To build an effective Digital Workplace, you need a workspace where teams can share knowledge and collaborate with absolute transparency.
This is easier said than done, as different teams may insist on using their preferred systems (like Confluence and SharePoint) and are reluctant to learn new software. This can result in a digital divide, reinforcing organizational silos. Information and documents are hidden behind platform walls, and users revert to emailing documents, storing them on internal servers or private clouds, and other inefficient practices.
What if there is a way to leverage both Confluence and SharePoint, seamlessly connecting them together?
In this blog post, you will learn how to use Confluence and SharePoint together to improve workplace knowledge management and collaboration.
When to Use Confluence and SharePoint?
The key enablers of a Digital Workplace include transparency and information accessibility. To facilitate that, your most important tool is a collaborative intranet.
Two platforms that can enable digital transformation are Confluence and SharePoint.
Confluence, a product by Atlassian, is a powerful, yet simple-to-use wiki tool for collaborative content creation. Its capabilities like templates, macros, and page layouts work wonders for teams that need to document every version of their product.
On the other hand, SharePoint moonlights as both an intranet platform and document management system. However, to fully unleash its powerful capabilities, you need in-depth training and development resources. Departments that benefit greatly from SharePoint’s document management feature are marketing and HR due to the sheer amount of paperwork involved.
Here’s a sample scenario:
Your company is expecting to release a new feature for your software, which requires collaborative efforts from the product and marketing teams.
As the marketing manager, you need to plan and execute the launch campaign. Your team needs to collaborate with the product team on the release calendar, strategy documents, planning presentations, reports, and so on. Since your team has been using SharePoint (or Microsoft Teams) for internal collaboration, you decide to edit and share the campaign materials from SharePoint.
However, the product team uses Confluence to develop the version release documentation. As the project progresses, both teams will require updated information from the other platform. But searching for the right information or giving feedback back and forth between them is time consuming and inefficient.
This is a critical problem that you need to address in order to effectively use Confluence and SharePoint together.
Problems with Using Confluence and SharePoint Together
Unfortunately, having two intranet and collaboration platforms without synchronization results in siloed systems and data.
This is counterproductive as there may be misalignment of teams who create content in both platforms. Your teams may also fail to disseminate important information across the board due to platform exclusiveness.
Let’s get back to the scenario above, the product team has just published the press release on Confluence for company-wide access. Everything looks great! At the last minute, before sending it out to partners, your product owner suggests some updates to the press release. You go ahead and makes those changes to the original file in SharePoint. However, one of the sales agents has already released the outdated press release from Confluence to their prospects.
As the product and marketing teams have multiple documents and files located in their respective platforms. Members from each team may be wasting time searching for the latest version of documents in the absence of platform synchronicity. This defeats the purpose of real-time collaboration tools.
Using both platforms simultaneously without synchronization can break your workflows and cause major headaches. At the same time, manually updating and syncing documents on both platforms is not going to boost your productivity either.
Solution for Using Confluence and SharePoint Together Seamlessly
One of the logical solutions to this problem is bringing Confluence and SharePoint together.
Fortunately, we have created an app (SharePoint Connector for Confluence) that allows you to embed Confluence content directly into SharePoint, and vice versa.
The app enables your teams to create, organize, and collaborate on the same content effortlessly.
Now, they can continue using the platform that they know and love, with the additional capabilities of the other system. The best part? Your team can enjoy the best of both worlds without any learning curve.
Once you’ve installed the app, your teams can use SharePoint to easily edit documents, a feature that Confluence (surprisingly) lacks. For teams that prefer Confluence, it’s now simpler to create or edit Microsoft Office 365 documents and embed them directly from SharePoint. No more recreating offline documents and uploading them as attachments on your Confluence page.
Now, everyone is on the same page, regardless of which platform they access.
Related Read: How to Install SharePoint Connector
Two Ways to Use Confluence and SharePoint Together
Following the installation, you can now connect and start using Confluence and SharePoint together in two ways, as described below:
Integrating a vast amount of information from SharePoint into Confluence to transform it into a knowledge bank has never been easier!
Use SharePoint Online Connector to embed single documents, custom lists or whole document libraries from SharePoint into your Confluence page.
You can also open the embedded document in its designated application and e.g. start editing Office files online or in the desktop app.
Any changes made will be reflected in both platforms automatically. Once again, you and your colleagues can work on your tasks collaboratively regardless of the choice of platform.
You can seamlessly embed and share your Confluence wiki page or blog in SharePoint. Users can then view and comment on the Confluence content directly from SharePoint.
Bidirectional syncing of the app ensures that all information is automatically updated on both platforms, with notification alerts triggered for all users.
SharePoint Connector for Collaborative Corporate Intranet
Confluence and SharePoint are two very powerful platforms that help make collaborative content creation and document management very efficient.
SharePoint Connector for Confluence, available for SharePoint 2016 / 2019 / Online, as well as Confluence Cloud, lets your team collaborate smoothly between Confluence and SharePoint, and across the entire organization.
Everyone is on the same page regarding enterprise-wide activities. Hence, no more siloed information systems or the need to switch between platforms.
Install our app to try it for free for 30 days.
Check out our Ebook: Building the Digital Workplace: From Intranets to Ultra Teams