Confluence (software)
| Company type | Software |
|---|---|
| Industry | Collaborative software |
| Founded | March 25, 2004 |
| Founder | Atlassian |
| Products | Confluence |
| Owner | Atlassian |
| Website | www |
Confluence is a web-based corporate wiki created by the Australian software firm Atlassian. Developed in the Java programming language, Confluence was first launched in 2004. The standalone version of Confluence includes an integrated Tomcat web server and an hsql database, while also offering compatibility with a variety of other database systems.
Atlassian positions Confluence as enterprise software, available either as on-premises software or as a software as a service solution hosted on AWS.
History
On 25 March 2004, Atlassian introduced Confluence 1.0 with the goal of delivering "an application designed to meet enterprise knowledge management needs without sacrificing the simplicity of the wiki."
Over time, Confluence has grown into a comprehensive collaboration platform, integrating seamlessly with other Atlassian products such as Jira, Bamboo, Clover, Crowd, Crucible, and Fisheye.
In 2014, Atlassian released Confluence Data Center, which offers high availability through load balancing across multiple clustered nodes.
Features
The 2007 publication Social Media Marketing for Dummies identified Confluence as a rising enterprise social software gaining traction in the market. Similarly, Wikis for Dummies described it as "among the most widely used wikis in corporate settings," highlighting its straightforward setup and enhanced search functionality compared to typical wiki solutions.
With the release of version 4 in 2011, Confluence introduced enhancements such as auto-formatting, auto-complete, combined wiki and WYSIWYG editing capabilities, social notifications, and drag-and-drop multimedia support. Its applications in business encompass enterprise communication, collaborative workspaces, social networking features, personal information management, and project oversight. The German magazine Computerwoche favorably compared it with Microsoft SharePoint, suggesting that Confluence excels as a platform for social business collaboration whereas SharePoint is better suited to organizations with more formalized processes.
Confluence supports CSS templates to maintain consistent page styling and allows importing content from Word documents. Its native search functionality includes filters by date, author, and content type such as images.
The platform provides add-ons for standard format compatibility alongside a versatile API that facilitates customization. It is particularly effective for defining requirements that are directly linked to tasks within Atlassian's Jira issue tracking system.
Discontinuation of wiki markup
Starting with version 4.0 in 2011, Confluence discontinued support for the traditional wiki markup language, which led to some user dissatisfaction.<ref>In response, Atlassian offered a source code editor plugin that permits advanced users to modify the underlying XHTML-based document source.<ref> Although this new source markup is based on XHTML, it does not fully conform to XHTML standards.<ref> Users may still enter wiki markup text initially; Confluence’s autocomplete feature converts it instantly into the new format. However, once transformed, the content can no longer be edited using wiki markup.<ref>
Security
Data within Confluence Cloud is secured through encryption during transmission and while stored. In June 2022, Atlassian revealed a zero-day vulnerability affecting Confluence Server that permitted remote code execution and had remained undetected for more than ten years. Later, in October 2023, a severe broken access control flaw was identified, which allowed for remote exploitation.
See also
- Collaborative software
- Comparison of wiki software
- Comparison of wiki hosting services
- List of content management systems
- List of wiki software