Teamwork - Migrating from SharePoint to Confluence

Organizations that have built their intranet or documentation hubs on Microsoft SharePoint are now considering a move to Atlassian Confluence. There are good reasons for this shift. SharePoint is a powerful platform for storing files and creating structured intranet sites, but teams often find it siloed and not tightly integrated with their everyday project tools. By contrast, Confluence is a dynamic collaboration wiki designed for open knowledge sharing. It seamlessly ties in with tools like Jira for project tracking, Loom for video updates, and Atlassian’s new AI assistant (Rovo) to break down information silos and boost productivity.

Undertaking a SharePoint to Confluence migration is a significant project, and it’s natural to feel cautious about moving years of content to a new system. SharePoint has served your organization’s needs, but Confluence offers a modern, unified workspace that can fundamentally improve how your teams collaborate. In this guide, we’ll walk through how to plan and execute a migration effectively. From pre-migration assessment to user training and post-migration enhancements, you’ll learn how to preserve critical content and bring your team on board with minimal disruption. The end result will be an integrated platform that not only replaces SharePoint, but empowers your organization with a more agile and connected way of working.

Pre-Migration Assessment

• Inventory your current SharePoint content: Start by taking stock of everything in SharePoint. List out all sites, document libraries, lists, and pages that your organization currently maintains.

• Identify what to migrate vs. archive: Not all content needs to move. Determine which documents and pages are actively used and which are outdated or redundant. Plan to migrate relevant, frequently used information, and consider archiving or leaving behind old, obsolete files to streamline the new system.

• Categorize content by team or purpose: Organize the SharePoint content inventory into logical groups. For example, group documents by department, project, or content type. This will help map each group to an appropriate Confluence space or page hierarchy later. 

• Note permissions and access levels: Document the current permission settings on your SharePoint sites and libraries. Who has access to what? While Confluence's permission model differs, you'll need to ensure that any sensitive or restricted content remains properly controlled after migration.

Planning the Confluence Spaces

With your SharePoint inventory in hand, the next step is to design the structure of your new Confluence site. Start by determining what spaces you will need in Confluence. Often, a good approach is to mirror the logical structure you had in SharePoint: for example, each department, team, or major project that had its own SharePoint site can become a dedicated Confluence space. This way, users will have a familiar home for their content. Within each space, you can create a hierarchy of pages that reflects the sections or libraries from SharePoint. For instance, if your Marketing SharePoint site had sections like "Plans," "Policies," and "Assets," you might establish parent pages or page categories in the Marketing Confluence space with those same names. Planning this mapping ahead of time helps ensure that once migrated, content is easy for your team to navigate.

Another consideration is how to handle documents and files. SharePoint often stores many Word documents, PDFs, and other files in libraries. In Confluence, the emphasis is on pages "which function as living documents that anyone with permission can edit right in the browser". Consider converting important Word documents into Confluence pages. Confluence can import Word files and turn them into pages, allowing for real-time editing and versioning. For files that you prefer not to convert, you can attach those files to Confluence pages or use Confluence's Smart Links to embed Office documents. The goal is to make information more accessible: instead of burying knowledge in attachments, use Confluence pages whenever possible so that content is directly searchable and editable on the platform.

Migration Methods

• Start small (manual migration): If you have a relatively modest amount of content, you might choose to manually recreate pages in Confluence. This can be as simple as copy-pasting text from SharePoint into Confluence pages and uploading documents or images as attachments. The manual approach has the benefit of letting you clean up and update content as you go. It’s time-consuming, but it ensures you review everything and only bring over what’s needed.

• Leverage automation for large migrations: For a large volume of sites and pages, manual work may not be feasible. In these cases, consider using scripts or third-party migration tools to automate the process. There are utilities that can transfer SharePoint pages, documents, and even metadata into Confluence spaces. These tools aim to preserve your content hierarchy, carry over attachments, and reduce human error. While using an automated tool requires some setup and testing, it can dramatically speed up the migration of thousands of pages.

