confluence

Confluence most commonly refers to Atlassian's Confluence, a collaborative documentation platform used by teams to create, organize, and discuss work. The term also denotes the geographical junction of two or more bodies of water, where streams combine to form a single river.

Atlassian Confluence, first released in 2004, provides spaces to organize content, with pages, subpages, blogs, and attachments. Content is structured hierarchically, and users can create templates and macros to embed dynamic content. Pages support inline editing, comments, mentions, and page restrictions. Version history enables tracking changes and restoring earlier revisions. The product supports search across content and export options to PDF, Word, or HTML.

In collaboration workflows, Confluence integrates with Jira, Trello, Slack, and other tools, enabling linkable issues, project documentation, and runbooks. There are two deployment options: Confluence Cloud and Confluence Server/Data Center, offering different scalability, security, and administration models. Security controls include space-level and page-level permissions, restrictions, and content access management. The platform also exposes a REST API and marketplace apps to extend functionality.

Common uses include internal knowledge bases, onboarding portals, product and engineering documentation, meeting notes, and knowledge sharing across teams. As a wiki-like workspace, it emphasizes collaboration, versioned content, and centralized information.

See also: confluence as a geographical term.