What happens to everything we’ve already built?

Your courses, assignments, learner data, Insights, and the workflows your teams already rely on all had to remain part of the experience.

The migration took several months of work, with one priority throughout: bring Smart Courses to Forge while preserving the features and workflows you are already familiar with.

But we didn’t stop at rebuilding what was already there.

Along the way, we also introduced improvements and new capabilities to make training easier to assign, track, and manage.

Smart Courses is now built on Atlassian Forge, with new capabilities to assign Learning Paths, understand learner status, and customize the information you see across course listings and Insights.

Let’s go through what’s new in this Cloud version of Smart Courses LMS.

Smart Courses is now on Atlassian Forge

Smart Courses for Confluence is now built on Atlassian Forge.

For most users, this change happens behind the scenes. The Smart Courses experience remains familiar, but the app is now built on the platform Atlassian is using for the future of its cloud ecosystem.

Why does this matter?

Moving to Forge keeps Smart Courses closely aligned with Atlassian’s platform and gives us a stronger foundation for future development.

As Confluence and the wider Atlassian ecosystem continue to evolve, Smart Courses can evolve alongside them, giving us more opportunities to introduce deeper integrations and new capabilities over time.

Most importantly, the move to Forge was designed around continuity. You can continue working with the training content and workflows you already know while benefiting from a version of Smart Courses built for Atlassian’s latest cloud platform.

Assign Learning Paths

Learning Paths already let you combine up to 10 courses and exams into one structured learning journey.

Now, you can assign an entire Learning Path to Confluence users and groups.

Instead of managing training course by course, you can assign the complete journey learners are expected to follow.

This can be especially useful for structured programs such as employee onboarding, compliance training, role-based training, or professional development.

Why did we add it?

This was actually one of the first feature requests we received after launching Learning Paths.

Creating a Learning Path makes it easier to organize related training, but customers also needed a simple way to assign that complete path to learners.

Now, instead of assigning each course separately or asking learners to find the right Learning Path themselves, you can assign the full path from the start.

See learner status directly in Course Insights

Course Insights help you understand how learners are progressing.

This release makes that information easier to scan by adding learner status directly to Course Insights.

You can now quickly see where each learner stands without relying only on progress percentages, completion dates, or other indicators.

Why does this matter?

Checking individual learner progress may be manageable with a small group. As the number of learners grows, it becomes much harder.

Having a clear status directly in the Course Insights makes it easier to identify who has completed their training, who is still progressing, and who may require follow-up.

Instead of interpreting several pieces of data, you get a faster overview of where everyone stands.

Customize your lists

Not every team needs to see the same information.

An HR manager tracking onboarding may care about different data than someone managing compliance training, internal certification, or another training program.

You can now choose which columns to display and then drag and drop them into the order that works for you.

Column customization is available in both the course catalog Listing view and Insights dashboards.

Why did we add it?

As more information becomes available in Smart Courses, listings and Insights can quickly include columns that are useful for one workflow but less relevant to another.

Now, you can adapt the view to what you are working on.

Keep the information you use most visible, hide columns you don’t need, and drag and drop columns to arrange them in the order that makes the most sense for your team.

External Links

There is one more change to be aware of if your courses use externally hosted content.

With the new Forge version, media, embedded websites, and SCORM content that load resources from external domains are subject to Forge egress controls.

In simple terms, Smart Courses can load content only from approved external domains.

We’ve already included some of the external links commonly used by Smart Courses customers, so media components using these services can continue to work without additional configuration:

• Google Drive
• SharePoint
• YouTube
• Loom
• Vimeo

If your media (video or audio) comes from one of these supported sources, you usually don’t need to do anything.

What if your content comes from another website?

You have two options, depending on the type of content you are using.

Option 1: Upload the file as an attachment

For media such as images, videos, or audio files, you can export the file and upload it directly to Smart Courses as an attachment.

Option 2: Add the external domain in Smart Courses configuration

If the content must remain externally hosted, a Smart Courses admin or Confluence admin with site administration permissions can add the required domain in the Smart Courses global configuration.

