received replies with a number of suitable options.

At this point we realized that we really needed to sit down and come up with our requirements. We could then use the requirements to help compare the solutions and make a final decision.

The team bumped heads and came up with a relativity straight forward list of features and requirements.

Our replacement wiki needed,

  • Excellent search functionality.
  • Permissions at a per page basis.
  • Easy to use layout.
  • To be easy to find information in.
  • Search uploaded documents (nice to have)
  • Ability to upload files such as PDF, Images, Zips.
  • Ability to move pages, articles around and change names.
  • Ability set descriptive titles / names.
  • WSIWYG editor for creating pages / documents.
  • Version Control for a document / page.
  • Able to structure information and modify layout of system.
  • Local install (not a hosted solution)

Some of those options were quite basic, but essential to how we wanted to run our wiki.

We then went through the process of comparing all the viable Wiki solutions against our list of requirements.

  1. Tiki Wiki

    TikiWiki ticked a lot of the boxes that made up our criteria. Good search, permissions, upload files, version control, and the expected WSIWYG editor. However what turned us off this solution was the look and feel.We strongly believe the wiki should be easy on the eyes, and the layout should be a breeze to work with. Many of our testers did not find it met those needs.

  2. KBPublisher

    KB Publisher was another great option. It met most of our needs, with a great search function, positive comments about how easy it was to use and all the usual features you would expect from a wiki solution.

  3. BrainKeeper

    Straight away we ruled this out because brain keeper was not able to be locally installed, you had to use it hosted on their infrastructure. While this is not necessarily a bad thing depending on your budget, we prefer to keep our wiki locally run.We still went through the testing process however, and found this solution to be very feature rich. One disappointing note was it had a page version control, but you couldn’t revert to a previous version, just see the changes.

  4. MindTouch

    MindTouch was an interesting offering. From a feature set perspective it had a large list of features, a good portion we had no use for. We considered this a disadvantage as it meant there was a lot of bloat or unnecessary functionality.We came to the decision that this was not a suitable option as the layout was not user friendly which we believe was as a result of the large list of features.

We then got on with testing Atlassian Confluence. Immediately the feedback from our testers was very positive. Great layout, easy to use, ticked all our feature requirements and a search function that was exactly what we were after!

Confluence had all the bits we needed plus more! A recurring comment was on the WSIWYG editor used when creating pages / documents, the editor in Confluence is amazing. With drag and drop ability for adding images and documents, as well as easy to use shortcuts.

Further to our decision Confluence has an excellent documentation area for users and admins alike. Along with that Atlassian offer an interactive and video based training area called Atlassian University.

Personally I have worked with Confluence in previous roles, and already had made my mind up, but to avoid to much bias we still let the team vote and give feedback.

Confluence was chosen as our new wiki replacement!

 6 months later…..

We’ve been running Confluence now for about 6 months. We are on the end part of a migration to migrate all our old articles from our legacy system and could not be happier! We took our time moving the articles across because we wanted to verify each article and make sure it was worth moving!

Since going live with Confluence we have started using it quite heavily for our project documentation, internal tech support documentation and a large number of our team members are making great use of the persona spaces for their own notes, documents and general shenanigans.

At the time of deployment we went live with Confluence 4.1 and it was great, since then Confluence has now gone to Confluence 4.3 which has added a couple of features worth noting, including a WSIWYG editor for the Global Templates area.

We are looking forward to Confluence 5 and some of the new UI changes they are bringing in!

If you have any questions about why we moved to Confluence, or wondering about our experience in using Confluence so far, please feel free to leave a comment.

Disclaimer: The company I work for is partners with several vendors

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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MP
GM Technology at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees
Real User
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Easy to use out-of-the-box templates satisfy the majority of common use cases.
Pros and Cons
  • "It is easy to use."
  • "There is a good library of templates for a wide range of needs."
  • "It integrates well with other Atlassian products"
  • "The product should have a workflow with approvals out-of-the-box."

What is our primary use case?

Every project and every initiative we start gets a Confluence site to track artifacts that are created related to that initiative. For example, we will use it for a knowledge base and for general documentation. We collect all of our meeting minutes, action lists, and so on. It is grouped in scenarios for reference, et cetera.  

What is most valuable?

I think it is easy to use. There are a large number of out-of-the-box templates, which can satisfy the majority of use cases. If those templates do not quite cover what you want them to do, you can tweak the templates so you can create your own just so you end up with standardized content look and feel. It integrates well with the other Atlassian products, like the Jira software, which we use for our software development teams.  

