Document Control - Which product?

[Patrick Geering]

We would like to implement Document Control for a specific Department Space in our companies Confluence Cloud.

Our requirements on a DMS would be:

1. definition of roles such as reviewer(s), approver(s), owner/editor(s)
2. overview of document/page status
3. definition of review specifications (in terms of time), e.g. 15 days etc.
4. notification of pending review/approval requirements
5. automatic initialization of periodic reviews based on policies (e.g. annually etc.)
6. archiving of retired documents/pages

I've looked at the DMS possibilities within Confluence, but if I correctly understand, the build in capabilities won't cover the above stated requirements.

I also found two external plug-ins ("Comala Document Management" and "Document Manager for Confluence"). I went through the provided descriptions, but honestly, they are not specific enough to decide, if our requirements are covered.

We don't need a regulatory conform solution, so the "document manager" is certainly oversized. But would Comala suit our needs? or are there even other solutions which we haven't descovered yet?

And how about Licensing? would we have to license the whole company for that (1000 users), or can we only license our department users (30)?

Thanks in advance for any qualified feedback

[Grecia Camacho]

Hi @Patrick Geering 

I'm Grecia Camacho, a Solution Advisor at Appfire—great to meet you!

It sounds like Comala Document Management (CDM) could be a strong fit for your Confluence Cloud requirements. Here’s how it aligns with your needs:

• Role Definitions: You can easily assign approvers through customizable workflows, either for individual users or groups.
• Document Status Overview: CDM offers a clear visual of the workflow status for each document, and the Document Report gives you an at-a-glance overview of all document statuses within your space.
• Review Specifications: Set up workflows with due dates and triggers, ensuring documents are reviewed or flagged once expired.
• Notifications: Alert reviewers and approvers about statuses, keeping everything on track.
• Periodic Reviews: CDM also supports automated periodic reviews (like annual reviews), with notifications triggered based on your policies.

As for licensing, CDM follows the standard Atlassian model, meaning you'd need to license all users in the Confluence instance, not just your department.

Feel free to take advantage of the 30-day free trial, and if you’d like a deeper dive, I’d be happy to schedule a quick chat and walk you through the magic!

Looking forward to hearing from you! :-)

[Patrick Geering]

Hi Grecia. Thanks for your reply. We're currently reviewing our options based on the replies on this post. If I need more information regarding Comala, I'll get in contact with you.

Regards, Pat

[Grecia Camacho]

Amazing Pat!! My email is grecia.camacho@appfire.com :-) 

Chat soon!

Chers, Gre

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

@Patrick Geering Make sure that you try the Better Content Archiving and Analytics app. It is used by 1300+ teams for all sort of content lifecycle management use cases.

Here is a quick list of pointers about how this app implements your requirements:

1. Reviewer, approver, owner/editor: For each page or blog, you can assign content owners. They are responsible for that content. It can be one or more users, one or more groups or even flexibly mixed! Owners can be automatically inherited by child pages, therefore it is easy to set up the owners of a whole page tree and make sure it is consistent.
2. Document/page status: Our app has an extremely customizable, automatically maintained content status concept. The status is shown on the top of the page, it is searchable, can be used by macros, automations, can be displayed on reports and dashboards!
3. Notifications: You can automatically send custom notification emails with your custom content and on your custom schedule.
4. Periodic reviews: Just see point 2! You can set up the "To review" status in a way that any page changes to this one year after its last update, for example. You can have multiple (up to 20) variants of "expired type" status with different conditions. Statuses are assigned automatically by a background job, so you can totally forget about this!
5. Archiving: You can auto-archive pages by defining periodically executed automations.  (You can also auto-delete if your information retention practices require that.)

The app is rich of features, but it is still rather lightweight and user friendly.

(Discl. it is a paid and supported app developed by our team. Free for 10 users!)

[Patrick Geering]

Hi Aron. Thanks for your feedback. Sounds interesting, I will have a look into it. :-)

[Dmitriy Panyukov _Stiltsoft_]

Hi @Patrick Geering 

I suggest trying out our app - Handy Macros for Confluence Cloud.