Once the domain is added, Smart Courses can load supported content from that external source directly inside the course.

This applies to externally hosted:

• Video and audio components
• HTML and web page components
• SCORM packages that load content or resources from external links

More improvements in this release

Alongside the bigger updates, we’ve made a few more improvements to Smart Courses:

• Cleaner filters: A new filter UI in both the course catalog and Insights keeps the interface less cluttered while making it easier to find what you need.
• Easy access to copied courses: When you copy a course, you can now retrieve the link to the new course directly from the confirmation modal.
• Refreshed design: Smart Courses has been updated to better align with Atlassian’s latest design system, creating a more consistent experience across Confluence.

Try Smart Courses for Confluence free

Smart Tables for Confluence now supports SQL Views, giving teams a new way to explore large datasets directly inside Confluence.

Write your own SQL query or simply describe what you’re looking for in plain language. AI Mode generates the SQL automatically, creates an adjustable SQL query, and keeps everything connected to the same dataset.

What’s new?

Smart Tables has always helped teams organize information with sorting, grouping, filtering, global search, pivot tables, charts, and formulas. We’ve added a new advanced feature: SQL Views.

Instead of creating multiple filtered tables or repeatedly combining filters and formulas, you can now create adjustable SQL queries that answer more complex questions, all while working from the same table.

If you don’t know SQL, that’s fine. Simply describe the result you want, and AI Mode generates the SQL query for you.

Whether you’re managing project portfolios, sprint backlogs, financial reports, asset inventories, or compliance registers, Smart Tables now lets every team explore data with the level of precision they need.

Why do native Confluence tables eventually reach their limits?

Native Confluence tables are excellent for documentation and lightweight tracking.

Most teams don’t just want to find information anymore; they want to answer questions like:

• Which projects are overdue and over budget?
• Which high-priority risks still don’t have an owner?
• Which assets expire next quarter by department?
• What’s the average completion rate per team?

Smart Tables already solves many of these scenarios through sorting, grouping, filtering, search, pivot tables, charts, or formulas.

SQL Views don’t replace those features. They complement them.

For everyday work, filtering, sorting, or grouping is often the fastest solution.

When datasets become larger, or questions require multiple conditions, aggregations, or advanced reports, SQL Views provide another layer of analysis without leaving Confluence.

Why SQL views?

Many teams already think in queries, even if they’re clicking through filters instead of writing SQL.

SQL Views make those questions easier to answer.

They allow you to:

• Query multiple conditions in a single request.
• Aggregate data using counts, totals, averages, and calculations.
• Create other views without duplicating your tables.
• Generate multiple perspectives from one dataset.
• Save SQL Views for future reporting.

The biggest advantage isn’t writing SQL; it’s avoiding duplicate tables across your page.

One dataset and multiple views

One Smart Table can support multiple teams and use cases without filling your Confluence page with separate macros or duplicate tables.

With Tab Mode, you can display different views of the same Smart Table as tabs within a single macro. Each team can create its own SQL View based on the same source data and switch between views without leaving the table.

For example:

• Project Managers can monitor overdue tasks and project status.
• Finance can focus on budget variances and spending.
• Leadership can review high-level portfolio summaries.
• Engineering can track sprint progress and blockers.
• Operations can review resource allocation.

The source data stays the same. Each team simply gets the view it needs, all organized within one Smart Table.

AI mode makes SQL easy for everyone

SQL isn’t difficult for technical users, but for everyone else, AI Mode eliminates the learning curve.

Instead of writing a query, simply describe the information you’re looking for.

Examples include:

• Show all overdue tasks assigned to Marketing.
• Display projects exceeding their planned budget.
• Count high-severity risks grouped by owner.
• List assets that expire within the next 30 days.

AI Mode translates your request into SQL, automatically creates the SQL View, and lets you review or edit the generated SQL query if you’d like.

Technical users save time, and non-technical users gain capabilities they never had before.

Use case: How to manage Company Risk Register with SQL query?

Imagine a Project Manager Officer (PMO) team managing a company-wide risk register.

