Confluence is a super powerful and versatile tool, used by teams across the world to create, review and share content.
But, whilst Confluence can do some incredible things, it doesn’t have all the native features you need for a complete document management solution.
So, what if you could go beyond Confluence’s in-built capabilities? What if you could elevate the tool with additional functionality to achieve even more?
The Atlassian Marketplace holds the answer. Packed with thousands of apps, all designed to extend the possibilities of the Atlassian system of work, you can browse third-party plugins to find the solution you need.
In this post, we’re going to focus on the best Confluence document management plugins out there today.
We’ve chosen five trail-blazing Confluence apps that you can use to provide a cohesive and centralized document management process.
Our top 5 apps for Confluence document management
We’ve previously explored the benefits of a strong document management process in Confluence here. With the right practices and tools, it can enhance your content quality, improve efficiency and support document security.
You can elevate your document management further by using innovative Marketplace apps to deliver additional functionality. To help you, we’ve picked our some of our favorite Confluence plug-ins for each stage of the document management process:
1. Best for enhancing your documents: Content Formatting Macros from Kolekti
Imagine if your Confluence content could reflect your organization or team’s look and feel. And imagine if you could enhance your documents with colour, graphics, tooltips and more, to make them even more engaging and accessible.
Well, our first app recommendation enables you to do just that.
Created by Kolekti (an Adaptavist brand), Content Formatting Macros provides a real range of options to breathe life into your Confluence documents.
A note on native Confluence functionality
It’s worth saying that Confluence already offers a number of native macros to help make your content a little more engaging.
You can add tables, dividers, quotes and graphics to your pages. You can also highlight important information – like a top tip or warning – by inserting an ‘information panel’. These are pretty flexible, as you can change the colour of the panel and add emojis to suit the content.
However, beyond these macros, there aren’t many options to align your content with your own branding and provide a super engaging experience.
Spotlight on Content Formatting Macros:
The Content Formatting Macros app means you can:
- Add interactive banners to your pages.
- Use tabs to structure content and enable users to easily navigate sections.
- Insert tooltips and footnotes.
- Add background images and colours to really make a splash.
- Include buttons and pop-ups.
All of these elements combine to create engaging and dynamic content. Kolekti have actually provided some great examples here, so you can see how your Confluence pages could be levelled up.
Of course, not all of your content will need a visual makeover. HR policies or legal documents won’t require visual CTAs or strong imagery. But, from product plans to an internal knowledge base, most content could do with an injection of brand personality and colour.
Available for Cloud, Data Center and Server, and free for the first ten users, the Content Formatting Macros app is designed to reinvigorate your Confluence documentation.
2. Best for document review and approvals: Workflows for Confluence from AppFox
The review and approvals process is one of the most important aspects of document management. It ensures quality and accuracy, and should provide confidence that your content is ready for publishing or sharing.
So, what if you could set up bespoke, automated approvals to guide your documentation from ‘first draft’ through to ‘ready for publishing’? (Spoiler alert: You can!)
Whilst some of Confluence’s built-in functionality can be used for parts of your content review needs, it can’t support a fully automated, end-to-end approvals process. Happily, the Workflows for Confluence app is designed to do just that.
Spotlight on Workflows:
Created by us here at AppFox, Workflows provides the flexibility and features you need to create a content approvals workflow – perfectly tailored to your needs.
With Workflows, you can create an unlimited number of workflows, from a simple single-stage approval to a far more complex document review workflow, complete with multiple reviewers and stages.
Features include:
- Automated notifications, reminders and actions.
- Configurable and dynamic page statuses.
- Unlimited approvers and stages.
- Integrations with tools like Outlook or Slack for a fully integrated process and communication.
- Intuitive drag ‘n’ drop workflow builder.
- Full workflow histories, so you can see comments, decisions, delays and document statuses at a glance.
- Automated ‘Publish content’ feature to publish in specified spaces.
One of Workflows for Confluence’s strongest USPs is that it’s an all-in-one tool, with no need to purchase separate solutions (some fellow apps require you to buy a second app to publish across different spaces, for example).
The other stand-out feature is Workflows’ unique flexibility. Ultimately, with Workflows for Confluence, there’s no need to compromise with a one-size-fits-all approach to approvals. Instead, your teams can benefit from dynamic and flexible workflows to create custom approval and review experiences across your entire range documentation.
Available on Cloud and free for up to 10 users, try Workflows for Confluence today on the Atlassian Marketplace!
3. Best for document metadata and audit trails: Scroll Documents from K15t
Imagine if you could see a list of document amendments, or compare the changes between versions.
Well, of course, there’s an app for that. And this time it’s from the good folks at K15t, who have developed the Scroll Documents app.
Spotlight on Scroll Documents:
Part of the wider collection of ‘Scroll Apps’, Scroll Documents provides valuable insights into your document editing process. Essentially, you get an audit trail, so you can clearly see a document’s history.
This kind of data is vital for keeping a tight handle on your documentation’s quality control and editing.
