Atlassian Mini Confluence for iPhone Review - Hands-on

I've just installed and set up Atlassian's Mini Confluence for iPhone, linking it up to our Confluence wiki install. It's available now in the Apple App Store for £2.99.

On first-run Mini Confluence prompts for a username and password, and the web address of your Confluence installation. You need to enable the Confluence Remote API in your confluence install before the app can connect, and I needed to set up a VPN connection on my iPhone before I could connect to our company Confluence install.

Once you've logged in you're taken to your dashboard which, in Mini-terms, means a list of the latest content changes. Don't think of this as a copy of your web-dashboard that you may have heavily customised; here Mini Confluence give you a simpler window onto the latest content updates.

Along the bottom of the app you have quick links to Dashboard, Spaces, People, and (most importantly) Search. 

Dashboard: List of latest content updates 

Spaces: A list of the spaces to which you have access 

People: A neat cork-board display with people's photos and names, along with a "Search people" box 

Search: A very familiar search interface.

If you've ever searched and typed something on an iPhone, you can't go wrong here!

The first thing to appreciate is that this is not a fully featured Confluence editing and management application; it is a window onto your wiki giving you access to information you need when you're on the move. It seems quite acceptable to not want to administer your Confluence installation through an iPhone, but some may question the omission of the ability to edit content. However when you consider that you are getting quick, easy access to all your wiki content whenever you have your phone in your pocket the issue of editing becomes less important. In the future it would be good to see even a wiki-markup-only editor for those determined enough to write significant amounts of content on an iPhone which, in itself, would not be a pleasant experience no matter how good the interface.

You can, however, view and post comments on any articles in the iPhone's portrait mode which is a welcome feature.

Search

This is the important bit! The big question is: can I find content quickly and read it easily? The pleasing answer to this question is yes. The search facility is implemented simply, works perfectly, and is easy to use. It appears that Atlassian has concentrated on the most important aspects of why someone would want to access their corporate wiki which are finding colleagues and finding content fast and without fuss. This being the first version of Mini Confluence, any other criticisms aimed at the new app have to be balanced against the fundamentally simple search and viewing functions.

Currently the search box is very static, requiring the user to submit the search before seeing results. A future improvement would be to have a more dynamic search which filters the search results as you type in the same way that the full version of Confluence shows you relevant pages before you've finished typing. The Wikipanion app is a good example of this search method in action which works well even when restricted by a standard phone network connection.

Navigating around content

As I've said above, the main method of navigating around content you'll use is the Search option. In many ways you're forced to use this option as the structural element of Confluence is a bit hit-and-miss inside Mini Confluence. For instance, you can browse to a space and see the list of all content within that space sorted alphabetically. If you have the {children} macro on a page to display it's child pages you can navigate using that. However there is no breadcrumb, or indication of where you are within the wiki's structure, and the {pagetree} macro does not appear to render at all. An odd choice given that it is such a commonly used macro.

The lack of a breadcrumb looks like a space issue: an iPhone just isn't big enough to display where you are within the app, as well as where you are within the wiki, especially given how long some of the page names can be within a Confluence installation. It's a shame that the Pagetree macro is not supported though.

Overall you'll be searching for content rather than navigating around content, and you'll be consuming content rather than editing it. Mini Confluence handles searching and consuming of content very well indeed and I've already been using it to check information while off-site.

Wish list

In the future I'd like to see multiple log-ins for those users who have more than one Confluence installation and, given that search is the fundamental way in which users are required to navigate content, a more interactive search system that offers suggestions as you type.

As it is, Mini Confluence is well worth the price of admission if you need to review and comment on your content while out of the office.

You can find out more about Mini Confluence here. Or purchase Mini Confluence in the Apple Store here.