I'm not sure that everyone knows about some of the nicer features of
Confluence...
* WYSIWYG Editor
* Rich integration with JIRA (issue lists and embedded portlets)
* Rich integration with Groovy/Jython/BeanShell & SQL
* Simple page linking... no need for *ugly* CamelCase
* Integrated search that index content *and* attachments
* Simple page view/edit restrictions
* Integrated blog-style news pages (great for tracking milestone
events)
* Integrated RSS, with advanced feedbuilder.. just get the news you
care about
* Page export to HTML, PDF and... Word (not that I care about
word... but someone does)
* Archives mail... nice because that mail becomes searchable
* Simple to embed Flash,MPG,etc. Flash specifically, which is a
great tool for online visual demos/tutorials (very powerful)
* Versioning of attachments
* Labels... organize content across spaces using flexible labeling
system
* Rich plugin support... which is really growing
* Renaming/moving pages updates references (huge plus IMO)
** Chart
** Dynamic calendars
** Dynamic TOC (must have for generated docs)
** Dynamic Excel .xls rendering (and sorting... very spiffy)
** Dynamic AJAX-based searching
Um... I could go on... and on.
My engineering organization has found Confluence a huge benefit for
managing release notes (pulled dynamically from JIRA), tracking
release history (as news items, with links to release notes). Some
of the advanced macros for content formatting also make Confluence
work really well as a project dashboard... with all the information
you want about a projects status in one place.
I believe this is an amazing tool. Blows MoinMoin out of the water
from a feature, usability and administration perspective... as well
as its built in ability to be configured to look (colors, layouts)
anyway you want. For example, once space could look like a regular
website, another could look like a user's guide and another could
look like a FAQ.
I guess I am going on and on now... so I will stop.
Cheers,
--jason
