Looking for your feedback on❓Confluence Questions and 📅 Team Calendars! 🙏

[#1]

👋 Avinoam here - product manager from the Confluence team.

TL;DR - we want to make Confluence Questions and Team Calendars better.

We need your help and would absolutely LOVE to hear your feedback (good, bad, and ugly) on both Confluence Questions and Team Calendars!!!

So, please feel free to schedule time with us directly here or drop a comment on this post and we honestly, truly, really really, look forward to hearing from as many as you! ❤️

[Heather Blue]

I think the thing that keeps us from using Confluence calendars is the import factor.

• It'd be nice to see what new hires start on what days
• As well as company internal and external events, like trade shows, webinars, all-hands etc

But most of that is currently in Gcal and from my understanding it can't be synced to Confluence calendars, it can only be exported and then imported?

I'm not familiar with Confluence Questions, so I can't provide feedback there, but I'd be curious to learn more about it.

Thanks!

[Filip Callewaert]

Hi Avinoam,

Really an interesting question, as still this week I did talk briefly about exactly those two Confluence features with one of my colleagues. 
My opinion is based on the use of these products quite some time ago, in server contexts, but the conclusion then was that they did not really added value to our use cases. When clients ask about it, I do not advise them, moreover because they are only available in premium. And if my client has premium, I do not see them so frequently used. 

Calendars: a Confluence calendar was never and could never become a primary team calendar - those were in Outlook, Google, or whatever common digital workplace tooling. But not in Confluence. So a calendar was always started with lots of good intentions, but I don't think I ever saw an up to date calendar. And that exactly kills calendars. You only want to consult and manage 1 calendar (that in the best case integrates other ones).

Questions: I do remember it was an expensive feature at those times. And there was something awkward about the tool. It was as if it was something that had been acquired but never was really completely  integrated. It felt as a stand alone feature and I have vague memories that there were inconsistencies between Questions and Confluence as such. Was it that it was difficult to manage the set of Questions? Or that question labels were a different set than the page labels (were they?)? The lack of using macros in Qs? You expect a question to behave as a page, and that was completely not the case. 
So, we used other forum add-ons for the forum use case, but still never were fully satisfied. We also built custom pages/labels/page properties combinations.

Mind that my opinions are based on experiences of 5 years ago. I'm open to be re-convinced.

That's two pence then, please.
Filip

[Andy Gladstone]

Major ➕1️⃣ to @Filip Callewaert's comments. 

Calendars: Included in Premium, but not a Premium experience. Clunky, no integration to gCal or Outlook - where everyone manages their work. Never up to date. We only rely on them internally for On-Call Schedules, which are basically set-it-and-forget-it. It's not a living organism within our Org.

Questions: Why is this the only remaining Atlassian paid-app? Why not include it in Premium? Conceptually a great idea, in practice not so much. The application has not really matured over the years and is in a MVP state for too long. 5,575 installs across 250,000+ customers really says it all. I'd love to see this app get some love and help Confluence become an LMS. But with AI Search I don't see it presenting any additional value. Last I used it was 6+ years ago, and I would not install it today at the cost or current state.

[Filip Callewaert]

Oh indeed, Questions is not a Premium feature, but a separate add-on. 
Just adding more about the context I refer to in which Calendars was mentioned to a colleague earlier this week: a client had asked for the extra value of Confluence Premium compared to Standard. I never dare to mention Calendars then... And as a whole, the Premium version, which @Andy Gladstone phrases so well as an experience the client expects, is not a coherent or strong story at the moment. Most important tangible features to choose for Premium in my customers' contexts are: Automation (for Jira in standard), IP-allowlisting (a feature you do not expect to be linked to this specific product, but to a more general access-product) and more and more AI too. Others are interesting to mention, but is that what the client is waiting for as true distinctive added value for a more expensive product? And even others should better not be mentioned, such as Calendars, because of reasons above.

[Avinoam]

Thank you @Filip Callewaert @Andy Gladstone @Heather Blue for the quick comments and honesty here!

I have a quick follow up for y'all, and everyone else who can answer of course - on a scale of 1-10 (1 being lowest and 10 being highest):

1. How important is Confluence Questions for you?
2. How satisfied are you with Confluence Questions today?
3. How important is Team Calendars for you?
4. How satisfied are you with Team Calendars today?

[Andy Gladstone]

1. How important is Confluence Questions for you? 
   • 3
2. How satisfied are you with Confluence Questions today?
   • 2
3. How important is Team Calendars for you?
   • 8
4. How satisfied are you with Team Calendars today?
   • 4

[Filip Callewaert]

1. How important is Confluence Questions for you? 7
2. How satisfied are you with Confluence Questions today? 3
3. How important is Team Calendars for you? 3
4. How satisfied are you with Team Calendars today? 2