It’s been a busy week for new wiki software releases. PBworks announced Project Edition, and Atlassian announced the availability of Confluence 3.0 (release notes). Confluence has traditionally been strong in technical, software development, and IT groups, and 3.0 adds several features that increase its attractiveness to business users.

Bill Ives summarized several key new features – Microsoft Office integration, improved editing, and plugin exchange:

Confluence 3.0 introduces a new easier to use interface. They also added a Microsoft Office connector in version 2.9 last Summer. You can start a document in MS Word and then bring it into the wiki. You can also edit wiki pages in Word. In addition, they have made their wiki text editor more similar to Word. Their goal is to lower the barriers to content creation.

With Confluence 3.0 Atlassian is providing an enhanced plug-in environment. First, it lets users add over 80 bundled extensions or ‘macros’ including charts, image galleries and task lists to their pages in just a couple clicks through a drag and drop capability. They call this the ‘macro browser.’ In addition, Atlassian is rolling out a dedicated website (plugins.atlassian.com) that gives both plugin developers a venue to showcase their products and customers the ability to easily find, download and review over 325 plugins created by third party developers.

Gil Yehuda looks at the enhancements to profiles that more clearly tie social context to the contents of wiki pages:

Confluence joins other E2.0 platform players by offering more than a single purpose tool. Although wiki pages still focus on content, they integrate with the profiles to create a much more useful experience.

Finally, a quick look at Mini Confluence, an iPhone app that was released this week to provide mobile access to Confluence to:

• Check your wiki dashboard and quickly catch up on news, comments, and page edits
• View and post comments on wiki pages
• Search the full text of pages, comments, and attachments on your Confluence site
• Browse profiles
• View attachments to wiki pages, such as PDF, Word documents, and images