Talk:Confluence (software)

comment by Italicus1632

I guess it is a bot that added that note. I created this page because I had to see that product in my work and the page does not exist yet. Somebody has to start from somewhere. Note that I have no interest in that company. On [advertising: "Note that simply having a company or product as its subject does not qualify an article for this criterion." Concerning the form I used the same pattern as MediaWiki. If somebody does not like this stub, you are welcome to improve it. Italicus1632 (talk) 22:39, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Article title

Question: Does Atlassian Confluence sound like the right name for this article? Italicus1632 (talk) 22:40, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope. Moved it. --Orange Mike | Talk 02:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Not Open Source

This article is in the "Open Source CMS" category but Confluence isn't actually Open Source (as is stated directly in the article text). This is misleading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.147.57.6 (talk) 10:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

The source code is available to licensees. So yes, it is "Open Source". --Demonkoryu (talk) 15:41, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Comparison With Mediawiki

Does anyone know how this compares with Mediawiki? --Robinson weijman (talk) 15:46, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

There is an article describing the differences between Mediawiki and Confluence. Basically Confluence is optimized for collaboration within a business - It has things like a built-in Rich Text Editor, page hierarchies, support for LDAP and includes technical support among other things. (Barconati (talk) 05:23, 9 April 2009 (UTC))

Mediawiki can also import the LDAP and contains Rich Text Editor. The "page hierarchy" is NOT advantage but Information Architecture fundamental error for the wiki projects.

Thanks for that reply. You've summarised the advantages of Confluence - what advantages does MediaWiki have? --Robinson weijman (talk) 15:24, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki is free software. All the feature mentioned above are available as plugins/extensions. The reason people choose confluence is that it comes packaged with sane enterprise features, (sort of) integration with other systems, both atlassian and third party. And there is official tech support. You don't get restrictive license agreements with MediaWiki, but it would be tricky, and not-so-time-effective to enable the features that "just work" with confluence. But if you're just after a "feature comparison", then MediaWiki wins by a longshot. 81.92.64.5 (talk) 11:12, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

The most of the time the Confluece Admins spend to disable all features that are in the package because it makes the tool too complex for end-users (who then feel lost in the jungle). The whole Atlasian Wiki is based on the in-sane concepts which have been considered as obsolete 3-5 years ago. It is typical peace of SW designe by coders without an idea of congnitive psychology, usability and all kind of these stuff.

Comparision of concepts

	Atlassian Confluence	Media Wiki
Content Organisation	1 wiki breaks down in spaces (1 space per working group/project...)	1 common space (eventually organised among "portals"
Content Structure	Tree structure - a child can have maximum 1 parent: encouraging 'bad' behaviours to create file plans	Category - content element can belong to many categories (!and the category is considered as an element too!): gives flexible taxonomical matrix - a mind-map like structures

Information retrieval is better in MediaWiki (MW) based project then in the Atlassian Confluence (AC).

The Category (MW) is unique and allows mind-map like organisation of the content, while the folkosonomies (AC) combined with tree structures are not clear.

The concept of working and personal spaces in AC brings to possibility to create within 1 instance (installation) articles with the same name which in big organisation brings funny search results like 20x article "Meeting". In MW to create new article you are forced to pass by search so there is more less likely to create an article with similar content or the same name. The content management in AC is focused on securisation of access to the information. The (R/W) rights are inherited within the tree and could be progressively restricted. The while uploading a file (img, doc ...) this is attached to the article in AC and also deleted with. This brings the behaviour 1. the information is published when available in the attachment of a page (often with no content), 2. if the attachment is of general interest it is copied to an other article to prevent its loss if the original article is deleted (and to link to the attachment in other page/article you have to include into the path the name of the collaborative space and the name of the article).

The content management in MW is manageable via categories which allows easy creation of multidimensional work-flows (stub/.../archive - request for deletion/vote/ ...); the "attachments" are "floating" in the "space", and so it is easy to find the orphans as well as link them with a several articles. Editing in AC is very much WISIWG - based on JS. This brings at 1st feeling of easy editing, but encourages the visual formatting instead of semantic one. The results of applying of several style over 1 fragment of text is sometime surprising. In the end either users have to learn the Confluence wiki tags which are very extensible and so complex or there is a need to create helpdesk dealing with the correction of the corrupted (formatting of) articles.

