When teams use Confluence to create and share content, it’s easy to hit “publish” too soon. Without proper reviews and approvals, content can go live with errors or misaligned messaging. The risks range from running afoul of brand and style standards on the low end, all the way up to increased churn risk from frustrated customers.

Even with approved content, Confluence’s default interface isn’t always intuitive for the people who need to read your content, especially if they’re outside your team or external to your organization.

That’s why we teamed up — Capable and Refined — to bring you a seamless solution: a way to approve content before publishing, and publish it in a branded, user-friendly experience your team or customers will love.

Why content approval matters in Confluence

Confluence is one of the most powerful collaboration tools available — but when many teams contribute content, maintaining consistency and trust can become a real challenge. What starts as a single source of truth can easily turn into a patchwork of pages in different states of accuracy, completeness, or tone.

For admins, this is about content governance and not just quality. You need a reliable way to ensure every page that goes live represents your organization accurately, meets compliance needs, and aligns with your messaging. Governance provides a framework that keeps content reliable as your organization scales.

Without clear review and approval processes, governance can break down. Over time, that can lead to:

Outdated or conflicting information

As content grows, older pages often remain visible long after they’ve been replaced by new ones. Teams may update their own versions without retiring the old, resulting in multiple “truths.” This creates confusion not only for users but also for teams relying on the same documentation for product, policy, or process decisions. Over time, the lack of synchronization undermines the value of Confluence as a reliable knowledge base.

Inconsistent tone and brand alignment

When anyone can publish, messaging can drift. Different teams might use different terminology, formatting, or tone, especially if they serve different audiences. For internal users, this inconsistency can make information harder to digest. For external readers, like customers or partners, it can erode the professional image of your organization. Approval processes help standardize language, formatting, and brand voice before your content goes live.

Unclear ownership or accountability

Many organizations struggle to track who “owns” a page once it’s published. Without defined ownership, outdated information stays live indefinitely. Approvals — and the workflows that support them — assign clear responsibility for content. When teams know who’s accountable for reviews and updates, information stays accurate and maintainable.

Erosion of user trust in the content

Trust is fragile. When users encounter errors, outdated data, or conflicting instructions even a few times, they might stop relying on your Confluence content altogether. Instead, they turn to chat threads, old files, or word of mouth — all of which fragment knowledge further. Building approval steps into your publishing process protects that trust and helps position Confluence as the reliable single source of truth it’s meant to be.

Tip: Read more about best practices for Confluence content.

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Capable: Streamlined approvals, no workarounds

Building a trustworthy, scalable, and streamlined Confluence content system is where Capable comes in. It adds structured, automated approval workflows directly inside Confluence, making it simple for teams to know:

• Who needs to review and approve
  
• When a page is ready to publish
  
• If content is indeed accurate and safe to share

Capable brings structure to your publishing process, without adding friction. It lets teams move quickly while maintaining quality control, so you can trust what’s published across every Confluence space.

Capable replaces the “DIY” mess of approval plugins with one integrated experience, giving you:

• Automatic team assignment: Set up approval teams like “Editorial” or “Legal”
  
• Slack & email notifications: Notify approvers right away.
  
• Flexible rules: Set quorum (e.g., 1 of 3 approvals), expiration dates, or re-review cycles.
  
• Auto-publishing to Refined: Once approved, your content moves to the right space.

This makes it incredibly easy for contributors to submit content, and for reviewers to give the green light.

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Refined Sites: Publish beautiful, branded content

Once your content is approved, Refined turns it into a branded, audience-specific website — without writing any code. Instead of sending users into the depths of Confluence spaces, you can present content through a structured, intuitive visual experience that’s easy to navigate and trust.

With Refined Sites for Confluence, you can:

• Publish knowledge on personalized sites: Easily build and customize internal or external sites for teams, customers, or partners. Once content is approved, it’s fetched automatically from Confluence without you needing to do anything.
  
• Manage permissions: Control which specific Confluence spaces appear on each site, and who can access them. Granular permission settings ensure a more focused experience for both teams and end users.
  
• Create custom navigation and landing pages: Showcase your brand and guide users with clear, intuitive page design.
  
• Leverage AI-powered search: Help teams and users find relevant content faster than before.
  
• Access analytics: Gain a deeper understanding of how your site is used so you can keep improving it — see which pages are being visited and searched for, what content can be improved, and more.

And yes, you can publish multiple websites from a single Confluence instance, keeping everything structured and scalable.

Tip: Learn how financial giant Nationwide used Refined SItes to scale Confluence to 12,000+ users.

How Capable + Refined work together

The integration between Capable and Refined creates a continuous publishing flow with zero friction, all the way from draft to live content.

Here’s a quick step-by-step example of how this all works:

1. A writer creates a draft in an internal Confluence space.
   
2. Capable assigns an approval workflow and notifies reviewers.
   
3. Once approved, the page is automatically published to a Refined site.
   
4. Refined displays the content in a branded, structured interface that’s easy to browse.

The result is a polished, branded page available on your intranet or documentation portal, with no extra work needed. Everything is automated, so your team doesn’t need to track who approves what.

Here’s how to set it up in minutes

Getting started is simple:

1. Use Capable to define approval teams and workflows, so every piece of content follows the right review path.
   
2. Enable automated publishing to your target Confluence space once approvals are complete.
   
3. Use Refined to turn that approved space into a beautiful, branded site for your chosen audience.

In just several steps, you can create a complete publishing system — with review rules, expiration dates, and even a custom domain like docs.yourcompany.com. It’s structured, scalable, and ready to grow with your team.

Build a trusted publishing process

Together, Capable and Refined make it easier to create, approve, and publish Confluence content that’s consistent, compliant, and beautifully presented — all without adding more manual work for your team. 

Want to try it yourself?

Explore Capable on the Atlassian Marketplace
Explore Refined Sites for Confluence on the Atlassian Marketplace

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Reach out to Refined or Capable if you have any questions.