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Does Confluence Support Document Versioning and Records Managment?

unknown

My company has invested greatly in SharePoint which provides great Document Versioning (e.g. Word and Excel documents can be checked in and managed with Minor and Major Version numbers) and we build our own mechanism in SharePoint perform Records Management (e.g. Any Major version or non-draft version of a document) that is checked into the system AND has specific meta data identifying it as "Final" document is automatically copied to a special Records Management repository for 10 years). If Confluence could address these two requirements, we could replace SharePoint and go with Confluence. Are these feature available out of the box or by plug-in????

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Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

It's not a document management system, it's a wiki at its heart.

It does keep a full history of page versions though (unless you choose to remove it), and has meta data functions, and you can easily add stuff to do things like automated copying.

Rodney Hughes

I agree with Nic.. it is a wiki

There are some file handling plugins for checkin/out

... BUT ....

I cringe when I hear anyone talking about document version numbering. This usually relies on humans doing something and then finding the right version later on.

THE advantages of Confluence and its automatic versioning are twofold.

First as a wiki editing tool, it is FAR easier to manage document drafting and editing directly on screen rather than downloading/uploading documents - every User is then ALWAYS looking at and working on the latest version of the text.

Secondly if you do have to use file attachments, let Confluence archive the old versions - you can still access them via the Attachment page, but again, even having a link on the main page will ALWAYS point to the latest version of the attachment. The trick here is to stop humans doing things such as changing the file name with some adhoc user-made-up suffix. Leave the file name EXACTLY as it was and Confluence will just archive the old version when a new version is uploaded.

So you can forget about this cumbersome manual "final" metadata thing with your Sharepoint processes - it is not automatic and it relies on being correctly assigned .. and what is a revision of a final referred to ???. Bound to happen over its 10-year life!!

The check in/out process is open to two people checking out the same document and uploading two different versions.
But still, both versions are saved so you can re-merge them if you have to. Alternatively the first User locks the page for editing using Page Restrictions to just themselves so that it prevents other Users uploading. They could also lock it as View Restricted so other Users can't even download it whilst the first User is working on it. No real need for a plugin.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

And, in 6 onwards, you don't need to do page locking at all, as you can do concurrent editing.

Aron Gombas _Midori_

I agree that replicating the same processes that you had in SharePoint may not be the best approach. You should probably redesign your processes to leverage the Confluence way of thinking.

unknown

Thank You for your feedback and candid responses. I appreciate that my current usage of SharePoint and it rigidity surrounding versions and records management make many of you cringe. The reality of my company's environment is that we operate in a regulated environment where our employees or customers can take legal action against us and will cite references to documents that were exposed to them at points in time. We use SharePoint today to collaborate with draft/minor versions of documents (e.g. employee handbook). When a version is ready to publish (a major version) this is what is exposed to the employees. We need to keep 10 years of these final/major versions. It sounds like confluence is great for the collaboration portion, but lacks on the published/major/final versions and the retention of those published/major/final versions for 10 years. Also, our company has an internal goal to have only one system of record for the documents we create and everyone points to that instance. So we would not want to draft in Confluence and publish through SharePoint as this would be two systems of record and one is likely to get out of sync. Does not sound like that Confluence will serve all my company needs given our regulatory requirements and desire for one system of record point in time version for 10 years.

Evangelos Mantadakis

Hi @[deleted],

For the Confluence Cloud, we have introduced a revision number feature with the QC Documents for Confluence Cloud plugin .

The plugin is available for the Confluence Cloud.

This plug in enables you to create a matrix to link the 'revision number' (major number) with 'Confluence version numbers'

More information is available here .

rbonora

HI @Nic , thanks for your comment. Could you please elaborate more about the meta-data function and the automated copying?

Thanks.

Rodrigo Fernandez-Suarez

Hi,

Since I had the same questions I have a question and a suggestion based on a very similar problem I have with engineering sensitive documents.

Question?

Do you need the server to be related to your company and not Atlassian's Cloud based one?

If no then

Suggestion

Get a plugging to hook your confluence to your sharepoint and sort information that can be stored at Confluence Tree Level (pages) and for the sensitive one at Sharepoint Tree Level.

In my case I am not that lucky because company and legislation requires servers to be local based (even for cloud services)

PS: check out an idea for the connector / plugging https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1218247/sharepoint-connector-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

David Toussaint [Communardo]

Hi, David here, Co-Head of Products at Communardo, the Company behind the mentioned SharePoint Connector. Thanks @Rodrigo Fernandez-Suarez for bringing our app into the discussion. Without hijacking this thread I just wanted to further clarify the our app does indeed work in the following scenrios:

Connect SharePoint Online to Confluence Cloud
Connect SharePoint Server/On-Premises (2016/2019) to Confluence Data Center or Server
Connect SharePoint Online to Confluence Data Center or Server

So no matter if you're all in for Cloud or completely self hosted it's just work. or any hybrid scenario as well.

If you have further questions or need a demo, just send me a message here or at david.toussaint@communardo.com

All the best, David

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