The ultimate guide to choosing a Confluence AI assistant

If your team uses Confluence, you probably have a love-hate relationship with it. It’s fantastic for keeping project plans, meeting notes, and company policies in one place. But as your company grows, Confluence can feel less like a library and more like a cluttered attic where information goes to get lost. Trying to find that one specific detail you need can feel like a full-time job, sifting through endless pages and outdated documents.

That’s the exact problem a Confluence AI assistant is designed to solve. These tools can turn your sprawling wiki into a smart, conversational resource that gives you instant, accurate answers. Let’s break down what these assistants are, look at the different types out there (from Atlassian’s own tools to other platforms), and cover the key features you should look for when choosing one for your team.

What is a Confluence AI assistant?

Think of a Confluence AI assistant as a smart search engine for your wiki, but one you can talk to. It’s an AI-powered tool that connects to your Confluence space to read, understand, and pull out information from all your documentation. Instead of you having to guess the right keywords to search for, you can just ask questions in plain English and get answers right away.

Here’s what it actually does for you:

• Lets you search like a human. You can ask complex questions like, "What is our policy on parental leave for employees in the UK?" instead of trying to guess keywords like "leave policy uk."

• Summarizes long documents instantly. The AI can give you the highlights of a long project plan or a dense meeting recap, which saves a ton of reading time.

• Gives you answers with sources. A good assistant doesn’t just give you an answer and expect you to trust it. It shows its work by linking back to the original Confluence page(s) it used, so you can easily double-check the information yourself.

These assistants use a technology called Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). All that means is the AI first finds the most relevant bits of information from your Confluence pages and then uses only that info to generate a precise, context-aware answer.

Types of Confluence AI assistants

As these tools have become more popular, you’ve got a few different options to consider. Each has its own pros and cons.

Atlassian’s native Confluence AI assistant: Atlassian intelligence and Rovo

Atlassian has its own solution built right into its products. Atlassian Intelligence adds AI features directly inside Confluence for things like creating and summarizing content. This is all powered by Rovo, which Atlassian calls its "AI teammate" for handling search and chat across the platform.

The obvious plus here is that it’s perfectly integrated. It already knows the structure of your Confluence spaces, pages, and user permissions. But its biggest strength is also its biggest weakness: it’s built to work best inside the Atlassian bubble. And as most of us know, crucial company knowledge often lives in other places too, like Google Docs, Slack, and the company helpdesk.

Third-party marketplace apps

The Atlassian Marketplace has plenty of third-party apps that bring AI features to Confluence. They usually come in two flavors:

1. All-in-one solutions: These apps come with the AI model and the Confluence integration bundled together in one easy-to-install package.

2. "Bring Your Own Key" (BYOK) apps: These tools are more like a bridge. They connect your Confluence data to an external AI service like OpenAI, but you’re on the hook for providing (and paying for) your own API key.

Marketplace apps can offer some neat, specialized features, but they can also create new headaches. You might have to think about data privacy differently, and the fluctuating costs of a BYOK model can be unpredictable.

External AI platforms

There’s a third route: using a standalone AI platform that connects to Confluence as just one of its many knowledge sources. These platforms are designed from the ground up to pull together knowledge from multiple places, not just one.

This approach gets right to the heart of the siloed information problem. Instead of having an AI that only knows what’s in Confluence, you can create a single AI assistant that understands your documentation from Confluence, Google Drive, Notion, and your helpdesk all at once. Platforms like eesel AI are built specifically for this, helping you create one source of truth for your entire company.

Key features to look for in a Confluence AI assistant

Not all AI assistants are the same. Beyond just answering questions, a few key features can be the difference between a slightly better search bar and an AI partner that actually helps your team.

Connections to multiple knowledge sources

Your company’s brain isn’t just in Confluence, right? Important info is scattered across Google Docs, Notion, Slack threads, and Zendesk tickets. A Confluence AI assistant that only reads Confluence content is bound to give incomplete answers, sending your team right back to searching manually in all those other tools.

The fix is to find a platform that sees Confluence as just one piece of a bigger puzzle. The best tools have broad, one-click integrations that cover your whole tech stack.

For instance, platforms like eesel AI let you connect Confluence, Google Docs, Notion, and even your helpdesk like Zendesk into one unified knowledge base.

Customization and control

A one-size-fits-all AI rarely works perfectly. You need to be able to control what the AI knows, how it acts, and what it can do. Here are a few things to look for:

• Scoped Knowledge: Can you easily tell the AI to only use specific Confluence spaces? For example, you might want an IT-support AI that only answers questions from the "IT Policies" space, while a marketing AI only uses the "Brand Guidelines" space.