Scroll Documents enables you to:
- Track changes made to pages.
- Compare different versions, so you can clearly see which changes have been made.
- Maintain a log of who, what and when amendments have been made.
Available across Cloud, Data Center and Server, you can discover more about Scroll Documents here. We’d encourage you to try it free today!
Also worth a look…
Whilst on the topic of audit logs and the important of accurate content data, we wanted to give a mention to Snapshots for Confluence by RadBee here.
Essentially, this app captures information from Jira in a static format, which you can then add to a page in Confluence as a record of what has happened. As Jira can be such a dynamic tool, with ever-changing data, this solution is particularly valuable when it comes to audit trails and demonstrating how work has been completed
Now, whilst this isn’t directly related to your Confluence document management lifecycle, it does demonstrate the power of Confluence and Jira when used together.
The Snapshots app provides a great way of capturing the data in Jira in an auditable, fixed format, which you can then use for a whole range of content – from progress reports to incident post-mortem documentation.
4. Best for document publishing: Scroll Viewport from K15t
We know many of you use Confluence to write and manage your knowledge base content. But what if there was a simple way to publish all that content as an interactive, ready-to-use help center?
Well, in at number four is another product from our friends at K15t, designed to do just that. Enter Scroll Viewport.
Spotlight on Scroll Viewport:
This app enables you to:
- Publish your knowledge base quickly and easily with pre-built help center themes.
- Customize your theme in line with your branding, from your brand color palette to look and feel – and enhance further with custom code.
- Restrict access for different audiences.
- Add a custom domain.
- Integrate with a range of other tools, like your service desk, for cohesive service management.
- Interactive search so users can find the content they need, fast.
Here at AppFox, we actually use Scroll Viewport ourselves for our product documentation. It’s simple, secure and looks great! We’ve been highly impressed, and wrote about our experiences with the app over here if you’re interested in finding out more.
Available on both Cloud and Data Center, Scroll Viewport is free to try on the Atlassian Marketplace today.
Top tip!
When you combine apps, magic can happen.
Our app, Workflows for Confluence, and the Scroll Viewport app are a great example:
‘When we started using Scroll Viewport back in early 2021, we were already using our Workflows for Confluence product to help manage our documentation internally. We used it to set up custom workflows and an approval process that enabled the right experts on our team to review content before it went live.
Once we started using Scroll Viewport, this process was elevated further.
Today, we are creating our documentation internally in Confluence. Using Workflows for Confluence to get content reviewed by the right team members, and then once it’s ready, Scroll Viewport will transform this content into pages on our beautiful help center.’
Bringing apps together can truly enhance your end-to-end document management process – so why not explore a few of the ones we’ve mentioned in this page? Ultimately, all of them are designed to deliver the same thing to users: An even better Confluence experience.
5. Best for document sharing: External Share from Warsaw Dynamics
It’s time to wrap up our our document management process with the final stage: Sharing your content. It all comes down to this – you’ve created, edited, approved and published, and now you want to share your Confluence content with the wide world (or a smaller audience, perhaps!).
Now, what if you could share your documents and be totally confident that you were doing so securely and seamlessly? You can with Warsaw Dynamics’ External Share for Confluence app.
Spotlight on External Share:
With versions for Confluence and Jira, External Share means you can:
- Encourage collaboration with bi-directional sharing. This enables a whole range of stakeholders to view your content in real-time, without the need for guest access or additional licenses.
- Decide how you secure your content, whether with domain or email-verified users, IP validation, SSO, password protection or the use of expiry times.
- Customize shared pages to reflect your brand identity.
- Share not only pages, but also attachments and comments.
We’ve written extensively about the importance of data protection and Confluence. The way you share your content should form part of your overall information security and data protection processes.
Thankfully, there are vendors out there, like Warsaw Dynamics, who are helping to enhance this element of document management for organizations – one share at a time.
Available for both Cloud and Data Center, you can give External Share for Confluence a try today.
In closing
Well, that brings us to the end of our top 5 apps for document management in Confluence.
Writing articles like this one is always enjoyable – because we know we’re introducing you to products that could really help to elevate your work in Confluence, and because it reminds us what an innovative space we work in.
There are so many Atlassian champions out there, dedicated to creating apps to make Atlassian’s system of work even more powerful and effective.
We hope you’ve found this list of our favorite Confluence document management plugins useful and that it’s given you some new ideas for how to protect, improve and publish your content. Will you try any of these new apps? We’d love to know how you get on if you do on the AppFox socials!
Workflows for Confluence and more…
As this is our blog, we’ll finish with a final plug for one of our own Confluence apps.
Workflows for Confluence is designed to enhance your end-to-end document lifecycle, enabling you to create an unlimited range of flexible document management workflows, from the editing and review stage to publishing.
Here at AppFox, we love creating products to enhance the way you work in the Atlassian ecosystem (and, in this instance, transform your document lifecycle in Confluence).
That’s all from us for today. It’s now time for you to start exploring some of the fantastic Confluence document management plugins we’ve shared today. Enjoy!