For daily work, they use:

• Sorting to prioritize risks by status.
• Grouping to organize risks by team or category.
• Global Search to locate a specific risk by ID or description.
• Filters to review only open, active risks.
• Pivot Tables to summarize risk counts by severity.
• Charts to visualize exposure across teams.

As the register grows, different stakeholders need different perspectives. Rather than maintaining multiple copies of the same table, the team creates SQL Views.

The Finance team creates a view showing every open risk with a cost impact above $20,000:

“Show me all risks where cost_impact_usd is greater than 20000, and status is Open.”

The Project Office creates a view of overdue, still-open risks to make sure they’re caught and acted on quickly.

SELECT `risk_id`, `description`, `owner`, `due_date` FROM `T1` 
WHERE `status` = 'Open' AND `due_date` < CURDATE() ORDER BY `due_date` ASC

Engineering and IT/Ops review a view of unmitigated risks, filtering to anything where mitigation hasn’t started yet, so effort goes where it’s needed first.

SELECT risk_id, description, mitigation_status FROM T1 
WHERE mitigation_status = 'Not Started' AND status = 'Open';

Every SQL View is based on the same Smart Table, ensuring everyone sees the latest information without duplicating or manually maintaining data.

How to use SQL?

If you’re new to Smart Tables, you’ll find the interface intuitive and easy to navigate. Whether you’re starting from scratch or importing an existing Excel file, you can begin organizing and analyzing your data in just a few clicks.

As your dataset grows, use familiar features such as sorting, grouping, global search, filters, formulas, pivot tables, and charts to explore your data from different perspectives.

When you need a more advanced view, simply click + View and select SQL table. From there, you can write your own SQL query or switch to AI Mode and describe the results you want in plain language. Smart Tables generates the SQL query for you and creates an adjustable SQL View alongside your existing Table, Pivot Table, and Chart views.

You can switch between these views at any time without modifying your original dataset, allowing different teams to work from the same data while focusing only on the information that’s relevant to them.

Why does this matter?

Every team works differently, and some questions can be answered with a simple filter.

Others require grouping, a pivot table, or a chart.

And now, as your data grows and your questions become more complex, SQL Views offer another way to explore the same information without exporting data or leaving Confluence.

Instead of choosing among spreadsheets, databases, and Confluence, Smart Tables brings them together into a single view on one page.

Key takeaways

SQL Views expand what teams can do with data in Confluence by adding powerful querying capabilities to the Smart Tables experience. Rather than replacing existing tools like filtering or grouping, they provide more ways to explore larger datasets and answer more complex questions.

• Analyze large Confluence tables more efficiently with SQL queries designed for advanced reporting and data exploration.
• Keep one source of truth by creating multiple SQL Views from the same Smart Table instead of maintaining duplicate tables for different teams.
• Generate SQL queries with AI by describing the data you want in plain language, no SQL expertise required.
• Combine SQL Views with existing Smart Tables features, including formulas, sorting, grouping, global search, pivot tables, and charts.
• Work entirely inside Confluence Cloud, with Smart Tables running natively on Atlassian Forge for a seamless and secure experience.
• Give every team the view they need, whether they’re tracking projects, reviewing budgets, managing assets, or monitoring operational data.

Frequently asked questions

Can you use SQL with Confluence tables?

Native Confluence tables don’t support SQL queries. Smart Tables adds SQL Views, allowing you to query table data directly inside Confluence without exporting it to another tool.

Do I need SQL knowledge to use SQL views?

No! Smart Tables includes AI Mode, which automatically converts plain-language requests into SQL queries. You can use the generated query as-is or edit it after running it.

When should I use SQL views instead of filters or grouping?

Filtering, sorting, grouping, and global search are the quickest way to work with everyday tables. SQL Views are best suited for larger datasets or more advanced reporting scenarios that require multiple conditions, aggregations, or complex queries.

Can different teams create different views from the same table?

Yes! One Smart Table can support multiple SQL Views, allowing project managers, finance teams, executives, and operations teams to work from the same dataset while focusing only on the information relevant to them.

Can I save and reuse SQL queries?

