What is Confluence?

Confluence is a collaboration wiki tool used to help teams to collaborate and share knowledge efficiently. With Confluence, your users can create pages and blogs which can be commented on and edited by all members of the team. For example, you will be able to create a roadmap easily, create notes containing checklist, create a knowledge base and centralize everything in one place. You can also attach files, like your excel planning and display it on a page for more convenience. You can take a look at this short Youtube video to get an overview of Confluence or take a look at this detailed article about Confluence's features.

How can I get access to Confluence?

Confluence is currently available to current Faculty, Staff, and Researchers at Columbia. Confluence is not currently available for student use or for student-facing sites. For more information, please contact us at confluence-admin@columbia.edu with the name of your group/department, the estimated amount of users who will need access, and a brief overview of your needs and how you plan to use Confluence. If your site requires student access, please contact the Courseworks team at courseworks-admin@columbia.edu and they can discuss alternatives with you.

I'd like to bring on my entire school/department. Who should I contact?

You can contact us at confluence-admin@columbia.edu with as much detail as you can provide about your needs (department, number of users, compliance needs, use case, etc) and we will get back to you to set up a meeting.

How much does Confluence cost?

Confluence is not currently centrally funded, so a cost may be incurred depending on the size and nature of your specific use case. In some cases, Confluence can be made available to smaller teams at no cost. Please contact us at confluence-admin@columbia.edu as outlined above for more information.

How do I add a user to my Confluence space/page?

Confluence has its own User Directory. This means that the Academic Services team must create an account in Confluence before a user can be given access to any Space in Confluence. You can request access for a User by emailing us at confluence-admin@columbia.edu with the user's UNI, Full Name, and email address. If you'd like, you can also provide the group(s) they should be added to when making the initial request. If a user already exists in Confluence, you can add them as outlined in Space Permissions.

How can I create a new Confluence space?

Site Spaces are created by the Academic Services team and can be administered by a group of users specified by the person requesting the space. To request a new space, please email us at confluence-admin@columbia.edu with a space name, space key (shortened version of the space name or abbreviation), and a list of users who need access. For each user, please provide their UNI, full name, and email address.

I gave access to someone and they still can't see my content.

When giving access to a page or space, please make sure to check both Space Permissions and Page Restrictions. The distinction between the two can often be confusing, but when you're giving a user access to a page, they must be given access at the space level. Giving a user view and/or edit access to a page in Page Restrictions will do nothing if they don't already have the appropriate permissions at the space level. Page Restrictions are subtractive, meaning you cannot give any user more access than they are granted at the space level. For more information, please read the guides to Space Permissions and Page Restrictions.

How can I move my content from my Sakai/Courseworks Project Sites?

Unfortunately, there's no systematic way to migrate all of your content, so you will largely rely on manual effort to move content. For file repositories in Sakai, you can use the Sakai WebDAV client to extract your files and then you can upload them in Confluence or in your school's designated network storage platform. Please keep in mind that Confluence's file structure is much different than most file systems because content is stored as Pages and Attachments rather than Folders and Files. For more information, please read our guide on Files.

For groups using Sakai to store meeting notes, documentation, or other text-based files, you may want to consider copying the contents of those files into Confluence Pages rather than storing the files in Confluence.

Wiki and Collaboration content from Sakai can be copied into Confluence fairly easily and should retain any formatting that was used on the original page.

I'm interested in an add-on available on the Atlassian Marketplace. How can I add it?

Because any add-on that is installed can affect the processes of all users in Confluence, add-ons can only be installed by the Academic Services team. If there's a specific add-on that you're interested in, please let us know and we will test the add-on out before installing. If a free add-on is approved by our team after review, we can install it at no cost. If the add-on has a cost, your department will be responsible for the cost of the add-on and we will work with you to charge back for the software.

I'm getting too many emails from Confluence. How can I change the frequency of these emails?

You can change your notification settings in your User Preferences. For more information, please read our page on Email Notifications.

Is Confluence HIPAA-compliant? Is the file storage secure?

Confluence is not currently HIPAA-compliant. We are currently looking into several options for secure/compliant storage and will notify users if and when we make any changes.

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