Using Handy Macros, you can:

• Create customizable status sets
• Switch statuses directly in the view mode
• Synchronize statuses to page labels for quick search
• Keep your statuses consistent across Confluence tables and pages and view their history
• Change the dates right in the page view and mark important moments in time
• Keep track of the Handy Page Status
• Build upon  Page Properties and Page Properties Report macros to create interactive dashboards for better data management

You can check out our blog post, diving deeper into how Handy Macros can help your Confluence page status management.

As well as this one, talking about Confluence tips and tricks with Handy Macros.

You can try the Handy Macros for Confluence app on the Atlassian Marketplace for free to see if it works for you.

And I will be glad to showcase our app on a quick demo.

Best regards,

Dmitriy

[Patrick Geering]

Hi Dmitriy. Thanks for your reply. We're currently reviewing our options based on the replies on this post. If I need more information regarding Handy, I'll get in contact with you.

Regards, Pat

[Kristian Klima]

Hi @Patrick Geering 

Appfire (parents of Comala) have also Comala Document Control app which caters for a slightly different needs set.

There's also AppFox's Workflows for Confluence which should fit the bill (pun intended).

[Patrick Geering]

Thanks Christian. will have a look into it.

[Kristian Klima]

Hello. 

Pls, check my answer an the Workflows for Confluence app, it is affordable.

Comala has also a very affordable app called Comala Document Approval which we're using. It does the job but the workflow is not customizable.

As for the apps in general. There are hundreds of apps in the marketplace from multiple vendors. I don't think there's a single person who knows them all and if the differences are subtle, it might take the vendor to answer the question.

The 30-day trial does help to test the apps... that's what I was doing.

When looking for an optimal setup for my uses case, I also opened tickets with vendors and arrange a call with them to discuss the specifics and the differences.

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

Hi @Patrick Geering ,

Indeed, you can use Confluence as a Document Control system.  You can build the system yourself if you use Confluence Automation (when you use a Premium subscription).  Probably you are also required to use an addon from a third party (we make Document Control for Confluence Cloud).

Most likely you need to use an existing addon and add an automation tool, or adjust your workflow such that it fits an existing tool.

Each tool has their pros and cons, and my recommendation would be to do a trial of these tools.

Regarding the licensing, all addons in Confluence are licensed per Confluence user, i.e. you'd need to pay for 1000 users.

[Adrian Hülsmann - B1NARY]

Hi @Patrick Geering

Maybe you would also like to check out Breeze.

It's a full-fledged document management solution and seems to fit your requirements. If you would like to see a personal demo, feel free to schedule an appointment with me (there is a link at the Marketplace listing).

I will be happy to show you the capabilities of the app, answer all of your questions, and discuss your use case.

Have a great day, Adrian from B1NARY (the developers of Breeze)

[Patrick Geering]

Thanks Adrian. Sounds pretty much liek what we're looking for. I'll try to schedule an appointment for next Wednesday :-)

Regards, Pat

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Patrick Geering 

I would say try them both. Any app can be trialed fro 30 days.

Apps need to be licensed to the tier that is used fro the Atlassian product, so if your license is for a 1000 users, the app requires to be licensed for a 1000 users as well as any user is possible able to use the app.

[Patrick Geering]

Thanks for the answer. But our ressources are very tied, so it's a no-go to make two trials just to find out if our requirements are met by any of the two solution or even none at all.

[Marc - Devoteam]

HI @Patrick Geering 

How other can you see if any of the apps fit.

My or others have different requirements.

Not to be blunt, but your are asking others to trail and see if it fits your requirements. That's asking something, others spending time to fulfil your requirement!

[Patrick Geering]

Well, I'm not at all asking anyone else to do a trial for us, I wouldn't be that disrespectful. I was simply asking, if anyone has a qualified input which would allow me to make a better decision on where to start.

So if someone doesn't have a qualified answer to that, then that's fine. But then again, why bothering replying to it? ;-)