Confluence vs Jira – What’s the Difference? (Pros and Cons)
Jira and Confluence are two of the most popular software designed by the leading Australian Company, Atlassian. Not only did they create these two amazing software but also Trello and other multiple technological products. These tools are used by several organizations, both small and large, for management and collaboration purposes.
Their ability to scale based on the requirements of the projects make it the most famous tool in the business world. Hence, we have created this detailed comparison that will enable you to evaluate the pros and cons of the products and help you choose the suitable product for your business.
What is Confluence?
Confluence is a shared workspace where teams can associate precisely on mission-critical projects. It is a wiki-based content management tool that effortlessly writes information that includes meeting notes, strategy documents and design documents, and IT documents. Teams create, store, and share information more efficiently, which enables them to make immediate decisions and satisfy the needs of their customers appropriately.
The functions performed by Confluence distinguish it from other collaboration and content management tools available. It is a Java-based application that is designed utilizing several open standards and libraries, which is why it runs swiftly on different operating systems, databases, and application servers.
Confluence provides organizations the feature of collaborating on projects or engagement with team members, handling and tracking projects, assigning tasks to members, and much more. Furthermore, Confluence can be used for documenting HR and legal policies, how-to guides and troubleshooting, and best practices and procedures.
Features of Confluence
@Mentioning
Do you want to discuss a piece of content with one of your teammates? Then, you can do it with the help of Confluence. It enables you to notify people about the project through @mentions. Bigger companies sometimes find it confusing or arduous to mention someone to share content. Confluence has helped them tremendously.
You can type the name of the person you want to mention in this feature. It also gives you the information of the person you haven’t tagged yet. Hence, you can effortlessly differentiate the team members based on their job roles.
Search Functionality
Confluence is known for its improved search functionality. You can use the refined filter to search particular places or the type of content you are looking for. It makes working much more comfortable for the team members of the organization.
Editing Attachments
Confluence is loved for its amazing feature of sharing and discussing files effortlessly. Previously, editing took a lot of time and effort by the workers. However, with Confluence, you can edit any files and documents effortlessly. It also automatically saves the changes without the need of downloading or re-downloading them.
Team Calendar Management
With the help of this feature, you can add the team calendar directly from the personal calendar. Scheduling a meeting from two different calendars required unnecessary admin work, and you avoid the step to add the appointment to the team members. But, with Confluence, the appointment is saved to the team calendar by default. It enables you to keep everyone on the same page.
Mobile App
Sometimes, you have to work out of the office, but you want to connect with your team. Keeping this point in consideration, Atlassian has introduced a Confluence App that enables you to access your team through your phone. Thus, you can create, edit, receive notifications, and stay connected with your team.
Pros and Cons of Confluence
Pros
- Collaboration – Confluence allows you to collaborate with the base of knowledge. Individual contributions can also be tracked with the help of Version Control. It also notifies you about the time update you make. It ensures that you work efficiently and the knowledge base you create is comprehensive, timely, and precise.
- Analytics – Confluence provides Analytics that lets you track the most viewed, accessed, and liked pages. It is a crucial way of understanding how knowledge is used in your organization.
- Integrations – Apart from the direct integration with other Atlassian products, Confluence has a sturdy marketplace for third-party integrators. These integrations can be used for anything like making better charts, connecting to the Google suite of products, and adding gifs to your documents.
Cons
- Search – Search is one of the biggest challenges faced by Confluence users. It is relatively complicated to use the search option of Confluence.
- Plugins Dependency – Confluence has native functionality that is an issue in terms of a lot of scenarios. Thus, you will have to get comfortable with third-party dependencies. However, you might face some difficulties in the third-party marketplace, which leads you to create a specific plugin for it.
What is Jira?
Developed by Atlassian, Jira is one of the most known enterprise-grade issue tracking tools. It focuses on tracking bugs, resolving issues, and regulating project functions. This project management platform is currently used by approximately 65000 companies. It is entirely customizable and provides options for help desk systems, a simple test management suite, and a project management platform with end-to-end traceability.
With Jira, organizations can also manage flexible project management needs. You can design, manage, and customize all kinds of workflows, reports, and tasks, thereby facilitating the project management lifecycle. Like Confluence, it is a shareable platform that enables the team members to share information and trace development changes. This way, they suffer from inexpensive and fewer delays.
Therefore, you can connect with tools, people, and activities that assist you in designing quality products and connect with people with the same intentions.
Features of Jira
- Agile Development – Jira’s most essential application, Agile, allows its user to use the scrum and Kanban board features smoothly and efficiently.
- Jira’s Project Tracking – Jira is an issue-tracking software that allows users to track ongoing projects at any stage. The Jira Query Language is a customizable query language that filters and solves issues based on different circumstances. It accesses immediate planning, releasing, tracking, and reporting.
- Reports – You can acquire proper information in Jira in the form of reports. These reports enable its user to gain visibility of the situation.
- Security – The security setting of Jira limits the access of specific bugs for those people who are allowed to work on a team member of a given security level. It includes security features like a default permission scheme.
- Real-Time Notification – With the help of Jira, you can obtain the information you want immediately. When the issues are updated, configurable email alerts are issued. It also sends the optional email as a reminder for overdue tasks.
Pros and Cons of Jira
Pros
- Jira enables its user to create big pictures, communicate plans, and connect with bigger project roadmap goals.
- Jira provides one view for all user stories and brings about the required support for multiple sprints.
- It tends to integrate with several third-party software.
- With Jira, you can customize workflows that fit with any requirements of a specific company.
- Jira can be used by developers, project managers, engineers, managers, and other non-tech business professionals.
Cons
- The users are not as satisfied with Jira’s Mobile App as its web version.
- Users find it arduous to integrate or migrate other application lifecycle management systems.
- Jira does not have the function of re-downloading the reports as images.
- The user interface of Jira is a bit confusing.
Confluence vs Jira - Key Differences
Functions
A confluence is a wiki-collaboration tool that enables the business to store and organize the content concerning their projects. On the other hand, Jira is a bug and issue tracking tool that enables the organization to resolve issues, track bugs, and manage project functions efficiently.
Role
As mentioned above, Confluence is a knowledge base that is used primarily to perform the functions of content management. This means that it assists the team to create, organize, and store the project. It also allows them to share information efficiently to enable them to make considerable decisions and meet the needs of customers more quickly and efficiently.
On the contrary, Jira is a part of the Jira family and uses Agile methodologies to manage software development projects. Teams can design, manage, and customize all kinds of tasks, workflows, and reports.
Use
Companies use Confluence to publish monthly highlights and trace the progress, issues, and general information on all the work. It is also used for documenting HR and legal policies, best practices and procedures, and troubleshooting and how-to guides.
Since Jira is designed for tracking bugs and resolving issues, it is the best one for the organization. Internally, it is used for appointing tickets to Kanban boards that enable the members from both inside and outside the team to keep tabs on the status of the tasks. It also allows the team members to tag others when an opinion or review is required.
Confluence vs Jira - Final Verdict
Confluence and Jira can be used distinctively to improve project management. Both the products are valuable in their own ways. Nonetheless, when an organization integrates Confluence and Jira, it tends to enjoy the advantages of the tool’s complementary role and improve communication, access to information, and overall efficiency.
While Jira is a perfect tool for planning and tracking all the work, Confluence keeps all the additional content created during the ongoing project. The content created in confluence has a hierarchy, which makes it effortless to find as and when required.
They are simple to integrate and have one smooth software efficient in working comfortably. Together, they are a sturdy solution that can move the business forward towards success.
