Confluence

Opmerkingen: I use this almos daily and I think it is a great tool for team performance. It allows to create and view all the info in no time and pretty well structured.

Pluspunten: The main advantage about Confluence is that is part of the Atlassian Suite which involves Jira and Bitbucket among others. This makes pretty easy to integrate them and add quick references to a jira issue with just write the reference number.
The text editor in Confluence is pretty complete, allowing to create really decent pages for any kind of documentation desired. The possibility of create nested pages makes really easy to organize the information in "chapters" "sub-chapters" and so on, giving your documentation a really neat look.
This feature also allows to segregate the information, so you can have your product's documentation on one place, perfectly organized and set another "Chapter" for your team info, where you could store info about code conventions, timetables about overtime or availability, and so on.
Confluence is also useful in order to create software designs, since it allows to create pages where you can paste your diagrams and so on and allows to discuss on them by adding comments or remarks.
And the Watch utility keep you posted via e-mail whenever a page you're watching is modified in any way so you can keep track of a discussion or whatever.

Minpunten: So far didn't find any big issue with confluence. Maybe for beginners it has a bit of learning curve and some option like the page nesting and so on is a bit difficult to learn. Besides that, I think is a pretty complete software.
Something I miss is the possibility of "downloading" a page with all nested ones into a pdf. That would be a great feature in order to generate documentation files.

Opmerkingen: Confluence has become the place for us to collect information, across our business. We use it document our processes and policies (the access controls prove useful there), and our development teams use it on a daily basis to record the outcomes of discussions and to share knowledge.

Pluspunten: Confluence does a good job as a tool for writing, organising and viewing all kinds of documentation.
It's fairly wiki-esque, but with a more intuitive editor for pages that should make it easier to pick up for new users that might be more familiar with, say, Microsoft Word.
As an Atlassian product, you can expect a full set of tools for managing access to different pages and areas across your organisation, making it more appropriate for enterprises than more basic wiki software that doesn't always provide the same level of control.
Another advantage is the high level of integration. 'Macros' allow users to include a variety of rich content, and are customisable. Examples of integrations include JIRA, Trello, Microsoft Office, G Suite, and more. The 'Atlassian Marketplace' can be used to find and install more macros.

Minpunten: Although the editor is easier to use than the markdown used by a lot of other wiki software, it can occasionally be frustrating to work with. Not all macros and formatting settings behave exactly the same, so while you'd be able to fix these issues directly in markdown, you can end up trying out a bunch of different tools before you find the one you need to achieve your goal.
As with all collections of articles, organising pages can become difficult. The software itself provides basic tools that allow you to define a structure for your pages, and these work well, but it still requires considerable discipline as your use of the software scales up.

Opmerkingen: We are using Confluence as our internal documentation storage system. It allows us to easily create documentation and share it among our various teams while controlling access to the teams. It is better than a document storage system for this purpose, as it allows us to create the documents on the fly, cutting a step out of the process and making documents easier to manage. We host it on site, so it is more secure than a solution like Google Docs as it's not on the web.

Pluspunten: We use Confluence on a daily basis to document various aspects of our organization. There is a large variety of built-in templates for a variety of sorts of documents. We heavily utilize the how-to articles to record procedures. Although it does link with other Altassian products, like Jira, we don't use that functionality currently as we run Confluence on-site and Jira in the cloud. The upgrade to version 6 greatly increased the usefulness of the product, as it brought in concurrent editing, ala Google Docs, which was functionality we needed when developing procedures for an event as a group. The search and indexing capabilities make it easy to find a document if its location is not obvious.

Minpunten: Search and indexing can lose usefulness in the event you have many similar documents, like say a checklist that is executed often. I would like a function to be able to click a check box to "ignore results like this." The initial setup of Confluence was not completely straightforward, however, we were installing on an older version, version 5. (The upgrade to version 6 went much smoother.) I would prefer an omnibus install package if it doesn't currently have that rather than having to install PostgreSQL and the application. The LDAP integration could have been a little bit smoother than it was, although it is in line with the other Atlassian products I have integrated.

Opmerkingen: My coworker and I use confluence extensively to document all of the work that we perform. As IT staff many issues that we come across will be repeated ad-infinitum. As such to simply be able to look up the fix from any location with internet access increases efficiency many times over. The notification ability helps all users to see what has been changed, when, and by whom providing an excellent level of accountability.

Pluspunten: It is extremely easy to create a large number of documents, it is possible to reference other documents within them to facilitate ease of research, and documents can all be put into sub-folders to contain them within separate trees to aid with organisation.
The mobile app is extremely useful for reading documentation whilst on the go - an example would be that we keep Video Conference details on one page that I have favorited, as such when I set up a VC from any location I am able to rapidly find the correct details to dial.
The search functionality allows for extremely quick location of relevant documents. On many occasions I have not been able to find what I need looking through the lists, only to immediately find it on the first search. Indeed I no longer look through the list as the search is so efficient.
When changes are made to documents it is possible to set it up to notify other members of the team so that they are able to see what has been done.

Minpunten: The only minor issue I have discovered with confluence is that when creating new documents setting the location is not as smooth as I would like.
Specifically I need to begin creating the document, then select "Move" and finally put it into the desired place. This does not really cause issues as it is still a quick process, however a one click setup would be appreciated.

Opmerkingen: Overall I would recommend using Confluence, but would caution people on how they rollout the new platform to their company. Ensuring that the expectations are communicated clearly for how the platform will be used, by whom and the frequency, are very helpful things to communicate when preparing your team to switch.

Pluspunten: The interactive features of Confluence serves as the best feature and function of this platform! Our organization is relatively small (20-30 employees) and is a Foundation that interacts with other nonprofits in the area. As a result we had many touch points in the community through various teams and often time what we were doing would get lost. In an effort to improve our internal communication our organization adopted Confluence as a means of servicing our company. We used the blog feature heavily which proved to be the best method of communication internally and cut down on the amount of emails adding to the clutter in our inboxes. It also allowed discussions to happen seamlessly and served as a point of reference for folks to easily access when needed.

Minpunten: It wasn't always very user friendly. Our organization consists of a variety of ages, so the way that people have engaged with technology is also varied. There are times that adding spaces or pages have proved to be a challenge for those who don't consider themselves as "technologically savvy". There was a bit of a learning curve for me in learning to how to use the software, but the customer support team was helpful in walking me through difficulties. The mobile function also wasn't the best depending on how users have different spaces setup.