Are other organizations using Confluence AND SharePoint?

Lynsey Nelson1

Are other companies using Confluence AND Sharepoint? Does it make sense to use both, and if so, what type of content is best suited for one or the other? Which organizational units are best suited for working out of one or the other? Does it make sense to have PMO using Confluence along with Dev/Ops/QA teams if we already have Sharepoint licenses, rather than purchasing additional Confluence licenses? I'm curious to hear what other companies are doing as far as the demarcation between these two tools.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

There's a number, yes.  It's because the two systems do different things.  It's a lot more complex than this, but deep down, Sharepoint is a document repository, and Confluence is a wiki.

A document repository is good for holding and tracking swathes of documents - discrete objects that people work on locally and then store the relevant versions of.  A wiki is more dynamic and collaborative, there are no discrete objects, you edit a page on screen, and it's presented to other users as soon as you click save.

Some places need document repositories - lawyers would be a good example, as they need those discrete fixed documents.  A lot of places suit a wiki more, as they need lots of people to contribute and have the latest information there instantly.

You can tell when a place is using the wrong thing quite quickly.  I've heard Sharepoint referred to as "does-not-Sharepoint", "Sharepointelessly" and my favourite, "You know, that thing where documents go to die".  All of those comments were from places that simply don't need document objects, they were doing development, support, authoring, etc.  And equally, I went to a site that sounded keen on Confluence recently and left telling them "Confluence simply isn't for you" (that was one of the things that made me mention lawyers earlier).

In the end, it's down to how people want to work.  Most users will find a wiki suits them better than they think.  Some simply need a repository.  A lot of places can make good use of both (and in those cases, the Sharepoint connector add-on for Confluence is well worth a look)