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Atlassian Confluence Connects with Office, MOSS

Atlassian has released the latest version of their Confluence enterprise wiki software, officially releasing their SharePoint Connector and a new Connector that will make many MS Office and Open Office users happy.

Version 2.9 of the Atlassian Confluence wiki comes with a number of new features, a ton of fixes — 140 to be exact — and two new Connectors:

• SharePoint Connector
• Office Connector

New Features for Confluence

• Search: A simplified search that now searches across all spaces and object types and Filters Results
• Charting: Updated charting capabilities includes a number of new formats and chart types that are even prettier than ever
• Auto-Save: A last saved timestamp hangs out by the save button
• Demonstration Space: An updated demonstration space includes “simple, straightforward demonstrations of Confluence’s capabilities and an easy to follow tutorial for newbies”
• Gallery: An improved macro lets you display picture sets visually on a page

As for the 140 fixes and other improvements, well, we won’t go into these — take a look for yourself.

Confluence Office Connector

Another new feature that is free to all Confluence customers is the Office Connector.

MS Word Integration

This is something Atlassian seems particularly proud of as it lets anyone contribute to the Confluence wiki directly from MS Word or OpenOffice.

OpenOffice Integration

They also claim some cool functionality using Excel and PowerPoint and say you can build a SlideShare using this connector and Confluence.

PowerPoint and SlideShare Integration

This new Connector comes as a result of a recent acquisition — plugin developer Benryan Software — last month.

Confluence SharePoint Connector

We covered the SharePoint Connector in June when Atlassian announced it at the Enterprise 2.0 conference.

The Connector enables several things:

• Searching across SharePoint and Confluence wiki sites
• Embed SharePoint content into the wiki
• Embed wiki pages into SharePoint via a couple of web parts

Unlike the Office Connector, the SharePoint Connector is not free. A commercial license will run you US$ 5,000 and includes 12 months of maintenance updates and support.

Connector Heaven for Confluence

According to the vendor, there are over 300 free and commercial plugins for the Confluence wiki — now that’s a lot of extra goodness. With the addition of the Office and SharePoint Connectors, there will probably be an increased use of the product in the enterprise. A very smart move for Atlassian.

Take a free trial and judge for yourself if the solution is all they claim it to be.