Confluence is a great platform to store and share documents. These files are stored as attachments and automatically gain functional advantages over sharing documents via email, a shared network drive or even some document management systems.
Benefits
By using Confluence to store attachments, you gain four benefits:
1) Automatic permissions
Attachments inherit page and space permissions restricting viewing to authorized users.
2) Automatic versioning
No more questions on which version is the most current. Older versions are automatically stored allowing you to easily role back to previous versions.
3) Full-text Search
No more lost documents. Easily and instantly search the full content of the following file types:
- Standard Microsoft Office Documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
- HTML, XML, source and text files
- ZIP
Using Attachments
1) At the Page Level
You can attach all types of files to Confluence. On this page, we've attached three file types as a demonstration: PDF, XLS, and GIF files.
You can link to the files inline. For example, here's a link to the PDF. In Confluence, by default, a green arrow that points down indicates a file that will be downloaded once you click on the link. You can also link to files on other websites, like this one.
You can also display all attachments on this page by adding the text {attachments} (with curly brackets). That displays the information as follows:
| Name | Size | Creator (Last Modifier) | Creation Date | Last Mod Date | Comment | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
 webdav.png |
16 kB | Joshua Wold | Sep 07, 2007 | Sep 07, 2007 | ||
|
view_attachments.png |
12 kB | Joshua Wold | Sep 07, 2007 | Sep 07, 2007 | ||
|
 sample excel file.xls |
33 kB | Jon Silvers | May 16, 2007 | May 16, 2007 | Sample Excel file | |
|
 JIRA_Enterprise_Commercial_License_1.5.pdf |
21 kB | Jon Silvers | May 16, 2007 | May 16, 2007 | JIRA Enterprise license agreement attachment | |
|
 codegeist-logo-sm.gif |
2 kB | Jon Silvers | May 16, 2007 | May 16, 2007 | Codegeist logo attachment | |
|
search_for_attachments.gif |
7 kB | Boots Wang | Dec 26, 2007 | Dec 26, 2007 | ||
|
Picture 1.png |
84 kB | Nick Muldoon [Atlassian] | Jan 31, 2008 | Jan 31, 2008 | v2 picture |
Lastly, you can click the Attachments tab above to view the attachments on this page.
2) At the Desktop using WebDAV
Enabling WebDAV allows you to mount Confluence as WebDAV drive at the desktop level. This allows drag and drop of files, editing and creation of Confluence pages, and the opening up of Confluence attachments such as Excel files from within the application itself. The following two blogs from some of our developers show how this can be used.