• Pilot and phase the rollout: Rather than migrating everything at once, it’s wise to run a pilot migration first. You might pick one department or project to migrate initially. This pilot allows you to refine your mapping and catch any issues on a smaller scale. After adjusting your process based on the pilot, you can proceed to migrate other groups in phases. A phased migration reduces risk and gives your IT team bandwidth to support users as they come on board, space by space.

• Plan for attachments and links: Don’t forget about files and embedded links. If your SharePoint pages contained a lot of attached files, decide how these will be handled. Many migration tools will bring attachments over and add them to the corresponding Confluence pages automatically. If you’re doing things manually, you’ll need to download those files and upload them into Confluence. Also, be mindful of any SharePoint-specific hyperlinks or references in your content. For example, if a SharePoint page had a link pointing to a document on OneDrive/SharePoint, that URL will need to be updated after the migration. In Confluence, you could use Smart Links to embed the live Office document, or better yet, attach that document to a Confluence page so everything users need is in one place.

Setting Up the Teamwork Collection Environment

Migrating from SharePoint to Confluence is not just a one-to-one replacement of one tool with another, but an opportunity to modernize how your teams work. Atlassian’s Teamwork Collection refers to the powerful combination of Confluence, Jira, Loom, and AI-driven Rovo agents working together. As you move your documentation into Confluence, consider setting up the rest of this ecosystem to maximize value. For example, if your organization was tracking tasks or issues in SharePoint lists or spreadsheets, this is a great time to adopt Jira for project and issue tracking. You might create a Jira project for each team or department and link it to the team’s Confluence space. That way, project plans, requirements, and documentation in Confluence directly connect to actionable tasks in Jira, providing context and traceability. This Teamwork Collection approach ensures that your documentation, project work, and communication all live in an integrated environment.

Think also about how to handle internal communications and rich media content in your new setup. In SharePoint, you might have used static news posts or announcements on your intranet. With Confluence and Loom working together, you can communicate in more engaging ways. For instance, your leadership or project managers could publish periodic updates as Confluence blog posts and embed Loom videos to deliver messages "in person" without needing to schedule a meeting. This kind of integration makes your intranet content far more dynamic and personal. Additionally, by consolidating information in Confluence, you enable Atlassian’s Rovo AI agents to search and assist across a much broader range of your team’s knowledge. Rovo can tap into pages and Jira tickets together, effectively breaking down the silos that previously existed between documentation and work tracking. In short, setting up the full Teamwork Collection creates a unified hub where knowledge, work, and communication all reinforce each other.

User Onboarding and Training

• Offer training and guides: Don’t assume users will instantly know how to use Confluence effectively, especially if they’ve only used SharePoint. Schedule hands-on training sessions or workshops to introduce Confluence’s basics. It also helps to prepare a quick "Confluence for SharePoint Users" reference guide that maps common tasks: for example, creating a Confluence page vs. a SharePoint page, uploading an attachment vs. saving to a SharePoint library, using labels (tags) in Confluence vs. metadata in SharePoint, and so on. Providing this kind of comparative cheat-sheet will shorten the learning curve.

• Establish champions or power users: Identify a few people in each department or team to become Confluence champions. These individuals can receive advanced training and serve as go-to resources for their colleagues. Having local champions means team members have someone nearby to ask for help, which encourages adoption. Champions can also gather feedback and common questions to relay back to the project team, so you can address any usability issues early on.

• Run systems in parallel (briefly) and encourage exploration: It may be useful to keep SharePoint available in read-only mode for a short transition period. This way, if someone can’t find a piece of information in Confluence right away, they have the safety net of the old system. However, clearly communicate that new content should be added only in Confluence going forward. Encourage teams to explore and start creating pages in Confluence. The more people use Confluence, the more comfortable they will become.

