Companies today face a serious problem: poor communication. As more employees travel and work long-distance, teams become more difficult to manage. Since in-office meetings and physical documents no longer cut it when it comes to project management, it’s no surprise that several companies now offer project management software.
Atlassian’s Confluence, a wiki-based project management solution, is one such offering. Confluence provides powerful tools for teams to collaborate, complete projects, and review tasks. Below are the top five project management features of Confluence that are useful to any team:
1) No more separate documentation process
The word “wiki” usually invokes the notion of documentation software. Websites like Wikipedia are simply knowledge bases that contributors pour information into. However, the pages created on Confluence are more interactive and can be used to plan meetings, assign tasks, and make decisions. This more proactive approach allows your team to plan and collaborate without worrying about documenting everything in a separate location: Simply using Confluence creates searchable documentation.
2) Powerful task management
The heart of project management is task management. Although there are a plethora of task management solutions out there, Confluence’s implementation of tasks is particularly effective. Tasks can be added anywhere in the wiki and assigned a tag, assignee, and due date. Confluence automatically notifies team members of new tasks assigned to them, and you can create task reports that dynamically update with new tasks. You can add a task to a meeting’s notes and it will automatically be propagated everywhere you need.
3) Organize, track, and review decisions
Meetings can be great for discussions and planning, but they aren’t good for everything. That’s why the decision-making capabilities of Confluence are so useful. If your team simply needs to make a decision on a straightforward question, you can create a page for it and assign relevant team members, who can then comment on it. These decision pages can then be referenced elsewhere – no more need to explain and re-explain how a particular decision was reached.
4) Hassle-free file-sharing
As with task management, there are a lot of file-sharing options out there, but few stack up to Confluence. Files can be either embedded in pages or added to a file list and shared with specific team members. Team members can preview most file types live inside the page or download them. Best of all, versioning is built into the software: Simply replace a file with a new version and Confluence will track each version you uploaded. The only downside is that you do have to upload files and cannot simply link to folders on your computer; however, uploading is a simple drag-and-drop process.
5) Project management for any company
Are you a fan of the cloud or do you prefer to distribute software yourself? Atlassian offers both options for Confluence, allowing companies to start using it for as little as $10. This flexibility makes Confluence appropriate for any company, regardless of its IT setup.
Confluence is just one of the many applications that Contegix manages for our customers. We know your business turns to applications like these to simplify the way you do things, and managing it would only create a hassle for you and your busy IT team. If you need help with Confluence or any other Atlassian applications, contact us. We have been helping users since Atlassian started in 2002.