Yes! SQL queries are saved as SQL Views, making it easy to return to the same analysis without rebuilding filters or writing the query again.

Can SQL Views be used alongside Pivot Tables and Charts?

Yes! SQL Views become another view type within Smart Tables and work alongside Table, Pivot Table, and Chart views. You can switch between them at any time while keeping the same underlying dataset.

Does SQL work with imported Excel and CSV data?

Yes. After importing data from XLSX or CSV to Smart Tables, you can query it using SQL Views, build pivot tables, create charts, or continue working with the rest of Smart Tables’ features.

Is Smart Tables built on Atlassian Forge?

Yes! Smart Tables is a Forge-native Confluence app, meaning it runs directly on Atlassian’s cloud platform and integrates with the Confluence experience.

Which teams benefit most from SQL Views?

SQL Views are ideal for any team managing structured data in Confluence, including Project Management Offices (PMOs), Product teams, Engineering, IT Operations, Finance, HR, Compliance, and Operations. They’re particularly valuable when datasets become too large or complex for standard filtering and grouping alone.

With features like Atlassian AI definitions powered by ROVO, employees can select an unfamiliar term, ask for an explanation, and get an answer instantly. Some acronyms are even defined and highlighted automatically, so you don’t always have to look it up. It is fast, convenient, and often surprisingly accurate.

So if AI can explain terms on demand, do organizations still need a glossary?

The short answer is yes.

Because explaining a term and managing organizational terminology are two completely different challenges.

AI helps people understand information in the moment. A glossary ensures everyone across the organization is working with the same definition, the same language, and the same source of truth.

The most effective knowledge management strategy is not choosing between AI and a glossary. It is understanding where each one delivers value.

Where do AI definitions shine?

Imagine a new employee reading a technical document for the first time.

They encounter a term they have never seen before. Instead of opening another tab, searching through documentation, or messaging a colleague, they can simply define that word from a Confluence page using Atlassian AI definitions.

This is where this feature excels.

AI-generated definitions are contextual. They can analyze surrounding content, interpret intent, and provide explanations tailored to the situation. They require little maintenance and can scale across large amounts of information automatically.

For quick clarification, AI is often the fastest solution.

When the question is: “What does this mean right now?” AI is usually the right answer.

Where does AI reach its limits?

The challenge begins when terminology becomes specialized, or when the same word means something different depending on who you ask.

Consider terms like:

• RAID log (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies), a staple for any PMO, rarely explained the same way twice
• WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First), core to SAFe prioritization, and genuinely hard to look up in plain language
• Product Owner, a title that exists natively in Jira, yet means something different on nearly every team that uses it
• CAB (Change Advisory Board), meaningless as three letters unless your org has already defined it
• DORA metrics: deployment frequency, lead time, MTTR, change failure rate, often tracked differently team to team
• RTO / RPO (Recovery Time Objective / Recovery Point Objective), high-stakes compliance terms that are easy to mix up
• Definition of Done (DoD), famously interpreted differently by nearly every Agile team

These aren’t just vocabulary. They’re business-critical concepts, and in several cases, the inconsistency itself is the problem, not just the definition.

Different teams may interpret them differently. Different departments may create competing definitions. Over time, documentation becomes inconsistent, and onboarding becomes harder.

AI can explain these terms, but it cannot guarantee that every employee receives the exact same official definition every time.

AI explanations are probabilistic. They can vary depending on context and available content.
That flexibility is useful for understanding and less useful for governance.

The role of a glossary app

A glossary exists for a different reason. Instead of generating definitions dynamically, it establishes approved definitions that everyone can reference.

When someone asks:

“What is the official meaning of this term in our organization?”

A glossary becomes the authoritative source.

With Smart Terms, organizations can:

• Create and manage glossary entries
• Identify who created a term
• Control who can create and edit definitions
• Standardize terminology across teams, spaces, pages…
• Reuse definitions across multiple spaces
• Maintain a central glossary repository
• Ensure consistent definitions for every employee

AI helps people discover information.

A glossary helps organizations govern it.

A glossary is more than a definition.

One of the biggest misconceptions about glossary tools is that they simply store definitions.

