What are your favorite ways to use Confluence?

[rebecca.ruthfitzpatrick]

Hi there,

Currently new to and exploring what Confluence has to offer. I am keen to champion on my team and I was hoping to get some inspiration / new ideas based on your favorite ways to use the tool ??

For context, we are an Agile Coaching team. 

Looking forward to hearing from you & thanks in advance,

Rebecca

[thomas.ohrbom]

Our primary use is to have Confluence Cloud be the technical solution where we maintain and make available our Quality and Environmental Management System. We are ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified.

We make extensive use of templates for the various types of governing documents (policies, guidelines, process descriptions, and work instructions).

We also use Excerpt Include to pull in relevant definitions in the governing documents. Having set up a separate space holding all definitions (ISO terms, internal "tribal terms", business definitions etc.). This way we need only update a definition once in one place.

The Page Properties macro is used to define additional parameters like document owner, document approver, and expiry date.

Labels are used to specify document type and target audience. 

The Scroll Word Exporter app is perfect for when ever we need to share governing documents with third parties. We have defined a rich set of Word templates, to ensure we capture all contextual info when auto building the exported Word content.

The app "Navigation Menus - quick & easy orientation" is used to make our hundreds of governing documents more accessible to the end users. We have defined "starting points" which are pages where we have collected links to all relevant governing documents for specific topics or roles in the organization. This helps the end user find their way. The lists of documents on these pages are automatically updated using the Content by Label macro. 

Draw.io is the app we use to draw org. charts, process workflows etc.

It all works like a charm!

PS! A few additional facts: we have 3000+ users, 750+ governing documents. We also use Confluence Cloud for a lot other documentation purposes (for teams, projects etc), all in all 100+ spaces (not counting personal spaces).

[rebecca.ruthfitzpatrick]

@thomas.ohrbom  that's super! Thanks so much!

[Rodrigo]

Hello @rebecca.ruthfitzpatrick 

I can only add my two cents as it has changed my perception towards the management of information. Before it, I used to send & receive documents back & forth via Google Drive (time schedules, information, how-to's and even what canned responses existed (in another software).

Then I discovered it. Love how easy it is to separate information by creating mutual spaces for collaboration and, at the same time, have your little corner for notes (that you can easily share when needed or keep private). 

Now Sales, MKT, Support have their own space. And if you need to update yourself in something, you can quickly pay them a visit, or mention them directly, without interrupting their workflow. It's much easier to have an overview of topics that concern the whole team, from planning, tasks, schedules and general information. Neatly organized.

To the point that I use it for family purposes now and, while not thought as a "Friends & Family" solution (we quickly consumed the 10 user limit), made me discover Nextcloud Collectives just to be able to have a somewhat similar experience with large group of friends. 

Thomas already made great points, I can only say that I love the organization behind it. 

Best of luck!
Rodrigo

[rebecca.ruthfitzpatrick]

That's really helpful, thank you @Rodrigo