In MW the users are forced to learn wiki tagging - which is very restricted and so simple; there are (almost) no wiki tags for visual formatting - MW focus on the semantic values of the text. This brings also an uniformity of the content in MW.

In AC there is only edit button for the whole article - more aesthetic. In the MW there is an edit button at each heading - very ugly. The difference is seen when articles become long. The MW is based on 2 objects - article+category. By default there are 2 articles bind together to have a "result" page and "discussion" page; very simple to learn and extensible. The AC is composed of collaborative spaces, pages (=article), comments (=forum), news (=blog), labels (=folksonomy tags); very complex (already the terminology) and so cumbersome. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.169.131.14 (talk) 11:10, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank your both for your detailed replies! Certainly a lot to think about (e.g. attaching documents to articles). Does anyone else have experience of both packages? --Robinson weijman (talk) 14:01, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Conflict of interest?

Why has this tag been added? I expected to see an explanation here. Otherwise, how can it ever be removed? --Robinson weijman (talk) 17:36, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

The banner was added because User:Barconati, who is Bill Arconati, marketing manager at Confluence, has significantly edited the page. That qualifies as a conflict of interest according to our guidelines on the subject. I intend to edit the article to improve it so we can remove it, but have gotten behind with real world responsibilities. Steven Walling (talk) 20:11, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Well spotted - how did you work that out? Thanks for the information - I missed that earlier. All I saw was the tag. Surely this is only a problem if someone adds biased information though, right? --Robinson weijman (talk) 05:55, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I removed the "10 Professional Packs" note under language attribute in the Infobox which seemed to fall under this category. --81.92.64.5 (talk) 11:37, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Poor article

This is a poor article:

• the neutrality issue has been flagged for eight months,
• it says almost nothing about the product itself and
• no review comments, comparisons with other products etc.

I know it is easy to criticise but I do not have the knowledge to improve it - I am interested as a reader. People with more Wikipedia experience: how can we improve this (other than adding a deletion tag to generate interest)? --Robinson weijman (talk) 08:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Ten years later, I agree with "it says almost nothing about the product itself". I came here to learn what the product is. Their web page is full of phrases I don't understand like "Confluence is your remote-friendly team workspace where knowledge and collaboration meet." Ericjster (talk) 19:03, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Removed the COI tag from April 2009

I have rewritten more than 1/2 of this article so I have now removed the "COI" tag which dates from April 2009. The article still needs quite a lot of work but this tag is no longer required. AWHS (talk) 11:18, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Removed link to Crowd page which I've proposed for deletion

A few days ago, I created a page for Atlassian Crowd because the link to it in this article was red. Now, I think there isn't enough to say about Crowd to warrant it having its own page, so I've proposed the Crowd page for deletion and took out the link in this article. (The reference in the article to Crowd still exists, it just isn't a link any more).

Marfinan (talk) 14:37, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Comparison with SharePoint

One of the biggest debates for companies is whether to have Confluence, SharePoint, or both. Many articles have been written on this topic and it is a noteworthy point by itself. Being the start of what will be the future of content generation and delivery in the next few decades I suggest having a section on this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.13.3.89 (talk) 00:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Pattern of security issues

This is my first post, so apologies if I'm doing it wrong...

How is it that the pattern of security issues with this and other Atlassian products has not been discussed? Security is a very big deal. Here's some info...  

https://www.cvedetails.com/product/6258/Atlassian-Confluence.html?vendor_id=3578 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tlunsf (talk • contribs) 13:54, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Day zero fun time

Worth a mention?

https://www.volexity.com/blog/2022/06/02/zero-day-exploitation-of-atlassian-confluence/

Hcobb (talk) 19:02, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

How old is Confluence Cloud

Confluence cloud is a little different from server. But that transition isn't addressed? I can't find that information.

Ryan W (talk) 21:40, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Conflict of interest edit request - Confluence

• What I think should be changed (include citations):

What is Confluence?

Confluence is a collaborative knowledge hub where remote teams can create content, collaborate on work, and organize and share information, all in one place from any device. Australian software company [[1]] developed Confluence in the [[2]] programming language, and first published it in 2004. Today, Confluence is available in both on-premise via a data center and online in a cloud version. It is used by more than 85,000 customers around the world, including Redfin, HubSpot, Rent the Runway, Bloomberg, and Audi.

