Confluence: A Remote-friendly Team Workspace For Better Collaboration

Working efficiently and effectively at a distance in today’s distributed teams can be challenging. To help bridge the gap between online collaboration tools and in-person team workspaces, Confluence was created as a remote-friendly workspace to foster better collaboration with colleagues both near and far. With its intuitive interface, anyone from novice technologists to seasoned software professionals can easily create rich digital spaces to collaborate on projects.

Looking for a platform where you can do collaborative work management? Read more to learn about Confluence by Atlassian.

Tired of Struggling with Collaboration and Communication in your Remote team? 

Confluence makes it easy to collaborate, communicate, and get work done together across teams. Our software provides easy access to files, documents, and discussions so everybody is always on the same page, no matter how far away they are. With its intuitive design interface, you can quickly share ideas or information without jumping through hoops. 

Get ready for real-time collaboration on projects from anywhere in the world. With intuitive navigation, you can easily track progress, manage projects, and organize quickly so your team works smarter. Stop wasting time setting up clunky or outdated systems and start collaborating today with confidence – it couldn’t be easier!  

What is Confluence? Your Collaboration Tool.

Confluence is a product developed by Atlassian. It is the same company behind other software like Jira Software, Jira Align, Trello, and BitBucket. 

It is a collaboration tool for sharing, storing, and working on different things. It empowers you to create project plans, write meeting notes, and submit project requirements at the same time as other members of your team for better collaborative work management. 

You also get to edit; everyone can view those changes simultaneously.

Furthermore, the word confluence means merging two or more rivers into one, and this is what it can do for your team. It combines all the necessary elements to create a straightforward workflow to get more meaningful results quickly. In an ever-evolving industry of property we’ve used Confluence to establish and build key relationships across the business in a truly unprecedented way,” comments Ruban Selvanayagam of Property Solvers.

An Atlassian product that will change the way your team collaborates!

Are you tired of the tons of work piling up here and there that you do not know where to start? Are you feeling hopeless if you can complete your projects right on time?

The truth is, that getting things done takes a lot of work. You need to deal with documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more from everywhere. Information is spread out everywhere. What makes it even more challenging is that people from your team working on different projects are scattered in different parts of the world.

You need to get everything organized. Put all information in one place so that when your team members need certain information, they know how and where to find it.

How do you gather all the information in one place? How do you organize all of your team’s projects and tasks? How do you get everyone to coexist in a common space?

How do you effectively get things to the finish line?

In Confluence, you can brainstorm ideas, create strategies, make plans as a team, designate tasks, and bring in all the relevant information.

How can it help you?

Confluence can help solve your concerns and problems in your business in many ways. 

     1. In the past, when your team members submitted project proposals or any other requirements, you would need to check them individually and write your comments. When you’re done, you send it back to them for revision.

Confluence’s accelerated feedback loop lets you write inline comments on the attached files and pages. Your team members can view your comments in real-time and act on them quickly.

     2. Documentation plays a vital role in every business operation and compliance. It fosters confidence within your company, prospective investors, and clients. Sometimes, doing this task can take a lot of time and effort. It steals your precious time away from what is more important – your business.

Confluence makes documentation more straightforward and efficient with its Templates. These templates include ready-made solutions for your day-to-day documentation.

     3. Are you or your team always on the go? Are you in separate locations? With the rise of the virtual working model, more and more companies have people working from different places. Collaboration may be challenging compared to face-to-face meetings, where you can voice your opinion, ideas, and suggestions in person.

But with Confluence’s collaborative work management features, you can collaborate from anywhere using any device. You can sync the tool with your Android or iOS device. From there, you can monitor your team’s activities, provide feedback, and remain in sync between desktop, laptop, and mobile.

     4. Is your company comprised of different departments? Do you have different tasks per team? You could be dumped with various files from different departments if you do not organize them efficiently. How will you find the information you need when you need it if all the files are jampacked in one huge place?

Confluence, albeit putting all your information in one place, allows you to have separate workspaces for each department. This would enable you to have organized data and a smooth workflow.  

     5. Have you ever experienced creating a project where you modified it many times, only to realize later that the previous versions were better? Did you know that Confluence has a feature called page and file versioning?

This is the problem solved by Confluence’s ability to save several project versions. Confluence creates a version you can easily return to whenever you change the project or submission. Its technical documentation is also helpful for any project team that needs to keep track of the changes made over time. As you create pages, even a blank page, there will be a page history that you can refer to.