Modern glossary platforms do much more.

A Smart Terms entry can include rich formatting, images, links, related terms, synonyms, acronyms, labels, multilingual definitions, and related vocabulary structures.

This transforms a simple definition into a knowledge object.

Instead of explaining a term, you are building relationships between concepts and creating a navigable knowledge network.

That is something AI-generated explanations do not inherently provide.

Why does highlighting matter more than definitions?

Definitions are only useful if people see them. This is where many AI-based approaches fall short.

Users must actively ask for a definition or trigger an AI interaction. Or, in the Atlassian AI definition case, it selects and decides which terms will be highlighted.

Smart Terms takes a different approach.

Terms are automatically highlighted throughout Confluence and Jira, making knowledge discoverable exactly where people are working. Hovering over a term immediately reveals its definition without interrupting the workflow.

More importantly, highlighting can be controlled.

Organizations can customize:

• Where terms are highlighted
• Which glossaries apply to specific spaces
• Global glossary behavior
• Term visibility
• Highlighting rules

This creates a structured knowledge layer directly inside Confluence rather than relying solely on ad hoc AI interactions.

AI and glossary management work better together.

The future is not AI versus glossary software; it is AI-enhanced glossary management.

That is exactly the direction Smart Terms is taking with Lexi, the new AI assistant for Smart Terms glossary.

Lexi helps organizations accelerate glossary creation while maintaining governance and control.

Instead of manually creating every glossary entry from scratch, teams can use AI to identify terminology, generate definitions, and build glossary content faster based on a space or page content. You can also upload a file, and Lexi will determine all the terms that should be defined.

The difference is that these definitions become managed assets rather than temporary AI responses.

Once created, terms can be edited, approved, enriched, translated, and governed like any other term created with Smart Terms.

Lexi helps create the glossary; Smart Terms advanced configuration helps manage it.

When to use Atlassian AI definitions and when to use Smart Terms Glossary?

Use Atlassian AI definitions when:

• Users need quick contextual explanations
• Information changes frequently
• You want immediate answers with minimal setup
• Understanding is more important than standardization

Use Smart Terms when:

• Definitions must be consistent across teams
• Terminology requires ownership and governance
• You need a central glossary repository
• Compliance and documentation accuracy matter
• You want rich definitions and structured relationships
• You need advanced highlighting and discoverability
• Multiple languages must be supported consistently

The strongest knowledge strategy combines both. AI helps people understand what they are reading, while a glossary ensures everyone is speaking the same language.

Final thoughts

AI has made knowledge more accessible than ever. But accessibility is not the same as consistency.

Features like AI definitions are excellent at helping employees understand unfamiliar concepts in context. They reduce friction and improve productivity.

Yet organizations still need a trusted source of truth for business terminology; that is where Smart Terms continues to deliver value, not because it competes with AI but because it provides the governance, structure, discoverability, and consistency that AI alone was never designed to provide.

And with Lexi bringing AI-powered glossary creation into Smart Terms, organizations no longer have to choose between intelligence and control.

Today, that problem is even more visible. Teams are becoming leaner, expectations are higher, and new hires are expected to get up to speed faster than ever. There’s less room for delays, missed steps, or inconsistent training.

If you’ve ever managed onboarding, you’ve probably seen how easily things can slip. A task gets delayed, training isn’t assigned on time, or follow-ups depend on manual reminders. Even with a clear plan, execution becomes inconsistent.

That’s where monday.com starts to make a difference. It brings structure to onboarding by turning it into a workflow where every step is tracked, assigned, and visible. Instead of relying on memory, teams can rely on a system.

But even with that structure in place, onboarding still lacks the extra layer that makes it truly effective.

How does monday.com help you manage employee onboarding?

Onboarding tends to get messy faster than expected. Tasks are spread across emails, documents, and various tools, making it easy for things to fall through the cracks.

That’s exactly where it comes in. It gives you a way to organize onboarding into a clear workflow where every step is assigned, tracked, and visible. You can see who is responsible for what, what’s been completed, and what still needs attention, all in one place.