The content created in Confluence is organized into spaces that house pages, where users can share and edit knowledge and other content for company workflow management. Confluence provides thousands of pre-built templates and can be used for content management by a wide variety of business teams such as human resources, legal, marketing, sales, and finance, as well as technical teams like operations, development, IT, and engineering.

There are thousands of apps and integrations for Confluence made available on the Atlassian Marketplace, and users can also can build their own integrations. This allows for a more efficient user experience due to reduced toggling among various applications. Available Confluence integrations include Microsoft Teams, Command Line Interface, Slack, Lucidchart, and Google Drive.

Confluence features

In Confluence, a “space” is a modifiable work area for individuals, teams, and companies to organize and collaborate on ideas, projects, documentation, and announcements. Spaces can be customized and easily integrated with both Atlassian software tools and third-party products. Within each space are Confluence “pages” that are organized in a page tree. Users can also create pages for blogs and announcements. The Confluence search delivers results from across all spaces to which a user has access.

In addition to page creation and editing, users can collaborate and comment on pages and project plans with in-line and page-level comments that are automatically tracked in the version history. Confluence offers many visual options for its pages, such as the embedding of images, videos, GIFs, and emojis. When users mention or tag teammates or assign them a task, they are notified via in-product or through external applications like email.

Confluence offers granular permission settings for space and page management, so users can choose whether to keep a page private or share it with an entire team or company or select users. The creator can also grant view only or edit access to others. For each user, the home area features personalized activity feeds and quick access to recently visited areas, popular pages and spaces, and drafts of the user’s in-progress work. Reporting and analytics are also available for each space and page in Confluence.

The product offers the use of numerous [[3]], so users can extend the capabilities of Confluence and more quickly create dynamic content. Some examples are the Attachments macro to list files attached to a page; the Widget Connector macro to embed elements such as a YouTube video or Twitter feed in a page; and excerpt macros to define a snippet of content to be re-used on another page.

Using Smart Links, embedded links for users to access information across Atlassian and compatible third-party applications, team members can find and insert content, create and edit work, and access information from all of Atlassian’s tools, without leaving their current tab.

Use cases for teams

Confluence is designed to help teams with knowledge management, workflow management, and project and company-wide collaboration. Groups can create and maintain a space as a single source of truth with parent and nested pages, which are easily moved with [and drop] along the interactive page tree hierarchy. Teammates can review, approve, and provide feedback for each other’s work from any device. Twelve users can work on a Confluence page simultaneously, with changes automatically saved and reflected on the next published version.

Remote, hybrid, and international teams can use Confluence for a wide range of use cases, including knowledge management, intranet, project management for tech teams, and business teams, remote work, IT, software development, workflow management, marketing & sales, startups, small business, enterprise, product management, HR, and project collaboration.

Confluence offers thousands of templates based on collaboration best practices and customized for various roles, functional groups, team types, and business activities. Users can start with and modify these, or create their own spaces and pages.

Versions

Confluence is available both on-premises via a data center and as a cloud version. The [[4]] (SaaS) solution offering comes in four different plans: free, standard, premium, and enterprise. The free plan includes up to 10 users, 2GB of storage, and Community Support. When you exceed the Free plan's user limit, you are automatically upgraded to a free trial of the Standard plan. Confluence Standard includes additional features like page insights, page archive, audit logs, anonymous access, 9-5 support, and 250GB of storage. Site admins with a paid subscription to Confluence can also manage users, groups, and permissions manually or add an entire company domain.

The Premium plan also offers 24/7 Premium Support, including one-hour response times for critical issues, unlimited storage, and a 99.9% uptime SLA financially backed by service credits. The Enterprise version includes everything in the Premium plan, plus access to an unlimited number of Confluence Enterprise products.

History

Armed with a credit card and a dream, college friends Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar set out to create Atlassian. The company has been noted for its unique dual CEO structure. Atlassian, inspired by the Greek Titan, was registered as a business name in 2001. The following year, Atlassian launched its first product, [Software]. It is part of a family of products designed to help teams of all types manage work. Originally, Jira Software was designed as a bug and issue tracker, but has evolved into a powerful work management tool that integrates with Confluence.

