A practical guide to Confluence search AI in 2025

For many companies, Confluence is the official home for everything important. It’s where project plans, meeting notes, HR policies, and technical docs all live together. But as your company grows, that digital library starts to feel more like a maze. The more spaces and pages you add, the more time you waste scrolling and guessing keywords, just hoping to land on the right document.

Let’s be honest, standard keyword search just doesn’t work that well anymore. It’s like trying to find a book in a library when you only remember a couple of words from one chapter. This is where AI-powered search comes in. It’s a smarter way to find what you need because it understands what you mean, not just the exact words you type.

This guide will walk you through what Confluence search AI is, how Atlassian’s own tool, Rovo, works, and, more importantly, where it has some big gaps. We’ll also look at how a unified platform can pull all your team’s knowledge together and actually boost productivity.

What is Confluence search AI?

At its heart, Confluence search AI is an upgrade from a simple word-finder to an assistant that gets the context of your questions. The difference between a basic search and an AI-powered one is pretty stark.

• A keyword search for "vacation policy" might completely miss documents titled "Time Off Rules" or "Annual Leave Guidelines" because you didn’t type the exact phrase.

• An AI search for "how many pto days do I get?" understands your intent. It knows "PTO," "vacation," and "annual leave" are all related and can pull the right answer from any of those docs.

This is all thanks to Natural Language Processing (NLP), which lets the search engine figure out your questions like you were asking a coworker. Instead of just getting a list of links you have to dig through, you get a direct answer. Atlassian’s tool for this is called Atlassian Intelligence, which has been rolled into their newer, more powerful AI offering, Rovo.

How Atlassian’s native Confluence search AI works

Atlassian has been pushing hard to integrate AI into its products, and native search is a big piece of that puzzle. To see what it can do, it helps to look at what their tool, Rovo, brings to the table.

Key features of Atlassian’s Confluence search AI (Rovo)

Based on what Atlassian has shared, their built-in AI has some handy features right out of the box.

• You can ask questions naturally: Just type a full question into the Confluence search bar, like "What is our work from home policy?" and the AI will do its best to find an answer.

• It gives you AI-generated answers: Instead of just showing a list of pages, Rovo puts together a summary based on what it finds. It also links its sources, so you can click through to the original page if you need more detail.

• It helps with content creation: The AI isn’t just for finding things. It can also help you draft new pages, summarize long documents, or even tweak your writing style to fit a certain tone.

• You can automate tasks: You can use plain language to set up automation rules, like "Archive inactive pages after 6 months and notify the creators," which can cut down on a lot of admin work.

A screenshot of the Rovo Intelligence Copilot in Confluence, demonstrating the Confluence search AI in action.:

The scope and limitations of native Confluence search AI

So, what’s the catch? Atlassian’s AI generates answers only from the information inside your Confluence instance. It’s built to be the best search tool for your Confluence pages and blogs, period. And while Rovo is starting to connect with a few other tools, its focus remains squarely on the Atlassian world.

This brings us to its biggest limitation. The AI is pretty smart inside its own walled garden, but what about all the important information that lives somewhere else? This is where the downsides of a siloed approach start to become obvious.

Why a Confluence-only approach isn’t enough

The whole point of an AI search tool is to have one place to find everything. But if that one place is blind to where your team actually gets work done, it’s not really solving the problem.

Your company knowledge isn’t just in Confluence

Think about it for a second: where does your team really store its knowledge? Confluence might be the official library, but day-to-day work happens all over the place. Information that your search AI needs is probably scattered across a dozen different apps:

• Project plans and marketing briefs sitting in Google Docs.

• Quick decisions and project updates buried in Slack threads.

• Solutions to customer issues logged in old Zendesk or Jira tickets.

• Official procedures and vendor contracts saved as PDFs.

When your Confluence search AI can’t see these sources, it gives you incomplete answers. That sends your employees right back to square one: opening five different tabs and searching manually, which is a massive time sink.

Missing critical knowledge in different formats

It’s not just about other apps; it’s also about file types.

A detailed project plan saved as a PDF on a Confluence page might as well be invisible to the search. While Atlassian is trying to fix this with Rovo, it shows a basic weakness in a tool designed for just one ecosystem.

This creates "dark knowledge", valuable information that’s locked away in formats your AI can’t read. Your single source of truth suddenly has huge blind spots.

This knowledge gap is why a lot of teams look for third-party tools built specifically to connect everything. For example, a platform like eesel AI can plug into your Confluence, Google Docs, and PDFs to create one single, unified brain for its AI to draw from.

How a unified search actually helps

Instead of trying to move all your knowledge into one tool (which is a nightmare project nobody wants), a much better approach is to use an AI that connects to all the tools you already use.

Connect your tools in minutes, not months

The best thing about a unified AI solution is how simple and broad it is. For example, eesel AI has one-click integrations for dozens of knowledge sources, including Confluence, Notion, Google Docs, and help desks like Zendesk and Intercom.

This is completely different from the complicated, developer-heavy setups some enterprise tools require. eesel AI is truly self-serve, meaning you can sign up, connect your sources, and have a working AI assistant in just a few minutes, without ever having to talk to a salesperson. It fits into your existing workflow instead of making you change how you work.

Go beyond simple search with an AI workforce

A powerful AI platform does more than just answer questions; it takes action. Once you’ve connected all your knowledge, you can use it in different ways.

• For internal questions: Let your team ask questions in Slack or MS Teams and get instant answers pulled from Confluence, Google Docs, past tickets, wherever the information lives. No more bugging engineers for simple questions.

• For customer support: Use that same unified knowledge to help your customers. The AI can automate replies to common questions in help desks like Zendesk or Freshdesk, freeing up your support agents to focus on tougher issues.

This turns your AI from a simple search bar into a platform that actively helps your team and your customers.

This video provides an overview of how Atlassian Intelligence enhances search within Confluence.

Comparing pricing

Money is always part of the conversation, and the pricing models for native versus unified AI tools can be very different.

Atlassian’s pricing (Rovo)

Atlassian includes AI features in its paid plans, but your access is tiered. According to their pricing page, Rovo’s features are in the Standard, Premium, and Enterprise plans, but they come with different limits on "AI credits" and how much content can be indexed. For full, unlimited use, you’ll likely need to upgrade to the more expensive Rovo product, which can get costly fast.

Plan	Price (per user/month)	Key AI Features
Standard	Starting at $5.16	Rovo Search, Chat, and Agents (with usage limits)
Premium	Starting at $9.73	Everything in Standard, with higher usage limits
Enterprise	Billed annually (Contact Sales)	Everything in Premium, with the highest usage limits

eesel AI: Transparent and predictable pricing

On the other hand, eesel AI’s pricing is all about being predictable and easy to understand. There are no per-resolution fees, so you won’t get a surprise bill if you have a busy month. You pay a flat rate based on how many AI interactions you need.

This model is meant to be straightforward and scalable. Plus, with flexible month-to-month plans you can cancel anytime, you can get started without being trapped in a long-term contract. All the main products, including the AI Agent, Copilot, and Internal Chat, are included in every plan, so you get the full power of the platform right away.

Stop searching and start finding

Atlassian’s built-in Confluence search AI is a good first step, but it’s made for a world where all your knowledge fits neatly inside its own ecosystem. For most companies today, that’s just not how things work.

To really manage your knowledge, you need an AI that can securely access and understand information no matter where it is. A unified platform like eesel AI doesn’t just give you more accurate answers; it turns all that collective knowledge into a tool that can actively support both your employees and your customers.

Ready to connect all your knowledge sources and build an AI that actually helps your team? Get started with eesel AI for free or book a demo to see how it works.