Why does onboarding need more than tasks and items?

Onboarding isn’t just about checking off tasks. It’s about helping new hires understand how things actually work.

They need to learn processes, tools, and expectations, which usually means going through structured learning modules. Without that, even a well-organized onboarding process can leave people confused or dependent on constant support.

The challenge is that while monday.com is great for managing workflows, it doesn’t natively deliver training or show how someone is progressing and performing through it. That’s why many teams end up using separate tools or manual tracking, which brings back the same problems onboarding was supposed to solve.

How does Smart Courses LMS fit into monday.com?

This is where Smart Courses makes a real difference. It adds that learning layer directly inside monday.com, so training becomes part of the same workflow rather than something separate.

What makes this especially powerful is that Smart Courses doesn’t introduce a new interface or external system. Instead, it uses the same board structure, navigation, and visual design that teams already use in monday.com. Everything feels familiar from the start, which means there’s no learning curve and no need to switch between tools.

Because Smart Courses is built on top of the same board logic, you can use monday.com’s native capabilities directly within your training setup. This includes creating workflows, triggering automations, and leveraging AI automations to handle repetitive actions like assigning courses, updating statuses, or sending reminders.

Course creation follows the same intuitive approach as any other board in monday.com. You can build learning modules by combining different types of content, such as videos, documents, and assessments, and organizing them into structured sections that guide learners step by step. Everything lives within the item view, which serves as a dedicated training piece for each course.

As users go through their training, their activity is captured automatically. Instead of relying on manual tracking, teams can use course insights to see progress, completion, and performance directly within monday.com.

The result is a system where onboarding doesn’t just happen alongside your workflows, but inside them.

A simple onboarding flow using monday.com and Smart Courses

Let’s look at what onboarding actually looks like when everything is connected and automated.

It starts the moment a new employee is added. Instead of having someone manually assign training, the system immediately assigns the appropriate onboarding courses. The new hire doesn’t have to wait or ask what to do next, because everything is already in place from day one.

As they go through their training, course insights give visibility into their progress. You can quickly understand whether the onboarding is moving forward or if someone is falling behind, without needing to check in manually.

At the same time, onboarding content doesn’t stay static. When a course is updated and its status changes from draft to published, it is automatically assigned to the right users. This ensures that every new hire always receives the most up-to-date training without additional effort.

And because people get busy, reminders are sent automatically, and users will be notified. Instead of managers chasing employees, the system keeps things moving on its own.

Why are teams moving toward automated onboarding?

The shift toward automated onboarding isn’t only about scaling teams anymore. In many cases, teams are becoming leaner, and expectations from each new hire are higher than ever.

Companies are investing heavily in AI and automation, sometimes reducing headcount, but that makes onboarding even more critical. Every new employee needs to be productive faster and equipped with the right, up-to-date skills from day one.

This is where onboarding can no longer rely on manual processes. When training depends on follow-ups, scattered materials, or inconsistent delivery, it slows down time to productivity and creates gaps that teams can’t afford.

By combining monday.com workflows with Smart Courses and automations, onboarding becomes a system that ensures every hire receives the same structured training without additional effort. Instead of managing onboarding step by step, teams can rely on a process that runs consistently and adapts as content evolves.

In a context where companies are optimizing resources, investing in people remains one of the most important decisions. Automated onboarding ensures that investment is not only made, but fully realized.

With Learning Path, you can bundle courses and exams into a single, structured journey, transforming scattered content into intentional learning experiences. Whether you’re building onboarding programs, continuous training, or upskilling initiatives, Learning Paths help learners see the bigger picture and stay motivated from start to finish.

Create and manage Learning Paths with ease

Learning Paths are intentionally easy to create and scale. Any user with creation rights can build and manage Learning Paths, making content organization more inclusive and collaborative.

From the editor, creators can:

• Add up to 10 published courses or exams to a Learning Path
• Set linear progression
• Restrict access when needed
• Enable certification
• Add contributors and collaborate

This flexible editor experience helps teams build a learning path experience while staying in control.

A clearer Catalog experience

To support discovery, the Smart Courses Catalog has evolved alongside Learning Paths.

