Is confluence suitable to be used as DMS?

[ieva.driksna]

Hi, I wonder have you any experience of using confluence as a document management tool (system to be used to receive, register, track, manage and store documents, as for example DocLogix)? If yes, can I limit access not only to folder level but also in document level (for example, in an agreement register to have the ability to share access to the certain agreement - marketing people can see only their agreement, people team -their, but at the end of the day all agreements are in one register). And please also let me know is it possible to introduce in system document indexation according to created numeration system in the company or only random system provided numbers are possible? Thank you. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

It depends on what you plan to store "documents" as.

If your documents are translatable to Confluence pages, handled by and edited in Confluence, then the answer is yes, as that is what it is for.

If your documents are lumps of data designed to be edited in other systems, then no, Confluence is probably a very poor choice.  External files are handled as attachments in Confluence, with the page tree being the "folders".  There's no direct browser for them, you navigate via the page tree, relying on the content of the Confluence page to be what you're looking for.  You can do the permissions and indexing for search (although only some file types can be indexed), but the content of Confluence remains the prime focus of searching.  Metadata and things like numeration or tagging mostly have to be done manually for attachments, and the attachments on a page are a simple flat versioned list.

Attachments are intended as support for the content of a page, not the focus of it, so the handling of them does not need to be that powerful.  Hence, if you're looking for a clever document storage system, I would not recommend Confluence