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Switching from Confluence

Top 5 things you need to know when migrating from Confluence to Superhuman Docs.

Confluence is a collaborative writing surface that works for doc and wiki use cases, but it’s limited in the way it handles structured data. Superhuman Docs is designed to satisfy your team’s doc, wiki, and structured data needs, like trackers and databases, from one collaborative surface. If you’re switching from Confluence to Superhuman Docs, here are 5 things to know to get started fast.

1. From wikis to hubs

 One of the first things people notice when moving from Confluence to Superhuman Docs is the difference in how their workspace is structured. Confluence is structured as a traditional wiki, meaning within your workspace, you have giant “spaces” where all of your information lives in individual pages and subpages. Superhuman Docs’ hub model works a bit differently. In Superhuman Docs, hubs start at the workspace level, where your teammates and their docs live. From there, workspaces can be divided into folders that group together different docs. Docs are the building blocks of Superhuman Docs. They house everything you need to know about a team, project, campaign, and more in one place, and they consist of endless pages and subpages. These extra layers make it much easier to find and share information, especially as your team grows. You’ll get better results if you don’t just dump pages into Superhuman Docs the way you might in Confluence. Instead, create a new doc when you kick off a new project, product, campaign, or team.
As mentioned above, folders are groups of docs that contain shared permissions. For instance, you can group all of your product team’s core docs in one place. Or your onboarding materials in a folder that is shared with the whole company. Once you’re in a Superhuman Doc, you can navigate the doc in a similar way to how you would navigate a space. Your pages and subpages are located on the left-hand side. And you can search across your current doc or across all docs in your workspace from the search bar.
Superhuman Docs has a few more layers that make it easier to find what you need when your team grows. This means you’ll navigate and use Superhuman Docs differently from Confluence; in short, start from your doc list to find the doc you’re looking for, and don’t be afraid to start fresh when starting a new project.
Work with AI that understands your docs and data
Docs AI can generate content, summarize pages, and pull insights from your tables—all directly inside your docs. It’s not just assistive, it works alongside your actual workflows.

2. From separation to collaboration

 The second major contrast you’ll notice when switching from Confluence is how seamless it is to collaborate with your team. For standard Confluence pages, you have to switch to edit mode and publish changes before teammates can see them.
 In Superhuman Docs, everything is live by default. You can collaborate in real time with unlimited teammates, seeing their cursors track and make changes across your doc. There’s no publish step, and all content types support real-time collaboration.

Quick tips:

  • If you don’t want to see your teammates’ activity (e.g. you’re reading or need space for uninterrupted work) you can hide collaborators' activity through the three dots next to the face pile.
  • If you’re working with someone and want to join them on the same page, you can click their face in the face pile to jump to their cursor.

3. From stark to stunning

 You’ll also find that Superhuman Docs has a lot more options to beautify your doc—and unlike other tools, Superhuman Docs makes it seamless to do this, so you can spend time where it counts.
We go into more detail in our design a doc with stunning visuals guide, but you can make a gorgeous doc in no time with things like header images, callouts, and custom icons.

4. From static tables to functional databases

 Although they share the same name, tables in Confluence are quite different from those in Superhuman Docs. Instead of simple tables where you can only add text, Superhuman Docs’ tables are powerful relational databases, meaning you can have connected, customizable views, which let you slice-and-dice the information in any way you like, while still maintaining a single source of truth. A view can filter out noise, or re-visualize your information as cards, calendars, and charts. Similar to Confluence, you can add a table to your doc by typing /table anywhere in the canvas.
The / command is a powerful tool in Superhuman Docs. It’s the key entry point for adding not just tables but also templates, Packs, buttons, and even adding Docs AI to your doc. Tables serve many different purposes in Superhuman Docs. You can use them to track meeting notes, crowdsource feedback from your team, build a structured database, and more. You can even turn tables into databases that are synced with outside apps, like Salesforce, Jira, Snowflake, and hundreds of others. You can also use Docs AI directly with your tables to summarize data, generate updates, or clean up rows in seconds. To learn more about Superhuman Docs’ tables, check out the getting started with tables in Superhuman Docs guide.

5. From siloes to a single source of truth

 Instead of relying on macros, extensions, plug-ins, and other add-ons, Superhuman Docs uses native embeds, Packs, and automations to sync with external tools and streamline your workflow. This helps you see all of your work in one place in Superhuman Docs. To see all of the ways Superhuman Docs connects with external tools, check out the sync guide. One popular example is the Jira Packs, which lets you pull data from Jira into your doc and push changes back. Everything is synced.
Now, no matter where your team works, you have a single source of truth for all your data.

Now what?

 If you’re ready to dive in, check out our courses, explore the resources in this guide, or try automations and Packs. Want more resources for switching from Confluence to Superhuman Docs?

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