Learners will now see:

• New filters that make Learning Paths easy to find: switch to change the types between Courses, Learning Paths or show all
• Dedicated “Learning Path” tag on cards that clearly distinguish paths from standalone courses or exams
• You can now combine the statuses to find the right course

These updates help learners quickly find what they need to start learning.

Learning Path Player

Once learners enter a Learning Path, the Path Player keeps them focused and confident throughout their journey.

With the Path Player, learners can:

• Move easily between courses in a Learning Path.
• See exactly where they are in the overall journey
• Track progress across the entire path at a glance

Learners always know what they’ve completed and what’s coming next without feeling locked into a rigid flow.
Another update in this recent release is that learners can access and download certificates directly from landing pages. This applies to Learning Paths and courses as well.

Powerful insights

Learning Paths are fully integrated into global insights dashboards, giving admins and managers a clearer view of learner engagement and progress.

Learning Path insights include two dedicated dashboard views:

• One focused on courses and exams within the path
• Another focused on learner progress across the entire journey

Reports automatically include only users with access to each Learning Path, ensuring accurate, actionable data you can trust.

Confluence is where your teams collaborate, document knowledge, and share content. To add structured training and compliance management, Smart Courses for Confluence turns your wiki into a full-featured LMS. The app lets you build courses, quizzes, and certifications directly inside Confluence.

In the latest release, we’ve significantly enhanced the Course Insights dashboard, making learner progress and course versions crystal-clear. Training admins can now instantly see if a learner session is based on an outdated course version, and reports can be broken down by version. These improvements deliver reliable, version-specific analytics that are essential for compliance audits and continuous training.

Enhanced course insights & version tracking

We’ve enhanced the Course Insights section to make tracking learner data clearer and version-specific.

• When a new major course version is published, existing learner sessions from older versions are automatically deprecated.
• Each course title now shows the latest version and when the course was last saved.
• Next to each learner’s name, an icon now shows if their session was completed on an outdated course version. By hovering over the icon, you can see which version they took. Learners can reopen the course player to access the latest version and automatically update their session.
• When data is exported to Excel, each course version with submitted answers to questions will now appear on a separate sheet, giving you clearer version-based reporting.

These changes make Insights more reliable, especially for compliance, audits, and tracking ongoing training performance.

Major versions: What counts as a significant update

Not every edit creates a new major version. Smart Courses automatically creates a new major version only when substantial changes are made to the default-language content, such as:

• Content edits: Adding, removing, or editing course sections or components in default language.
• Reordering: Changing the order of sections or components.
• Exam parameters: Updating the minimum pass score.
• New SCORM package: Uploading a new SCORM file.
• Version restore: Rolling back to a previous version of the course.

Minor edits, such as translations or minor course settings changes, do not trigger a new major version.

When a major update is published, the course card and landing page display a “New Content” tag to notify learners.

Course editing rules & Session protection

To preserve the accuracy of learner data across versions, Smart Courses enforces several editing safeguards once learners are enrolled:

• Course type locked: You can’t switch between “exam” and “regular” course types after learner sessions exist. This ensures consistent reporting in Insights.

• Quiz integrity: When editing quiz questions that already have learner responses, changing the answer choices may impact existing data.
  A warning message will appear before saving, reminding you to be cautious before making these changes.

• Certificate protection: If at least one learner has earned a certificate, the certificate feature cannot be disabled in the course editor.
  However, the “Only when pass” setting can still be modified.

These safeguards ensure historical results remain intact and reporting stays consistent over time. You maintain a clear audit trail, with edits that could affect past results either restricted or clearly controlled.

Learner view: Update notifications & certificates

Learners will now see a new information panel on the course landing page whenever a new major version of the course is published.
This helps them know when updates are available and ensures they always learn from the most recent version.

Importantly, when a learner completes a course and earns a certificate, that certificate remains linked to the version they completed.
Any new major version published afterward won’t affect their earned certificate or progress.

