Atlassian Confluence vs. Socialtext (discontinued)

Atlassian Confluence is a great tool for housing important information and resources across the organization, as it's very easy to search and find content across different teams and departments. The search function is mostly very accurate and the additional tagging with keywords also helps in the search experience. It's also good at tagging other team members, which triggers an automated email to them. Atlassian Confluence also has an extensive template library for all kinds of purposes like project management, etc., which saves time overall.

Incentivized

We use Social Text as a platform to air our issues with different departments. We voice our concerns and suggestions so we can help find a solution to the problems we incur on a daily basis. We need to have social text as an app so we can communicate in real time not only during work hours.

• Its integration with Jira for tracking development and the bugs and work linked to detailed Confluence documentation.
• We use it extensively for writing Software Product Requirement Documents, feature specs, architecture designs, and retrospectives.
• Our company follows compliance very seriously, so it helps in streamlining all documentation for ISO27001/27017 compliance and security-related information.
• Its integration with various tools allows us to create flow diagrams which are often required to make client and customer understand the overall flow of interactions across various modules of the design architecture

Incentivized

• Ease of the use of application
• Application does not freeze while attaching data files or pictures
• Unlimited data storage

• You need to watch over the structure of the content yourself. if not you can get information added anywhere so nobody can find it.
• Top search field is hard to set to only search a section of pages.
• You really need to think your structure through before starting. a guide when setting up at the start could help in that perspective.

Incentivized

• Search needs a ton of improvements. It was very slow a year ago
• Search result quality was also not that good
• I know they have improved their UI recently but when i used it last year it did not really have any design elements which could be used to make the articles look more presentable. It was important for us as we used it for external communication as well.

I am confident that Atlassian can come with additional and innovative macros and functions to add value to Confluence. In 6 months, Atlassian transformed a good collaborative tools into a more comprehensive system that can help manage projects and processes, as well as "talk" with other Atlassian products like Jira. We are in fact learning more about Jira to evaluate a possible fit to complement our tool box.

We have a lot of info in Socialtext already. It would be hard to get all that info out and port it to a different system

It's very intuitive for most things, making it easy to jump in and start creating pages and collaborating. This makes it ideal for onboarding new members to the team. There are a few areas that could be a little smoother, but overall it's a great experience.

Incentivized

I do not recall having outages or applications error so far, very reliable and available.

Incentivized

We never worked against the tide while using Confluence. Everything loads considerably fast, even media components like videos (hosted on the platform or embed external videos from Youtube, for example). We are not using heavy media components a lot, but in the rare occasion we happen to use one we have no problems whatsoever.

Incentivized

This rating is specifically for Atlassian's self-help documentation on their website. Often times, it is not robust enough to cover a complex usage of one of their features. Frequently, you can find an answer on the web, but not from Atlassian. Instead, it is usually at a power user group elsewhere on the net.

Incentivized

Overall, I am very satisfied with the initial implementation (and the subsequent upgrades and implementations made over the years).

This product has never rose to the level of being an major issue at an executive level. It has quietly and valiantly done it's job for our company!

Incentivized

Atlassian Confluence is a super handy hub for sharing ideas and keeping all your docs in one place. While Jira Service Management is more about handling tickets and support issues, Atlassian Confluence really makes teamwork easy. I feel Atlassian Confluence is user-friendly, integrates smoothly with other Atlassian tools, and helps everyone stay in sync. It's great for brainstorming, and project planning as well. Overall, it is a great way to boost collaboration and ensure all team members are on the same page.

Incentivized

I frankly like Confluence better than socialtext because of the speed and the quality of search. They also have better design elements which can help make the articles pleasant to the eyes.

This tool is very adaptable. So much so we use it for three completely separate projects, in three very different ways.

Incentivized

• Merging instances has saved search time - We used to have several instances of Atlassian Confluence, which means they're separate and so can't communicate with each other. We've since merged into one instance and now with the help of the search feature can find the documents you're looking for in seconds rather than several minutes.
• Cross linking product assets streamlines following paper trails - Being able to click on a BitBucket link from a Confluence page which then links to a JIRA ticket means you can follow paper trails really easily; seconds rather than several minutes.

Incentivized

• We get solutions to concerns much faster
• We promote interactions with the other depts
• We listen and have discussions