Confluence Review

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Review of Confluence powered by the Slant community.

Confluence is a Java based wiki solution by Atlassian.

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What are the best tools for managing multiple version control repositories?

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Pros

Pro
Easy to use

Confluence offers a highly intuitive and user friendly experience without sacrificing the advanced feature set of a typical wiki.

Pro
Integrates well with other services

Confluence integrates well with other Atlassian offerings like Jira, a bug tracking system.

Pro
Keyboard shortcuts support

There are a lot of shortcuts to speed up the interactions with the editor, viewscreen, workbox, etc.

Pro
Hierarchical page tree

Most wikis don't have a page hierarchy, but Confluence has one, and this is very helpful for a lot of people.

Pro
Great plugin ecosystem

Confluence offers a huge selection of paid and free plugins across all kinds of different categories that extend the functionality of the core software.

Pro
Document and inline commenting offers low-commitment opportunities to contribute

Often someone that is not an expert/owner of a process is hesitant to edit documentation of someone that is. The ability to merely comment on the existing material helps elicit improvements without requiring as much boldness.

Pro
LDAP integration

Confluence provides built-in connectors for:

Microsoft Active Directory
Apache Directory Server (ApacheDS)
Apple Open Directory
Fedora Directory Server
Novell eDirectory
OpenDS
OpenLDAP
OpenLDAP Using Posix Schema
Posix Schema for LDAP
Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition (DSEE)
A generic LDAP directory server

Cons

Con
Pretty slow

The hosted version feels slow and can be annoying to use regularly.

Con
Search is utterly terrible

It requires having to put in almost exactly what's needed to get a result on the front page. Defeats the purpose of the problem it's supposedly solving.

Con
Many unresolved bugs

Atlassian is notorious for not resolving bugs for months or even years in Confluence.

Con
Costs money

Although inexpensive, starting at $10/mo for 10 users, many other solutions are free.

Con
WSIWYG editor is broken

Markup is not saved and complicated to use.
Not suitable for dev teams.

Con
Redesigns are rolled out without thorough testing

There were two major redesigns for Confluence (cloud version) in the last couple of years, and both of them were released in a very immature state, causing a lot of trouble for existing clients.