Confluence as an Intranet: Spaces vs Pages

Question

We are planning to use Confluence as our Intranet.  My question is around best practice in using Spaces vs Pages.

Each team will have its own “area” for content, eg HR, IT, Legal, Development, etc. We will have a Company space as a central point.  Groups like IT, HR, Legal provide outward services, whereas groups like Development are more inward focused.

I have two options:

* Use a page like Company/IT and Company/HR for all outbound IT and HR info, and keep the IT and HR spaces for internal team use only.  Especially for HR and Legal, there’s likely a lot of confidential information.
* Use a space for each of IT and HR and Legal, with the home page containing that outbound information. Each of IT, HR, and Legal space editors will then need to be really careful about restricting pages that are confidential.

Any thoughts on this?  How have others solved this?

Thanks.

James Dellow · Answer

I would also recommend separating collaboration and information referenced internally by a department or function from content shared across the whole business.

One immediate benefit is from a search perspective, but also the permissions will be easier to manage.

You might also want to break up the company space into different spaces, depending on your particular mix of internal communication, knowledge sharing and reference information needs. For example, if you have an extensive company policy manual, it might help if you don't mix that content with less formal content.

However, I would avoid vanity spaces or departmental specific publishing spaces, unless you can be assured that users know exactly who does what - e.g. is expenses to do with finance or HR?

Robert Reiner _smartics_ · Answer

You could have two spaces per department: One for internal and one for public content. The central company space many then transclude from or reference to the content in the public spaces. The internal spaces may also use content in these public spaces.

Users find it sometimes hard to locate content in too many spaces. But in your case the rules which content goes where seems pretty easy to follow (internal or public).

I use labels to mark the function of a space. Different layouts and skins would be recommended, but I often do not have that much time. But I'm working in a really small team ...

I would not recommend to mix internal and public content in one space. But this may be related to my working style and is just an opinion.