One vs Several Spaces?

[tbellmr]

I am just getting started with Confluence and it looks great!

I do have a question related to the use of one vs several spaces.  Under my "Director" there are about six different work groups or managers.

On the plus side of creating six spaces is that you do not quickly run into page name already used.  On the downside if I am the sole space admin, I need to manage six vs one spaces.  I have been leaning toward a single space but still not certain that is correct.  Seems like a single space makes it easier to collaborate and maintain. 

What do the well seasoned Confluence experts have to say about this?

[Alex Christensen · Accepted solution]

In my opinion, I'd start with one space and make sure content is organized well in that single space. If your team grows, the amount of documentation grows, or the scope of permissions needs to change for different content inside that single space, then you can always create additional spaces later on and move the content from that single space into others.

In my experience, I've found it best to start with something simple in Confluence and then introduce changes as problem statements present themselves.

[Davin Studer]

I would say it really depends upon the size of your teams. Typically, I would tend to create a space for each team. However, if they are really small that may be more of a headache. However, you do gain some functionality by having different spaces ... beyond just having multiple pages with the name name. It is also much more difficult to lock down content in one space if you need that. It can be done, but it is a bit wonky to do. Also, as another example maybe each team would want to record meeting minutes in Confluence and they do this off of a template, but each team has different things they want in their template. You would need to create multiple templates for meeting minutes and the teams would need to make sure they use the right one to create their new minute pages. The nice things about having multiple spaces as well is that search will only return pages that you have access to. So, if content is locked into a space you don't have access to they you won't see that in search results and thus avoid some of the clutter.

There are lots of other good reasons for multiple spaces. Like I said I think the biggest factor for the decision would be you teams sizes, but even then I think I would personally still ted toward multiple spaces.