     6. There are times when the company needs to address everyone in it. It may be an announcement or news that needs to be shared across the company. 

This tool offers a common venue to share this announcement where everyone can read it and participate actively in a discussion.

     7. Have you ever wondered, what if your workspace is already full of documentation, can you find the one you need right away? 

There is a couple of ways to find what you are searching for in Confluence, and they are all explained in the quick search tips section. To help you get things done fast, it features a search panel on the workspace itself.

Who uses Confluence?

     1. Companies

Over 2100 companies are now reaping the benefits of this collaborative work management tool. Small companies still starting up can use this tool to focus more on growing their business. Even prominent names and companies use Confluence. That only shows their credibility and authority regarding GTD or getting things done. 

Some of the popular names that trust Confluence are the following:

     2. Developers

Regarding anything computer and internet-related, whose words are most reliable and authentic? Of course, that would be the words of the developers who use and study it the most.

Confluence has about 14,000 developers on StackShare to back them up. These developers all stated that they use Confluence at work, and typically, their teams will already use the Jira platform, the #1 software development tool used by agile teams.

Does Confluence come with Jira?

A lot of users always ask, does Confluence come with Jira? Confluence is a standalone product in the Atlassian product line, just like the Jira platform. Both products have separate costs, with Jira coming under the “Plan, Track, and Support” product line and Confluence coming under the “Collaborate” product line.

Each of these products has a per-user monthly and annual fee which ranges from Free to $14 USD per user for Jira and Free up to $10 USD per user (monthly) for Confluence. It is important to understand that both products have different applications and use cases, and Atlassian offers flexible plans that allow your team to scale up and down as required.

Can Confluence be integrated with other apps like Trello?

Hundreds of integrations and extensions with 3rd party apps are compatible with Confluence. You can get a hold of them through the Atlassian marketplace. Some of them can be integrated through a plugin.

To enable your team to move projects more quickly and divert helpdesk tickets, you can integrate your Confluence tool with Jira Service Desk and Jira Software. Apart from that, it can also support several types of files that you are working on. One example is the Google Drive files.

Finding the right app for your team

To find the perfect app or integration for your team:

1.  Open Confluence Cloud and tap Apps to open the menu
2. Tap Find new apps to go to the Atlassian Marketplace (if you already have at least one app installed, you’ll have to tap Manage Apps to open the app administration page first)

From there, you can search the Marketplace without leaving Confluence. Only site administrators can install, enable, and remove apps.

A few of our favorites are listed below, but don’t fret; the Marketplace has more apps available than you could imagine. All of these apps and integrations are specifically built to supercharge your productivity.

Table Enhancer for Confluence

Currently, the following enhancements are available:

• Row numbers: Add consecutive row numbers as first cells to every row. Row numbers are calculated before, after, or independent from initial sorting.
• Initial sorting: Choose the column index and the sort order after which the table should be sorted initially.
• Total line: Add a total line to your table that sums up all summable columns of your table.
• Freeze rows and columns: Choose the number of rows and columns that should be fixed at the top and left of the table while scrolling.

Simple Tips for Using the Confluence

1. Take advantage of real-time messaging, video chats, and calls – Real-time communication is essential for working remotely, allowing teams to stay connected regardless of location.

2. Streamline team-wide communication with news feeds – Keep your whole team updated on the latest news by creating a dedicated Confluence page for announcements and updates that everyone can see.

3. Leverage wikis for document storage and sharing – Wikis are a great way to share documents, resources, and information among team members.

4. Use Confluence Spaces for project planning and tracking – Create a dedicated space to organize, track, and plan each project in detail.

5. Utilize automation tools for streamlining processes – Automation tools can help streamline and simplify the most complex tasks.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Conclusion: Should you pay for Confluence?

Indeed, there are many things you can do with Confluence. It addresses several problems that you and your team usually encounter at work. You can also explore many features, add-ons, and integrations to make your experience more efficient and worthwhile.

No matter how many tasks get assigned to it the members, no matter how much documentation is saved and shared, no matter how many people are in your team, and no matter what location they may be in, Confluence software has made it possible for you to start a project and carry it through the finish line.

While getting things done takes a lot of work, it only needs one effective collaboration and organization tool to help you reach the finish line successfully. At the end of the day, as they say, “Collaboration divides the task and multiplies the success.”