Confluence

What is Confluence

Confluence is a team collaboration and knowledge management tool developed by the Australian software company Atlassian. Its main purpose is to provide a single, shared workspace where teams can create, organize, and discuss work. It functions like a wiki, allowing users to build rich content pages, from project plans and meeting notes to technical documentation and company policies. Atlassian was founded in 2002 by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia. Confluence is designed to be a central source of truth for teams, reducing reliance on scattered documents and emails and fostering a more collaborative work environment, especially when used alongside other Atlassian products like Jira.

Confluence Features

• Pages and Spaces: Organize your work into dedicated 'Spaces' for different teams or projects. Within each space, you can create an unlimited number of 'Pages' with a flexible, hierarchical structure to keep information organized and easy to find.
• Templates: Start new pages quickly with a large library of pre-built templates for common documents like project plans, meeting notes, marketing campaigns, and requirements documentation. You can also create your own custom templates.
• Real-time Collaboration: Multiple team members can edit the same page simultaneously. You can see others' cursors and changes as they happen, making collaborative writing and brainstorming sessions efficient.
• Comments and Mentions: Leave inline or page-level comments to provide feedback. Use @mentions to notify specific team members and pull them into a discussion, ensuring everyone stays informed.
• Deep Jira Integration: Connect your project plans in Confluence directly to your development work in Jira. You can embed Jira issues, create reports, and view project status without leaving Confluence.
• Macros and Apps: Extend Confluence's functionality with powerful macros for adding charts, diagrams, and dynamic content. The Atlassian Marketplace offers hundreds of apps and integrations to connect Confluence with other tools.
• Knowledge Base: Create and manage both internal knowledge bases for your team and external-facing ones for your customers. It includes features for organizing articles and powerful search capabilities.
• Advanced Search: A powerful search engine that indexes all content, including page text, comments, and attachments, making it easy to find the information you need across the entire platform.

Confluence Pricing Plans

Confluence offers several pricing tiers designed to scale with your team's needs. The plans are typically structured as follows:

• Free Plan: Aimed at individuals and small teams just getting started. It includes core features but has limitations on the number of users and file storage.
• Standard Plan: Designed for growing teams that need more collaboration features and administrative control. This plan usually offers more users, increased storage, and additional permissions management.
• Premium Plan: For larger organizations that require advanced features, analytics, and greater administrative power. It often includes features like unlimited storage, advanced analytics, and guaranteed uptime SLAs.
• Enterprise Plan: The most comprehensive offering for large, distributed enterprises. This tier provides the highest level of security, compliance, centralized administration, and dedicated support.

Confluence Free Plan

Yes, Confluence offers a Free plan that is always free for up to 10 users. This plan is a great way for small teams to start organizing their work and knowledge. The Free plan includes essential features like unlimited spaces and pages, macros, templates, and basic integrations. However, it comes with limitations, such as a cap on file storage and community-based support only.

How to use Confluence

Getting started with Confluence is a straightforward process:

1. Sign Up: Create an Atlassian account and set up your Confluence site with a unique URL (e.g., yourcompany.atlassian.net).
2. Create a Space: A Space is a container for your pages. Create a Space for your team, a specific project, or a knowledge base.
3. Create Your First Page: Click the 'Create' button to make a new page. You can start from a blank page or use a template like 'Meeting Notes' or 'Project Plan' to structure your content.
4. Add Content: Use the intuitive editor to add text, headings, images, tables, and links. You can also embed files and use macros to add more dynamic content.
5. Invite Your Team: Invite team members to your Confluence site or specific spaces so they can view, comment on, and edit pages.
6. Collaborate: Use @mentions to get a teammate's attention and use comments to discuss the content directly on the page. Edit pages together in real-time.
7. Organize Content: Create a tree of pages by nesting child pages under parent pages to build a logical information hierarchy.

Pros and Cons of Confluence

Pros:

• Excellent Jira Integration: The seamless connection with Jira is a major advantage for software development and project management teams.
• Powerful for Documentation: It excels as a knowledge base and for creating detailed technical or project documentation.
• Highly Customizable: With templates, macros, and a vast marketplace of apps, you can tailor Confluence to fit your team's specific workflow.
• Strong Collaboration Features: Real-time editing, comments, and mentions make it easy for teams to work together on content.

Cons:

• Can Become Disorganized: Without strong governance and structure, a Confluence instance can quickly become cluttered and difficult to navigate.
• Learning Curve: New users may find the sheer number of features and options overwhelming at first.
• Performance Issues: Large Confluence sites with many pages and users can sometimes experience slow search and page load times.
• Cost: While it has a free plan, the paid tiers can become expensive for large teams, especially when adding paid apps from the marketplace.

Confluence integrations

Confluence integrates with a wide range of tools to centralize your team's workflow. Key integrations include:

• Jira: Create and track Jira issues directly from Confluence pages.
• Trello: Embed Trello boards and cards into pages for visual project tracking.
• Slack: Get Confluence notifications in Slack channels and share pages for discussion.
• Microsoft Teams: Share and edit Confluence pages within your Teams environment.
• Google Drive: Embed Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides directly into your Confluence pages.
• Draw.io: Create and embed professional diagrams, flowcharts, and wireframes.
• Gliffy: Another powerful diagramming tool that integrates seamlessly for visual documentation.

Integrations are typically managed through the Atlassian Marketplace, where you can find and install apps to connect to your other software.

Confluence Alternatives

• Notion: A popular all-in-one workspace that combines notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. It is often seen as more flexible and modern but can be less structured than Confluence.
• Slab: A knowledge hub focused on simplicity and a clean user experience. It integrates well with other tools like Slack and Google Drive and is a strong choice for internal knowledge bases.
• ClickUp: A project management platform that includes a robust 'Docs' feature. It's a good alternative for teams who want their documentation and task management in a single tool.
• Microsoft SharePoint: Part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, SharePoint is a powerful tool for document management and creating intranets, often favored by large enterprises already invested in Microsoft products.
• Guru: A knowledge management solution that focuses on delivering information to your team within the tools they already use. It uses AI to suggest relevant knowledge to users.

Confluence API

Yes, Confluence provides a comprehensive REST API that allows developers to build custom integrations, automate tasks, and interact with Confluence data programmatically. You can use the API to create pages, add comments, manage users, and much more.

To use the API, you need to authenticate your requests. You can generate a free API token from your Atlassian account security settings. Go to your profile, select 'Settings' > 'API tokens', and create a new token. This token is used for Basic authentication in your API calls.

Here is a basic developer API example using curl to get content from a page:

curl --request GET \
  --url 'https://your-domain.atlassian.net/wiki/rest/api/content/{pageId}' \
  --user 'your-email@example.com:<api_token>' \
  --header 'Accept: application/json'

For full details, developers should consult the official Atlassian Confluence Cloud REST API documentation.

Confluence Affiliate program

Atlassian does not offer a traditional affiliate program where individuals earn a commission for referrals. Instead, they have a comprehensive Atlassian Solution Partner Program. This program is designed for companies that provide services like consulting, implementation, training, and custom development for Atlassian products.

Partners get access to resources, training, and support from Atlassian. There are different partner tiers, such as Silver, Gold, and Platinum, based on their level of investment and expertise. If you are a consultant or a company interested in partnering with Atlassian, you should visit their official Partner Program page to learn about the requirements and application process.