Atlassian shipped its first cloud version of Confluence in 2011 that was free to use. In 2012, the company launched Atlassian Marketplace, an ecosystem of more than 3,000 commercial and free add-on tools and apps that integrate with Confluence. In 2014, Atlassian announced Atlassian Connect, an extensible framework for developers to build add-ons that deeply integrate with Confluence.

In 2015, Atlassian went public, listed on the NASDAQ as TEAM. That year, Atlassian combined its Git-based developer services brands, Bitbucket and Stash, under the Bitbucket name. The following year, the company launched its first native apps for the Confluence team collaboration service and Jira Software.

Shortly thereafter, Atlassian joined the Open API Initiative, a consortium that includes Apiary, Apigee, Google, IBM, Mashape, Microsoft, PayPal and others with a goal of creating a common way for describing APIs. That announcement came with the launch of Connect for Jira Service Desk, which allows third-party developers to build embeddable add-ons, and the open-sourcing of RADAR, Atlassian’s internal tool for generating API documentation.

In 2016, Sri Viswanath joined Atlassian as CTO to lead the company’s migration from data center to cloud. This involved closing down its data centers and moving Atlassian’s biggest applications, Confluence and Jira, onto AWS. This project involved turning 15-year-old code into microservices, resulting in a smaller code base. It took all of 2017 to migrate every customer over to the new system. That same year, Atlassian acquired [[5]], a web-based, [[6]]-style, list-making application that integrates with Confluence.

Two years later, the company introduced Jira Software Cloud Premium and Confluence Cloud Premium, along with the addition of free tiers to Atlassian products. In 2020, after discovering that one-fourth of its customers sought the ability to create more polished and presentable content, Atlassian added six new features to Confluence, including over 40 new templates, table visualization, multiple excerpt macros, page status, visuals in templates, and customizable panels.

Atlassian announced during a January 2022 earnings call that Sri was stepping down as CTO. In May 2022, Rajeev Rajan, formerly of Meta, joined the company as the new CTO.

• Why it should be changed: Updating for accuracy and adding citations for verifiability and credibility.

Redwoodtree23 (talk) 19:21, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi sorry but most of this is simply too PR-like to meet Wikipedia standards for neutrality and encyclopedic tone. Phrases like "Armed with a credit card and a dream," are particularly the wrong tone.

Instead of suggesting a wholesale rewrite, I'd focus on targeting the specific missing or incorrect facts that can be cited to third party source (thanks for including those). Steven Walling • talk 20:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Can you please elaborate on what you mean by "too PR-like?" Is there too much description around features and product capabilities?

What facts are incorrect? Redwoodtree23 (talk) 22:37, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

References

Paid Contributor Disclosure

. Redwoodtree23 (talk) 17:49, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

New Revisions to article

Confluence is a SaaS for team collaboration, knowledge base creation, and task and work management. Australian software company, Atlassian, developed Confluence in the Java programming language and first published it in 2004. Today, Confluence is available both on-premise via a data center and online in a cloud version.

How Confluence is organized

The content created in Confluence is organized into spaces that house pages, where users can share and edit knowledge and other content for company workflow management. In Confluence, a “space” is a modifiable work area for individuals, teams, and companies to organize and collaborate on ideas, projects, documentation, and announcements. Spaces can be customized and integrated with Atlassian software tools and third-party products.

History

Founded by college friends Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, the company has been noted for its unique dual CEO structure. Atlassian shipped its first cloud version of Confluence in 2011, which was free to use. In 2012, the company launched Atlassian Marketplace, an ecosystem of more than 3,000 commercial and free add-on tools and apps that integrate with Confluence. In 2014, Atlassian announced Atlassian Connect, an extensible framework for developers to build add-ons that deeply integrate with Confluence.

In 2015, Atlassian went public, listed on the NASDAQ as TEAM.

• Why it should be changed: Updating for accuracy and adding citations for verifiability and credibility.

~~~~ Redwoodtree23 (talk) 16:53, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: Fails WP:NPOV Lightoil (talk) 00:34, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi - I'm unclear on why revisions were rejected. Can you please clarify? 2601:640:C681:5320:1C08:9641:963A:AB43 (talk) 17:14, 23 June 2023 (UTC)