Advice regarding project vs seperate Confluence

Question

Sorry if this is a silly question. I am quite new to Pforge.

We have set up a project specific Pforge Jira which includes Confluence. We have a number of projects in our company each of which has it's own project including Jira and Confluence.

It has been suggested that instead of using separate project related Confluence we collect all project wikis in a central Confluence which is on a separate server.

I understand the logic of this (keep everything in one place) but am worried that we lose some features or advantages in going in this direction. For example I heard application links won't work but am not sure what this really means. Also yesterday I set up a calendar in the project Confluence and I believe this might not be possible in a central confluence ?

I have the feeling we are heading in the wrong direction but would appreciate some tips / feedback.

Thanks

Big Jim · Answer

Thanks Nic for the useful feedback. I guess one of my concerns is that our team login to Pforge and can directly switch between our project Jira and Confluence. At present we then add a link to our centralized confluence and users need to login there to access the project wiki. A small inconvenience but irritating none the less.

I was also wondering why wikis need to be centralized when you can just as easily link from the centralized confluence to the project specific one.

I will check why application links don't work and will try setting up a calendar.

Thanks again your help already allowed us to get this all setup !

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

This sounds wrong to me.  A centralised single Confluence alongside a similar Jira gives you benefits over having several.

The only advantage to using several Confluences is it's easier to look after access if you have stuff to hide, and you don't have to worry about users discovering each other's accounts (If, for example, I have a Confluence for working with oil companies, I might have Jim from BP and Jim from Shell.  In some places it is possible for one of the Jims to easily discover the other one exists.  With the right space permissions, they won't see the wrong pages, but this can be a problem for some people)

You absolutely can use application links, unless your central Confluence is firewalled off from your Jira (if so, then why?).  And you can add Calendars to any Confluence, as long as you have the right add-ons.