• Communicate the benefits: Change can be challenging, so it’s crucial to continually highlight why this migration is beneficial for everyone. Remind users of the pain points they had in SharePoint and demonstrate how Confluence alleviates those issues. For example, show the unified search that can find information across all spaces, point out that multiple people can edit a Confluence page simultaneously without version conflicts, and illustrate how a Confluence page can seamlessly link to Jira tasks or display live project status. When users understand the “why” and see improvements in their daily work, they’ll be much more enthusiastic about adopting the new system.

Managing Permissions and Access

One important aspect of the migration is ensuring the right people have access to the right content. SharePoint allowed very granular permissions on sites, libraries, and even individual files. Confluence’s permission model is simpler, mainly centered around space-level permissions. This simplicity can actually be an advantage. In fact, many organizations realize they don’t need as many complicated access rules as they had in SharePoint. During your planning, review the permissions you noted in the pre-migration assessment and decide which ones truly need to be reimplemented in Confluence.

In general, consider making information more open by default in Confluence. It can be powerful for an organization when knowledge is widely accessible. For instance, allowing all employees to at least view most spaces encourages cross-team awareness and reduces duplicated effort. Of course, certain content will still require limitations. You might set up Confluence so that most departmental spaces are viewable by everyone but only editable by that department’s team members. For highly sensitive areas like HR or Finance, create dedicated spaces or apply stricter permissions so that only authorized personnel can view them. Confluence lets you tailor space permissions and even apply page-by-page restrictions for confidential information. As you migrate, replicate any critical restrictions to protect sensitive data, but don’t be afraid to embrace a more open access model where it makes sense. This openness is often one of the cultural shifts that makes Confluence such a successful knowledge-sharing platform.

Migration Day (Execution)

• Communicate and schedule the cut-over: Well before the final migration day, inform all users about when the switch will happen. Set expectations that on a certain date, new edits to SharePoint will be frozen and content will be moved to Confluence. Providing a heads-up helps teams prepare and avoids last-minute surprises.

• Freeze edits on SharePoint: At the designated cut-off time, turn your SharePoint sites into read-only mode or clearly instruct users to stop making changes there. This freeze ensures no one updates a document on SharePoint that then gets left behind. You might also put a banner on SharePoint pages announcing, "We’ve moved to Confluence. New updates are now happening in Confluence," to catch anyone who missed the earlier announcements.

• Migrate the content: Now, execute your migration plan. If you’re using an automated tool or script, run it during this window to transfer pages, documents, and attachments into the planned Confluence spaces. If you’re migrating content manually, this is when your team will create pages, copy over text, and upload files into Confluence. Depending on the volume, this step might be done in stages to minimize disruption to users.

• Verify and spot-check: Once the content is in Confluence, take some time to validate that everything important came over correctly. Check a representative sample of pages from different spaces to confirm the content is intact and attachments are accessible. If you find broken links or formatting issues, note them for post-migration cleanup. It’s also wise to have key stakeholders from each department quickly review their pages in Confluence to ensure nothing critical is missing.

• Launch Confluence to the organization: After migration, officially “go live” with Confluence. Send out a communication to all users letting them know that Confluence is now the primary place for company documentation and knowledge. Provide links to the main landing page or key spaces in Confluence so people can easily find their content. Encourage everyone to start using Confluence for all new documentation, and point them to the training resources or team champions if they need assistance getting started.

• Provide support and a read-only reference: In the days following the cut-over, be prepared to support your users. Set up a channel for questions or issues. Some users may report missing pages or ask how to do certain things in Confluence. Address these questions promptly to build confidence in the new system. It can also be helpful to keep the old SharePoint accessible in view-only mode for a short period in case something was missed. Make it clear that this is only for reference and that SharePoint will be fully retired afterward.

Post-Migration Cleanup and Enhancement

• Fix formatting and links: After the dust settles, plan a round of cleanup. It’s common to find that some pages need a bit of touch-up after migration. Go through migrated pages to fix any formatting oddities. Also, update any hyperlinks that still point to SharePoint locations. They should now point to the equivalent Confluence pages or attachments. This cleanup ensures your Confluence site is polished and fully functional.

