Taking a huge swipe at the dwindling productivity of the modern worker, Atlassian today released Confluence 4.3, a turbo-boost to its best-in-class content and team collaboration software. The new release introduces a new notification and work action system, called WorkBox, that helps users focus on what needs their attention and act on it faster. Confluence 4.3 also adds simple personal and team-based tasks that can be added to any Confluence page and simply managed in WorkBox. And everything can be accessed through Confluence's new full, mobile-ready user interface for working with content, people and tasks on-the-go.

Confluence 4.3 introduces WorkBox, an all-in-one online work space that offers all the essential social and task management features teams need to eliminate the noise and track and take action on their work. (Photo: Business Wire)

“We want to take the labor out of Labor Day,” said Matt Hodges, product marketing lead for Atlassian Confluence. “People too often are working weekends and holidays because constant emails and endless meetings eat up their work day and distract them from getting any real work done. Confluence 4.3 gives users one place to track what needs doing, giving them more time to do it."

On average, workers receive more than 300 emails weekly, check their email three dozen times an hour, and spend 16 minutes refocusing after dealing with email, according to Atlassian's recent infographic. Also, on average, an employee attends 62 meetings each month and considers half of them as time wasted. Atlassian's new capabilities in Confluence 4.3 help teams rediscover their productivity by reducing context-switching and collaborating on decisions faster.

"Confluence brings everyone together in one online work space, lowering coordination costs for our large projects and minimizing mistakes for our business," said Stuart French, knowledge and business systems manager at SteriHealth. "Our business is dynamic and project priorities are volatile. The new WorkBox and mobile features in Version 4.3 save our team time switching between applications and searching for updates."

A new weapon for the mobile worker

Confluence 4.3 includes a new mobile-ready interface for accessing content on mobile devices. The new interface is device-aware and lets users easily toggle between the mobile and full desktop experience from their device. The mobile experience provides users a simpler and faster browsing experience for reading and responding to content on-the-go, while the desktop experience gives the full dynamic richness of Confluence for content creators.

"Receiving meeting tasks and updates right in WorkBox, and accessing live content directly by phone are two more reasons why Confluence is so valuable for our team!" French continued.

Trade Your Inbox for a WorkBox

Confluence has long been a popular work platform and is used by more than 9,400 companies in 100 countries to create and share content, connect people, and help teams work smarter. Confluence 4.3 introduces a new angle on social productivity with WorkBox - a re-imagined notification and activity system, available from everywhere within Confluence and directly integrated with email. WorkBox and the new mobile interface have four main capabilities:

• In-app notifications: a visible notification system that automatically tracks items that need your attention, giving you one place to follow the plot.
• Personal task lists: an automated list of tasks assigned to you and assembled from within Confluence pages, or personal tasks created in WorkBox, helping you keep track of what needs doing.
• Take action, immediately: WorkBox lets you view, comment or like individual items directly from a single view, avoiding the constant context-switching that kills productivity.
• Be productive, anywhere: WorkBox is 100 percent mobile ready so you can take action on important notifications, manage your tasks, and connect with co-workers on the go.

"Confluence has enabled our team to transfer discussions and important materials from email to one central place where everyone can easily find it, comment on it, and find it again when needed," said Mihai Marinescu, team & project manager at Brüel & Kjær, T&M. "Emails are so yesterday. Our employees would prefer spending more time working and less time stuck in their inboxes. There is no doubt that the new notification features in Confluence 4.3 will be a huge productivity boost for us."

More than half of Fortune 100 companies and over 70 percent of top U.S. colleges and universities use Confluence to connect users with the content and co-workers they need to get their jobs done, faster and more efficiently. Originally launched in 2004, Confluence is an industry-leading collaboration product used by organizations such as BMW, Nike and GlaxoSmithKline. Confluence has deep integration with Atlassian's issues-tracking software JIRA, providing teams with a comprehensive social and development collaboration platform.

Availability

Starting today, Confluence 4.3 is available for a free 30-day trial or can be purchased for onsite download or OnDemand cloud offering starting at $10/month for 10 users. The Confluence ecosystem features 175 consulting partners and more than 400 free and commercial add-ons, including Atlassian’s Team Calendars, available on the Atlassian Marketplace.

About Atlassian

Atlassian products help innovators everywhere plan, build and launch great software. More than 21,000 large and small organizations – including Citigroup, eBay, Netflix and Nike – use Atlassian’s issue tracking, collaboration and software-development products to work smarter and deliver quality results on time. Learn more at http://atlassian.com.

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