Atlassian Confluence vs. XWiki

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

XWiki is very well suited for a very wide range of web collaboration and web development.

• 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

• XWiki makes it easy to manage semi-structured information, which is at the heart of every knowledge nexus of organizations. It makes it easy to manage in a single system both structured data (such as memberships, projects), and unstructured data.
• XWiki offers a very rich API for creating enterprise applications quickly that are easy to maintain and evolve collaboratively.
• XWiki templating and skinning system is extremely flexible and powerful.

• 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

• While the basic pieces are available for turning XWiki into an advanced semantic system, some features could be made available more prominently to the user for easing the use of faceted and typed links, paving the way for a new era of collaborative knowledge sharing.

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.

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

XWiki key differentiators in my opinion:

• Fast app development framework with very rich API
• Open-source strategy, opening the way to collaborative innovation

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

• XWiki has a positive impact on the OW2 communication and collaborations strategies. It saves time when developing applications.