SharePoint vs Confluence

Collaboration tools are the integral part of the PMO function. Choosing the right tool will help you effective time, configuration (version), communication & knowledge management within your teams.  Ensuring the right processes will relive stress and gaps in the management.

You need to ensure the right type of tools are deployed to the right team members for smooth execution especially during this new norm of remote working. 

This post will talk about the key highlights one should know about the most commonly used tools – SharePoint & Confluence.

Lets get started:

SharePoint	Confluence
Designed by Microsoft Corporation included as part of the Office 365 Enterprise package; based on Dot Net	Developed by Atlassian – An Australian company, based on Java platform
It provides ease & structured way of document management for store, organize, share & access with folders and subfolders.	Confluence is light-weight & has very intuitive user-interface structured with spaces and further drill-down to pages and sub-pages (page-tree like structure)
Can be easily integrated with Microsoft products like Teams, Office 365 tools, One drive, OneNote	Confluence extremely integrates with all the Atlassian products like JIRA Software, JIRA service, Trello, Hipchat etc.
There is no feature like Rich-text editor in SharePoint though you can create interactive dashboard with text & hyperlinks in the SharePoint Homepage. You can also display the contents from excel as part of the homepage.	Confluence has a world-class Rich-text editor which will helps you to create pages like Wiki.
Key features includes SharePoint lists, intranet sites can be published as public-facing sites, built-in chat feature, tons of add-ons, better version management than confluence, multiple customizations,	Confluence has key features includes inline commenting, online @team mentioning, pre-made out-of-the-box templates for your projects, simple permission control (global, space-wide, and per individual page), variety of add-ons in Marketplace, search engine is powerful, side bar navigation is very intuitive.
Few cons are 1) not easily adopted – needs upfront training, steep learning curve, need IT support for initial set up 2) constant upkeep and maintenance in an orderly manner 3) Higher pricing & difficult to maintain on-premises though availability of latest SharePoint online	Few Drawbacks are 1) document workflows need add-ons 2) unable to see the real-time changes while co-authoring

To conclude, SharePoint looks traditional, the recent advancement in MS Teams which not only integrates the MS Office, MS To-do, Planner etc but also SharePoint online makes it boom for the organizations to provide much more features & improve communication all in one place.

Whereas, the increasing use of the Atlassian product JIRA is making a confluence, a perfect pair for your Agile Project Management needs.

I personally like confluence for being hassle-free, interesting to use those macros and for the look-feel of the platform.

Hope you enjoyed the post.