Team Spaces vs. Pages

[Denise Panepinto]

I am setting up a department Confluence environement. I am in terested in a space for the department as a whole and then individual spaces for each team. What are the pros and cons of using spaces for both of these as opposed to a Department Space and a page for each Team? thanks.

[Jonathan Simonoff · Accepted solution]

Having one space for the whole department, with page families for teams:

Pros:

1) Fewer spaces – only one place to go for this department. 

2) Easier to search just one space for this set of information.

3) If there are special restrictions or styles that apply to the whole department, it is easier to implement them in one space than in multiple spaces.

Cons:

1) Every page in a space must have a unique name, so each team can't, for example, have its own page called "Who's Who".

2) If there end up being a lot of pages, the space can get confusing.

3) Much easier to restrict access or editing if you need to have different restrictions for different teams.

[Denise Panepinto]

thank you!

[DR]

I just found out that you cannot easily manage Team Spaces (add/delete team members).  Adding team members has be done completely manually.  (Add a column, add the picture, add a mail to link, change permissions manually, and so on.)

That really stinks and I wish I would have never gone the team space route.

[Steven F Behnke]

Just to add to Jon's answer:

A new space if:

• To organize content per subject or product or department
• You need granular permissions for the content (page restrictions aren't great for huge maintenance and page edit restrictions don't affect all pages in a tree)
• You need specific CSS stylesheets for pages (only one  layouts/stylesheet per space)
• You need specific PDF export settings for pages (only one layouts/stylesheet per space)

A page tree if:

• If it relates to the space name and doesn't violate the above