• Organize and restructure if needed: Take the opportunity to improve the organization of content now that it’s in Confluence. You might find during migration that certain information could be better structured than it was in SharePoint. In Confluence, you can easily move pages around within a space, create new parent pages or sections, and add labels to categorize content. Spend some time refining the page hierarchy and content layout so that everything is logically placed and easy to navigate.

• Leverage Confluence features: Now that your content lives in Confluence, you can enhance it using features that weren’t available in SharePoint. For example, you can insert Jira issue or project macros on pages to show live status of work alongside the documentation. You can embed multimedia directly into pages to make them more interactive. If your team uses calendars or timelines, consider using a Confluence add-on or template to present that information more dynamically. The goal is to make the content more useful and engaging than it was in its previous static form.

• Archive outdated content: During migration, you may have brought over some information “just in case” even if it was rarely used. After a few weeks on Confluence, identify if some pages are not being accessed or are clearly outdated. Confluence allows you to archive or remove pages to keep the knowledge base lean. Don’t be afraid to clean up redundant information. Users will appreciate having a concise set of up-to-date pages rather than wading through old clutter.

• Continuously improve: Treat the period after migration as a chance to continuously improve your knowledge platform. Gather feedback from users about the new Confluence setup. Perhaps some pages could use better templates, or teams have suggestions for organizing information more effectively. You can iteratively update the spaces, introduce new Confluence best practices and even automate some processes. This proactive tuning after the migration will help your Confluence site deliver long-term value and remain the central, living knowledge hub for your organization.

Benefits Realized After Migrating

Migrating from SharePoint to Confluence pays off in tangible ways. First, information is no longer siloed. Your teams can now search in one place and find what they need without digging through separate SharePoint sites or network drives. Confluence’s powerful search can surface a page or attachment in seconds, cutting down the time employees spend looking for answers. Second, collaboration becomes more fluid. Multiple people can co-edit a page in real time, so knowledge gets updated faster and stays accurate. No more waiting for someone to “check in” a document or worrying about version conflicts. The integration with Jira means documentation and project tasks are linked, so engineers, support, and business teams are literally on the same page when referencing requirements or troubleshooting guides. By using Confluence as a living knowledge base, your intranet transforms from a static repository into an interactive hub that supports day-to-day workflows.

For example, consider how a support team benefits: In the past, a support agent might have had to search through a SharePoint site to find a relevant troubleshooting guide when assisting a customer. If that document wasn’t up to date, they might not have trusted the information. Now, with the new Confluence knowledge base, that agent can quickly use the search bar to find the latest troubleshooting article that the engineering team updated just last week. That page might even show live links to related Jira issues or past incident reports. The result? The support agent provides an answer faster and with greater confidence. Meanwhile, the engineering team isn’t repeatedly fielding the same questions, and the organization as a whole learns and adapts more quickly. Across the board, teams become more aligned and informed. Less time is wasted rediscovering or duplicating information, and more time is spent on productive collaboration. In short, migrating to Confluence and adopting the Teamwork Collection fosters a knowledge-sharing culture in which the entire company operates more efficiently and innovatively.

Wrapping Up

Migrating from SharePoint to Confluence is a significant undertaking, but as countless organizations have discovered, the rewards are well worth it. With careful planning and a people-first approach, you can transition your company’s knowledge base with minimal disruption. Remember that you’re not alone in this journey. Many teams have successfully made the leap, and resources are available to guide you at each step. The key is to take it methodically and bring your users along for the ride, addressing concerns and highlighting wins as you go.

By moving to Confluence and the Atlassian Teamwork Collection, you’re not just swapping one platform for another; you’re fundamentally upgrading how your organization collaborates. Information will flow more freely, teams will work more in sync, and your intranet will evolve from a static archive into a vibrant, interactive environment. In essence, you are empowering your teams with a unified workspace that is more than the sum of its parts. It’s a platform where knowledge, communication, and project execution all come together. Embrace the change, keep refining the system post-migration, and you’ll soon see a more open, integrated, and innovative teamwork culture take root. Here’s to a successful migration and a future of better, faster collaboration!