Overall I am pretty satisfied with it. We like the user interface and it is similar to the Jira software as well which makes it very familiar.  

What needs improvement?

Workflows is an area where it could be improved. Out-of-the-box, it does not have a good workflow solution, which is a bit odd given that there is a good workforce solution in Jira software. We had to purchase a workflow management tool off the marketplace called Kamala and that probably should not have been necessary. So, they could probably do with a bit of development on the workflows front to include a better solution out-of-the-box, but other than that, not a lot needs to be improved.  

For how long have I used the solution?

Personally, I have been using Confluence since around 2013. About seven years.  

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Confluence does not have any bugs, glitches that I can recall.  

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is pretty good.  

How was the initial setup?

The installation and setup for Confluence itself is relatively straightforward. There is good online documentation for it as well. The templates help make easy work of the design and site creation.  

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend Confluence, especially for anyone that is using other Atlassian products. It is a simple, additional, license to get the solution and it integrates really well with the other products in the Atlassian family.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate Confluence overall as a product as an eight-out-of-ten. I would not rate it higher because like all the Atlassian products, there are certain things I think the product should have out-of-the-box without you needing to go to the marketplace. For example, it does not have an approvals type of workflow. If you want to create content and have other people review and approve it before it gets published that should be available. I would think that is something that it should have out-of-the-box.  

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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MD
Managing Consultant - Enterprise Architecture at Wipro Technologies
Real User
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Easy to use and provides targeted access to relevant information
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are hyper-linking, the Drawing Tool, and enhanced tables."
  • "The standard table capability is substandard and virtually unusable."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use for this solution is EA documentation.

How has it helped my organization?

Confluence has helped us through its ease of use and access to relevant information in a targeted way.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are hyper-linking, the Drawing Tool, and enhanced tables.

What needs improvement?

The standard table capability is substandard and virtually unusable.  However with the "Advanced Tables for Confluence" from Bob Swift, this problem was solved.  The standard table functionality does not have enough functionality to document things clearly starting with colors.  The other tool which is extremely useful is IO Draw although it is expensive.  With these two extensions, I was able to really maximize my use of Confluence.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for four years.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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it_user432606 - PeerSpot reviewer
Documentation Department Manager with 10,001+ employees
MSP
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With this solution both developers and documentation engineers can edit manuals and share opinions.

What is most valuable?

Editing is convenient. We often have to edit manuals for different projects of the same software. These projects have only small differences in features.

How has it helped my organization?

In the past, only documentation engineers could edit the software manuals. Now, both developers and documentation engineers can edit manuals and share opinions.

What needs improvement?

It is not as professional as FrameMaker. Confluence is light and very convenient, but it is difficult to reuse the same content and its format is not as flexible as FrameMaker.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We did not encounter any issues with stability but we have not been using it as often as FrameMaker.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

How is customer service and technical support?

We seldom used the technical support.

How was the initial setup?

The setup is more complex and the developers helped to set up the environment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Confluence is convenient and cheaper but not so professional. FrameMaker is for documentation departments in a large company and Confluence is for small teams or companies.

What other advice do I have?

Ask the vendor to set up your environment if you buy Confluence.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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it_user607749 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user607749Manager, Live Production at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
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yes

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it_user574110 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Writer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
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Information is kept up to date. I think that customization and text styling could be improved.

What is most valuable?

I appreciate:

  • Web access.
  • Collaboration.
  • Export to PDF.

How has it helped my organization?

It has helped our organization as follows:

  • Information is kept up to date.
  • Accessible anywhere.
  • Editable by everyone.
  • Secure.
  • Exportable.

What needs improvement?

I think that customization and text styling could be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used it for 2.5 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not had any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not had any scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

I would give them 8 out of 10. But first and second level support are email only!

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use a previous solution.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup with the cloud version is super easy but the server is only slightly more complex depending on your firewall, SSO, etc.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing is in blocks of seats, so you need to decide what the maximum number of users might be before pricing it out. There is the option of anonymous users, which, while a security issue, does reduce the licensing cost.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have evaluated MediaWiki, Kentico, SharePoint and WordPress.

What other advice do I have?

  • Definitely try before you buy to make sure it aligns with your expectation of what a collaboration system should be like.
  • Post any and all questions to the Confluence forum (https://answers.atlassian.com/).
  • Not all add-ons are available for Confluence Cloud, so customization is further limited.


Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Download our free Atlassian Confluence Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2024
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Buyer's Guide
Download our free Atlassian Confluence Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Atlassian Confluence
May 2024
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