• Custom Prompts: You should be able to give the AI a personality and specific instructions, like, "You are a friendly HR assistant. Always be polite and professional."

• Custom Actions: The most capable assistants can do more than just talk. Look for the ability to have them trigger actions, like creating a Jira ticket or flagging a tough question for a human expert in Slack.

The best platforms let you start small. You can begin with a narrow, well-defined scope (like a single Confluence space) and then slowly expand the AI’s knowledge as your team gets comfortable with how it works.

Ease of setup

Your team is busy. You don’t have months to waste on a complicated implementation project. A lot of traditional enterprise tools involve long sales calls, mandatory demos, and expert help just to get started.

Look for a platform with a self-serve model. You should be able to sign up, connect your Confluence account, and have a working AI assistant ready to test in minutes, not months. Modern platforms like eesel AI are designed to be incredibly easy to set up yourself, putting you in control of the timeline.

Security and data privacy

This one’s a big deal, and it’s non-negotiable. When you hook up an AI to your internal documents, you need to know exactly where your data is going and how it’s being handled.

Look for platforms with clear, transparent data privacy policies. They should state plainly that your data won’t be used to train their general AI models. Make sure to check for things like end-to-end data encryption, SOC 2 compliance, and options for data residency (like ensuring your data stays hosted in the EU). Be extra careful with BYOK apps, as they often put the responsibility for securing the data and managing compliance entirely on you.

Comparing Confluence AI assistant options: Atlassian Rovo vs. third-party assistants

So, how do you decide? Let’s put Atlassian’s native tool head-to-head with the specialized third-party options.

Atlassian Rovo: Features, pricing, and limitations

Features: Rovo’s main advantage is its deep connection to the Atlassian suite. It can search across Confluence, Jira, and other Atlassian products, using what it calls the "Teamwork Graph" to understand how projects, tasks, and documents are all related. It gives you AI-powered search, chat, and content creation.

Pricing: Rovo isn’t available on the Free plan for Confluence Cloud. It comes with the Standard, Premium, and Enterprise plans, but with usage limits tied to "AI credits" and the number of "indexed objects" per user.

Feature	Standard Plan	Premium Plan	Enterprise Plan
Atlassian Rovo	Included	Included	Included
AI Credits	25 per user/month	70 per user/month	150 per user/month
Indexed Objects	100 per user	250 per user	625 per user

Limitations:

1. It’s an Atlassian-first world: Rovo is built to live and breathe Atlassian. While it can connect to some external apps, its ability to deeply understand knowledge from outside sources like Google Drive or a non-Atlassian helpdesk isn’t as smooth as a purpose-built platform.

2. Less room for customization: The ability to tweak the AI’s personality, set up complex conversational flows, and trigger custom actions is often more limited compared to what specialized platforms offer.

3. Credit-based limits: Those usage limits on credits and indexed objects can be a real pain for teams that ask a lot of questions. If you’re a heavy user, you could find yourself hitting a wall.

The eesel AI alternative: Bringing all your knowledge together

If the idea of being locked into one ecosystem is a concern, a platform like eesel AI is a strong alternative. It isn’t just a Confluence AI assistant; it’s a full knowledge platform that treats Confluence as an important, but not the only, source of truth.

• Connect all your knowledge: With eesel AI, you can plug in Confluence alongside over 100 other tools like Slack, Google Docs, and Zendesk. This creates a single AI that actually understands your business from every angle.

• Total control and a fast setup: You can get going in minutes, set up the AI’s prompts and actions yourself, and even simulate how it will perform on past questions before you launch it.

• Clear, predictable pricing: Unlike credit-based models that can lead to surprise bills at the end of the month, eesel AI offers straightforward plans based on interaction volume. You always know what you’re paying for.

Thinking beyond a simple Confluence AI assistant

Getting a Confluence AI assistant is a great first move toward unlocking the value buried in your documentation. But the real change happens when you have an AI that can access all of your company’s knowledge, no matter where it’s stored.

This video provides an introduction to Atlassian Intelligence, showing how its AI-powered features can assist with content creation and summarization directly within Confluence.

The choice really comes down to this: a built-in tool that’s convenient but mostly stuck in its own world, or a specialized platform that can bring your entire knowledge stack together. To truly knock down information silos and give your team instant, complete answers, you need to think bigger than just one app.

Get started with a smarter Confluence AI assistant today

Ready to build an AI assistant that connects to Confluence and all your other essential tools? With eesel AI, you can create a single source of truth for your entire team.

You can get set up in minutes, connect over 100 sources with one-click integrations, and test your AI’s performance risk-free before you go live. Stop digging for information and start getting answers.

Try eesel AI for free and see how easy it is to put your company’s collective knowledge to work.