A searchable Confluence knowledge base, in a fraction of the time and budget allowed

The challenge

EPM Projects is a medium-sized consultancy in Sydney, owned and run by its executives, providing client-side construction project management and property development management.

EPM wanted an easily searchable, collaborative document management system in Confluence, in place of traditional document repositories: one central knowledge base for internal information such as business processes, linking back to standards and supporting documents in InfoPoint.

It needed Confluence tailored to its own needs, with content grouped into business and project categories, visibility of where procedures and supporting content live, and training and material so its people could find, create and manage content themselves. We delivered the project remotely from Perth, with EPM's team in Sydney.

Our approach

We started with requirements analysis: the goals and priorities, how EPM needed its knowledge base structured, and what training its people needed.

Working in an agile way, we built a minimum viable product in Confluence rather than documents wherever the timeframe allowed, and documented the remaining functionality for EPM to implement.

We customised templates for business procedures and project procedures, and set up dedicated spaces for business content (Business Pathways) and project content (Project Pathways), where people can find content by functional area or by project phase. Labels surface relevant content, and a project repository holds labelled project artefacts. A knowledge base shows EPM's content editors how to run Confluence for their setup, backed by team training sessions and mentoring in creating knowledge base articles.

The outcome

We delivered the complete solution in 48 hours of work spread over three weeks, a fraction of the allocated time and budget, including migrating all of EPM's content, which was originally out of scope.

Dynamic Confluence pages replace the traditional folders and documents, in an easy-to-navigate, website-like interface, with templates that support EPM's business processes. Everything uses Confluence's out-of-the-box features, with no plug-ins or Marketplace apps, and training means EPM can keep customising and managing Confluence itself. EPM were delighted with the outcome.