Atlassian Confluence 4.2 Adds New Social, Content Features - Messaging and Collaboration - News & Reviews - eWeek.com

Atlassian Confluence 4.2 Adds New Social, Content Features

Written By
Darryl K. Taft
Darryl K. Taft
Apr 10, 2012
3 minute read
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Atlassian, a provider of collaboration software for product teams, today announced the latest release of Confluence, its popular content-creation and collaboration software.


Confluence 4.2

accelerates team productivity with new social user-engagement and content-discovery features, such as Quick Comments and Likes, which encourage users to start conversations and share feedback. These features power the new Popular Content stream enabling users to discover what’s “hot right now.”

Moreover, personalized weekly and daily summary emails recommend popular content, ensuring users never miss what is most important. And Atlassian continues to enrich the editing experience in Confluence with visual page layouts, letting everyday users create high-fidelity Web pages with visual, drag-and-drop editing. Confluence is available as a cloud offering or behind the firewall, company officials said.

€œWe created the new release of Confluence to provide the fastest, richest, most intuitive content-collaboration environment for teams of all shapes and sizes,€ Jean-Michel Lemieux, vice president of engineering at Atlassian, said in a statement. €œWe want to make sure that it’s easy for users to stay up-to-date with everything that’s happening, and help them identify what€™s most important. Confluence 4.2 leverages new social features to guarantee teams are always in-the-know and engaged.€

Atlassian said more than half of Fortune 100 companies and over 70 percent of top U.S. colleges and universities use Confluence to connect users with the content and co-workers they need to get their jobs done, faster and more efficiently. Originally launched in 2004, Confluence is a collaboration product used by organizations such as BMW, Nike and GlaxoSmithKline.

€œWhen we showed some of our global brand customers the cool new features in Confluence 4.2€”how you can now label attachments, quickly show appreciation for a co-worker or even use the new Page Layout function to create the most amazing pages ever€”they could barely resist the urge to send us chocolates,€ said Tom Moors of ACA IT-Solutions, a global consultancy and solutions provider.

Confluence’s new Popular Content feature helps users discover the most popular wiki pages, blog posts and comments from users. Social collaboration and discussion around content is driven via a familiar Like button and Quick Comments. Also, personalized Weekly or Daily summary emails surface popular content from across a company helping everyone stay on the same page. A selection of rich page layouts empowers all users of all skill levels to contribute and create engaging content.

Confluence 4.2 is available for a

free 30-day trial

or can be purchased for on-site download or OnDemand, starting at $10 per month for 10 users. The Confluence ecosystem features 175 consulting partners and more than 400 free and commercial add-ons, including Atlassian€™s Team Calendars, available on the Atlassian Plug-in Exchange.

“Looking ahead, we’re focused on continuing to make Confluence the one place where teams don’t just talk about work€”they actually get work done,” Matt Hodges, Atlassian’s product marketing manager for Confluence, said in a statement. “We’re continuing to invest in rich content creation and now have a renewed focus on social sharing and content discovery, creating the richest, most well-rounded social platform on the market.”

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