Confluence 5.7 introduced a new way to view, share, review, and resolve feedback on files; all without excessive emailing or lengthy meetings. We’re excited to introduce Confluence 5.8 which significantly adds to what we started in Confluence 5.7 – making it easier than ever to stay in context and in the flow while you work with your team on a file or document.
Files are essential to your work, but sharing them, giving feedback on them, and presenting them can give you a headache. We gave you a whole new way to work with files earlier this year and now we’re taking that to the next level, with the final step in your file feedback loop – presentations.
Review files in context and in the flow
We’re excited to introduce an all new presentation mode for any file stored in Confluence. It’s easy to flip through the latest product designs, advance through PowerPoints, or get a closer look at your budgets in Excel spreadsheets.
Let’s take a look at how easy it is to work with files in Confluence.
1. Share. View files with beautiful and fast previews.
Sharing and quickly viewing files in Confluence is a breeze with rich file previews. Bring a file to any page or File List by dragging and dropping the file from your hard drive. It’s simple; you can even add multiple files at once.
Most times, you can’t be bothered with downloading a file to view it, you just need to give it a glance over. Confluence makes that easy, too, with powerful previews. Quickly view any image, PowerPoint, Excel, or PDF file and you’re off and running.
2. Discuss: Pinpoint feedback in context and in one place
One of the hardest parts about working with files is that the feedback and the file almost always live in their own silos. As an author, incorporating suggestions often means decoding which slide your colleague was referring to, and then marrying the feedback from an email back to the document. It’s exhausting.
In Confluence, you can pin a comment to any part of the file so that your feedback always has context. You can pin comments to multiple points of one image to suggest changes in design and color, or leave a comment on a particular section of a page of a PDF. Your feedback is finally united with your files, so suggestions are in context and in one place, and incorporating feedback isn’t a tiring game of hide and seek.
Everyone can see and contribute to feedback that has already been given, allowing your teammates to build on each other’s comments. No one wastes time repeating other teammates’ feedback and you get the most complete set of suggestions on your work.
@mentions, likes, and links are really powerful tools that help your team bring in the right people, show approval, and provide more information where necessary.
3. Iterate. Resolve feedback and add new versions.
The final step in a feedback loop is closing it and letting all your contributors know you’ve incorporated their feedback. You can resolve inline comments on any page or file to indicate you’ve read and reacted to the feedback. The original commenter receives a notification when comments are resolved. Once all the feedback has been resolved, you’ve completed the drafting process and should have your final draft in hand.
As you add new versions of the file, Confluence will record a complete version history so you can maintain a single file name and a complete record of comments and changes.
4. Present. Take your meetings to the next level.
Whenever you’re working on a file, there usually comes a time when you have to present what you and your team have been working on. Confluence has you covered with a presentation mode in your file previews. You can quickly flip through the latest product designs, advance through your analyst briefing PowerPoint, or get a closer look at your budgets in Excel spreadsheets.
Want to see this in action?
Join our free webinar. We’ll discuss best practices on how to shrink your inbox and construct a productive meeting culture. You’ll learn how to use Confluence to review files without email, and run a focused and actionable meeting.
Small improvements that make a big difference
There’s a ton more in Confluence 5.8. We’ll continue to blog about today’s improvements over the coming weeks, but if you want a head start, check out the Confluence 5.8 release notes.
Work with files in Confluence today
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