Article

Reduce App Overload with Smartsheet & Confluence

It seems like every day, a new app comes on the scene that promises to increase productivity. Yet we can all relate to the dilemma of needing to track down a specific piece of information and having to hunt through email, chat apps, project management tools, and file storage systems to no avail. The fact that critical information is scattered across multiple tools can seriously interrupt your workflow and reduce efficiency - essentially, the technology that was supposed to be the answer has instead become the problem.

This reality becomes more acute when large-scale initiatives require technical and non-technical teams to work together; project managers tend to manage their work differently, and in different tools, than software engineers. Now, thanks to integrations between tools, there are more effective strategies to ensure that everyone has access to the information they need, when they need it, without any group having to sacrifice their preferred work management approaches.

Everything You Need, All in One Place

The Smartsheet for JIRA connector is one example of an integration that helps cross-functional teams work better together. Both tools automatically update when changes are made in either, and to take it one layer deeper, both work with Confluence. Confluence by Atlassian is wiki software used heavily by teams that work in JIRA day in and day out. According to Atlassian, more than half of teams who use JIRA also use Confluence to connect with the content they need to get their work done.

With Smartsheet and Confluence, you can embed anything in Confluence that you can publish in Smartsheet, including sheets, web forms, reports, and dashboards. As changes are made, published Smartsheet items in Confluence are updated in real time, so you can be sure that everyone has access to the most current information. Additionally, you can access Smartsheet and JIRA directly from Confluence if further drill down is desired.

Best of all, it can be done in minutes. Here are five steps to embed a published piece of content from Smartsheet in Confluence:

Enable the HTML Macro in Confluence.
Publish your Smartsheet sheet, web form, report, or dashboard. You will end up with a publicly accessible URL.
Log in to Confluence and go to the page where you would like to embed the published Smartsheet content.
Edit the page.
Add an HTML Macro on the page and add the following iFrame, making sure to change the URL from step two to the SRC parameter:

Top Ways to Improve Efficiency with Smartsheet and Confluence

Here are four ways that you can use Smartsheet and Confluence to ensure everyone has access to the information they need:

Report on high-level KPIs across the organization. Whether you’re working toward project, program, or organizational KPIs, it’s important to make sure everyone who is responsible for contributing to those goals is aware of and tracking toward them. With dashboards in Smartsheet, individuals, managers, and executives get a quick, visual status of their top KPIs and the status of those goals - all in one view. Publish and embed dashboards into Confluence to ensure key stakeholders have access to KPIs.

Communicate critical plans to cross-functional teams. When teams from multiple departments are involved in a real-time communications process, clear line of sight into actions to be taken is key. For example, at Smartsheet we have a critical situation plan that is activated should an issue with the app or website arise. This plan involves steps that individuals on our marketing, engineering, snoc, executive, and support teams are responsible for, so it needs to be accessible to all parties, in real time. We track and make updates to this plan in Smartsheet and then embed the sheet to Confluence to ensure everyone has access to the most up to date process.
Track cross-departmental project plans and status. Large-scale initiatives have hundreds of tasks that must be completed on time or run the risk of budget and timeline overruns. That’s why project timelines must be easily accessible to all responsible teams to ensure they know their deadlines and those deadlines affect other tasks. With Smartsheet and Confluence, the project manager can create, update, and track project timelines with a Gantt chart in Smartsheet and then embed the published project plan in Confluence so the relevant technical team members can find the details they need to stay on track.

Escalate your ticket submission and resolution process. If your organization uses JIRA Service Desk for IT ticket submission and resolution, it may be difficult for business stakeholders to get a greater view of overall status and metrics. Smartsheet for JIRA solves this issue by using a simple web form in Smartsheet and keeping all the data synced across both tools to improve visibility across teams. To ensure everyone has access to the ticket submission web form, and to expedite the identification and resolution of issues, embed the published form in Confluence so submitters can quickly find and submit the form directly from that location.

Reduce App Overload, One Process at a Time

With Smartsheet and Confluence, you can be assured that key stakeholders have access to and can easily locate all important information in the tools they already use. This helps to keep your teams in the loop and maintain a high level of productivity by reducing the app fatigue felt by so many. Just another way that Smartsheet with Atlassian together, helps you work better.