Confluence is Atlassian’s enterprise wiki and social collaboration solution, used by tens of thousands of teams around the world to collaborate on content and documentation. With the most recent releases, the Confluence development teams have delivered a number of innovative features that make collaboration across different teams even more streamlined and efficient.
Atlassian presented the latest features at the Team ’23 customer and user conference. They introduce new types of content, reduce manual tasks and open up additional options to integrate external stakeholders.
New types of content in Confluence
Confluence pages have always been able to do more than just display text. Teams embed images, data from other apps, roadmaps, Jira tickets, code snippets, and more into their pages. But in the modern workplace, with its highly distributed tools, the way people work together is evolving and things are becoming increasingly complex. Atlassian has reacted to this and released two new features that take this development into account: whiteboards and databases.
Make ideas fly with whiteboards
Every project starts with an idea – and most teams today use physical or digital whiteboards to collect suggestions and flashes of inspiration. And then? How does the good idea become an actionable plan in Confluence and Jira that people can actually continue working with? With the new whiteboards in Confluence, which will soon enter the beta phasethe operationalization succeeds seamlessly:
- On whiteboards, teams can brainstorm freely with digital sticky notes, shapes, stamps, stickers, timers and pens.
- Sticky notes can be converted to Jira tickets and Confluence pages with a click.
- The team can visualize the work by arranging all Jira issues in one view and seeing the relationships and dependencies between them. Supporting content from products such as Figma or Loom can be integrated with the help of smart links. In addition, bulk actions such as bulk assignment can be performed on the issues.
The following short video from Atlassian shows the whiteboards in action:
Databases to link and track work
Beyond the whiteboards, Atlassian is hard at work developing a new, structured way to link and track work in Confluence without having to manually update masses of pages. A new type of content should help to depict this: Confluence databases, which will also be ready for beta soon.
These are structured, dynamic tables that help teams organize information such as Jira tasks, Confluence pages, owners, completion dates and statuses in individual database tables. Users then have the option of referencing specific cells and rows or entire tables elsewhere in Confluence; the synchronization takes place in real time. In this way, the team is always automatically linked to the latest information.
The use cases for these databases are diverse. HR teams can track all their job candidates in the application process, marketing teams their complex ad campaigns, IT teams their equipment and much more. As soon as a team member adds a new applicant, advertisement or notebook to the relevant database, the update is automatic everywhere.
Work more efficiently thanks to AI, automation and analytics
Regardless of which tools a team uses for their work, the greatest effectiveness can be achieved when AI, automation and analytics functions are seamlessly implemented in the processes. The Atlassian platform is the common technology base of the Atlassian cloud products, and it enables Confluence to be equipped with such features.
Accelerated by Atlassian Intelligence
These days we are observing the next evolutionary step of AI-supported technologies on the web. And Atlassian is right in the middle: The AI feature Atlassian Intelligence is a kind of virtual team member. It opens up whole new ways to work more effectively and efficiently in Confluence.
More speed: Atlassian Intelligence can help, for example, to generate action points and next steps from telephone transcripts, to pull the essential information from several Confluence pages or to change the key of a text.
Continuous Learning: Atlassian Intelligence provides unique institutional knowledge about the company at all times. A simple hover over a term is enough to bring up a definition that leads to more understanding and context.
Quick Answers: Instead of waiting for a teammate to respond, Atlassian Intelligence acts as a 24/7 virtual assistant, pulling answers to questions from the organization’s existing information.
Also for this feature a beta waitlist is available.
Focus on meaningful work and automate repetitive tasks
Automation for Confluence empowers admins to manage content, organize spaces, or notify people of important updates without any manual overhead. When admins create rules, automation works behind the scenes, performing routine tasks that would otherwise have to be done manually. For a number of common use cases, Confluence provides preconfigured automation rules.
For more information on this feature set, see our previous post: Automate content management tasks with Automation for Confluence.
Get more value from data with Atlassian Analytics
Atlassian Analytics opens new ways to bring all of the company’s data into a single data lake to generate insights that drive efficiencies. Atlassian Analytics is now generally available as part of the Cloud Enterprise plan. This feature set can be used to track key metrics and better understand how spaces, pages, and other features are being used.
For introductory information on the possibilities, see this article: Atlassian Data Lake and Atlassian Analytics: Data for a Big Picture View.
Expand and scale collaboration with externals
Most teams are not self-contained units, but have various points of contact with external people such as customers, partners, agencies or manufacturers. To support content collaboration with externals, Confluence now offers seamless and secure integration with individuals outside the organization.
Invite external users as guests in individual areas
The option to invite so-called single-space guests is a great way to integrate outsiders who can then read, edit or create content in that specific area, while keeping all other areas of the Confluence system safe and inaccessible.
The feature is currently in beta and will be rolled out to the general public shortly.
Sharing information with public links on the Internet
Confluence users now have a new way to share content with a wider audience across the web. Public links can be used, for example, to set up customer FAQs, create release notes, publish shareholder information and much more.
Public links are read-only pages published on the web. However, these pages are not indexed by search engines, so the content remains under control as much as possible. This allows teams to share content externally without having to pay for an additional seat in Confluence.
Working with Embedded Pages in different ways but together
Bringing more people into the collaboration means having to consider more tools. Every team and organization has their favorite software tools, and that in turn can lead to inefficient and annoying context switching. It’s good that Confluence can now connect many of these tools.
Users now have the option of embedding and editing entire Confluence pages in products such as Microsoft Teams, Lucid-Miro, Launch Darkly and Invision. This is really handy for providing context and bringing up-to-date information into the team’s tools. And the list of supported solutions is just the beginning: more partners will be added gradually over the course of the year.
Your partner for Confluence and Atlassian Cloud
The new features make the Confluence platform even more powerful and flexible because they open up completely new application scenarios that help teams do their work faster and better. Do you have questions about Confluence and the Atlassian cloud products? We are Atlassian Platinum Partner and are happy to support you with all aspects of implementation, migration and licensing!
Further information
Knowledge Management and Collaboration: An Introduction to Confluence Cloud
Automate content management tasks with Automation for Confluence
The new Karma app: Build attractive, inviting, structured Confluence pages with just a few clicks
High-quality, attractive Confluence pages with aura and the most important use cases