One of my favorite tool at the moment is Confluence, from the company Atlassian. If you would like to collaborate efficiently with your local or remote teams, and to avoid having most of your discussions lost in your inbox, Confluence could be a good solution for you team work.

You can use this product as a simple Wiki tool as well as the platform for your intranet or extranet. Atlassian provides a Marketplace site where you can find add-ons. For example, you can purchase the Zen Foundation add-on (from Brikit) to easily build an intranet.

I like how Atlassian makes it easy to install or try their products. You can either let Atlassian host Confluence (OnDemand version) or host it yourself (Download version). If you plan to customize your site, I would recommend the Download version as most of the interesting add-ons are only available for that version. If your company is looking for a hosting expert that manages Confluence, you can have a look at Contegix (their support is amazingly reactive).

I don’t only evaluate a product based on its features but also on its company and the services that are offered. I like how Atlassian stimulates innovation within its teams (for example, their organize internal hackathons called ShipIt Days). They also have lots of resources on their website (documentation, online training such as Atlassian University, etc…) and they have a good support team. Register to local Atlassian user groups to discuss with other fans of Atlassian products.

You can use Confluence spaces to collaborate on projects with your teams. The software has default templates to handle meeting minutes, track decisions, save requirements, etc., and it is also simple to create your own templates.

One blog post is not sufficient to list all the team activities you can manage with Confluence so there will be more to come in future posts.