How to apply Jira Core and Confluence for my company?

[Hung Do]

Hi,

I would like to evaluate Jira Core and Confluence (all Cloud) for my company.

We are going to use Jira Core for Marketing and Sales.

The point is I have no idea where to start:

1. What is exactly an instance?
2. Should I setup an instance per department or an instance for whole company?
3. We are in a tight budget so I would like to leverage introductory pricing of Cloud version (10$ / month / up to 10 user). Any recommendations?

[Scott Theus · Accepted solution]

Hi @Hung Do,

I would compare an instance to a single installation of the software. Here is an example to take it out of technology:

I am a woodworker and I make all sorts of things from small boats to carts and cabinets to pens and toys. To accomplish that I have a workshop with all my tools, workbenches, etc. where I make things. Sometimes I also go to another workshop that has larger industrial equipment to work on stuff. 

Each workshop is an "instance" of a place to work on my hobby. Since Jira and Confluence work together, they both exist in my workshop; think of them as workbenches. Addons from the Marketplace would be my tools like a drill press or table saw, and so on, and the things I make are projects or Confluence pages.  

I suggest a single instance for your company, since that will make it easier down the road if you need to link projects together with dependencies or into a program, it will also make it easier for you to manage security across projects by setting up groups, you'll be able to limit the number of screens and fields, and a host of other stuff that would make combining instances into one later (if you decide to go to a server or datacenter instance.)

And...since you are evaluating the product and are on a budget I suggest you limit the users to  only those on your evaluation team, one or two per department perhaps. 

Hope this helps,

-Scott

[Hung Do]

Hi @Scott Theus

Thanks for your reply.

I had a look at this page https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/core/pricing?tab=self-hosted.

For 10$ (up to 10 users), does it mean I can have as many instances as I want? And I can have maximum 10 users per instance? Or does it mean only 10 users per server?

Hope to receive your reply soon.

[Scott Theus]

Hi @Hung Do,

Yes, you can probably set up multiple instances with 10 or less users per Cloud instance, For a server installation you would be limited to 10 users per server, but if you are just evaluating the tool I wouldn't think adding more instances won't give you much more information than one instance would anyway. In my experience an evaluation ten of more then 10 becomes too cumbersome to be effective.

-Scott

[Kesha Thill]

Hi @Hung Do! 

I'm on the Confluence marketing team - nice to meet you!

@Scott Theus has a great analogy and is correct. All of your Atlassian products can live on one instance, or site. You want to use the same instance across products so you can link them together and create a more seamless experience for your users! In general, if you decide to adopt Confluence and Jira Core after evaluating, I wouldn't urge you to create multiple instances because I find that the true value and purpose of Confluence and Jira Core show when all your teams are sharing knowledge across one instance, in one place, instead of multiple different instances.

I also noticed that you mentioned you're using Jira Core for your marketing and sales teams. Are you also using Confluence for those teams or intending to use it company wide? 

As a marketer myself, if you need any tips, tricks, or examples of use cases, I'm happy to chat with you! In the new year we'll be publishing quite a bit of content on marketing use cases around Confluence so I'll be sure to send them your way.