With companies creating more online work than ever, content management systems have become a necessity. Product requirements, content calendars, marketing plans, and business forms fill our inboxes and folders. An efficient enterprise content management system, or ECM, can save hours of company time that workers would otherwise spend tracking down files.
But too often, files get lost across the numerous spaces where companies store work. Gartner states that 75 percent of companies have six or more different content repositories to handle everything from internal communications to customer invoices. Even one, if not managed well, could quickly get out of control.
Managing your content from cradle to grave
A process to capture, publish and store information for the entire lifecycle of a piece of content is critical. Whether it’s called Content Management, Content Services or Enterprise Content Management (ECM), the goal is to make sure information is accessible and useful from cradle to grave. Your ECM solution should allow you to securely collect and store content across any file type, from any location.
Confluence is a natural solution to help teams create and organize all types of work. But why stop there? We’ve looked at three common challenges teams have when managing content and provided some handy app solutions across cloud and server platforms.
Atlassian Marketplace has hundreds of apps just for Confluence; including many that support and expand your document management strategy.
If you are already a Confluence administrator, it’s a snap to add apps from the In-Product Marketplace. Go to Site Administration> Find new add-ons and you will see a host of apps specifically for your cloud, server, or data center platform.
Ensuring Access Across Platforms
The problem: Teams use lots of different content tools across the company–from Confluence to Sharepoint to Google Docs–to create and manage content. Not ideal, but it’s the reality.
The solution: Confluence integration apps help you avoid a potential documentation nightmare and silo’ed information. Depending on your specific needs, you can choose from several apps to embed external documents and folders into Confluence. That way, everything stays accessible across teams in one place.
Here are some of our most popular integrations:
- Google Drive Embed Google Drive files and links into any Confluence page (see example below).
- Box app integration allows links to Confluence pages to appear in Box files; Box files and folders can also be embedded in Confluence pages
- OneDrive and Office 365 Organize and embed OneDrive folders and files in Confluence
- Evernote Create Evernote notes from a Confluence page, or bring Evernote notes into your Confluence page
- SharePoint Unite your Sharepoint and Confluence instances with federated search and bi-directional content embedding
The beauty of integrations! Embed a Word doc, stored in Google Drive to Confluence
Streamlining Your Approvals
The problem: Like many organizations, you may have a complex editorial calendar running across several different platforms. Keeping the editorial approval process organized is difficult, as the volume of documents is split across several different platforms.
The solution: An app to easily track document approvals in one place. Comala Workflows Lite for Cloud lets you assign approvers to documents, view approved docs, and easily review and track the status of pages. Since Confluence serves as your home base for content across several platforms, everything stays organized. Other approval apps to check out: Approval Macro for Confluence and Page Approval.
Assign Reviewers for specific documents with Comala Approvals for Confluence
Managing and Customizing Workflows
The problem: While some might be happy with an organized reviewer integration, you need a more comprehensive tool with which to manage various workflows. Depending on the content type, audience, and platform, you need a consistent, clear editing and approval process in place.
The solution: Comala Workflows for on-premise Confluence instances allows you to manage page status from the first draft to publication. It offers customized workflows, in addition to assigning approvers and giving you access to workflow reports. With simple controls, your workflows can be as simple or complex as you’d like.
With Comala Workflows you can easily generate and filter reports to see who has done what
Make Confluence your customized content management solution
Confluence is a great place to create engaging content and keep it organized.
Atlassian Marketplace apps let you go one step further by allowing you to enable multi-platform integrations, approvals, and workflows. Now you can intelligently manage diverse streams of content, all from the comfort of Confluence.