Why This Matters

These updates give teams better visibility into training activity across evolving course content.
You can clearly see:

• Which version did each learner complete?
• When and how the course content changed
• How updates affect completion rates and results over time

With session deprecation and enhanced version visibility, Smart Courses for Confluence makes learning data more transparent, accurate, and actionable. You can confidently track, manage, and trust your team’s training history even as courses grow and evolve.

If your team already runs projects, onboarding, HR workflows, and daily operations inside monday.com, chances are you’ve already wondered:
“Can we also train our teams here?”

“Can it function as our LMS?”

Short answer: Yes. And it works even better than you think.

This article explains how monday.com’s structure naturally supports learning, how Smart Courses uses that same architecture to enable training, quizzes, and analytics, and why integrated learning often outperforms a standalone LMS.

1. Is monday.com naturally designed for learning?

Even though monday.com is widely known as a work management platform, its fundamental building blocks mirror the elements you would expect to find in a modern LMS. Boards, for example, are essentially structured databases, the perfect place to organize courses, store training categories, or manage compliance requirements. Items, which normally represent tasks or projects, can easily represent training modules, lessons, assessments, or learning paths.

monday.com also gives teams a flexible visual environment.

Views allow you to present information in various formats, which is incredibly useful for displaying training dashboards or course libraries. The platform’s built-in permissions and automation capabilities also behave much like those in a traditional LMS. You can control who can access what, automatically assign training when someone joins a team and more.

All of these components, structured content, configurable views, workflow automation, and strong reporting, are the exact foundations an LMS requires. Smart Courses builds on that familiar architecture to add the missing layer: the training experience itself.

2. How Smart Courses builds a complete LMS for monday.com right inside your workspace?

What makes Smart Courses LMS truly powerful is how effortlessly it blends into monday.com. Instead of introducing a new interface or external dashboards, the app uses the same visual patterns, the same navigation style and the same workspace flow users are already comfortable with.

This creates a learning environment that feels natural rather than foreign.

Course creation follows the same intuitive logic as building anything else on monday.com. You can assemble training programs by combining videos, PDFs, audio files, questions, and interactive elements.

This content can be grouped or sequenced into sections, allowing you to design structured learning experiences without dealing with the complexity of traditional LMS builders. Everything appears inside the item view, which becomes a dedicated training screen customized for each course.

Smart Courses LMS for monday.com also adds full assessment functionality. Exams can include questions such as multiple-choice, ordering, and essays… Since everything runs on monday.com, learners don’t need to open external tools. Their progress, attempts, scores, and completion dates are recorded directly in the workspace, turning your boards into a live learning database.

Because the app is built natively on monday.com, reporting becomes exceptionally easy. Managers can track performance without leaving their monday.com, filtering results by user, reviewing completion rates, or analyzing quiz performance in real time. The data is always available and always up-to-date.

3. Why does an integrated LMS for monday.com outperform a standalone one?

Standalone LMS platforms often struggle with adoption, not because they lack features, but because they exist outside the daily workflow.

Asking employees to log into another system, with another interface, another set of notifications, and another learning curve, inevitably creates friction. Completion rates drop, engagement weakens, and training becomes something people do in addition to their work, rather than as part of it.

By keeping training inside monday.com, Smart Courses eliminates this friction. Employees already spend their day on the platform; their tasks, communication, and goals already live there. When training appears in the same space, it becomes an organic part of their routine. This significantly improves completion and reduces the mental overhead of switching tools.

Integrated learning also means integrated workflows. With Smart Courses, training becomes part of the full lifecycle of work: when an employee joins, they automatically receive their onboarding courses; when a user joins a new team, new training appears; when a compliance cycle resets, reminders fire automatically.

You also avoid the complexity of maintaining multiple systems. Instead of having an LMS for learning, monday.com for projects, and separate reporting tools, Smart Courses consolidates everything in one place. The result is a simpler, more coherent, and more cost-efficient environment that scales with your team.

In essence, Smart Courses makes not just a platform for managing training, but a platform for growing people, and it does so with the same clarity, structure, and simplicity that users already love.

This release brings a smoother course experience, smarter collaboration, and faster content creation, all designed around how teams actually work. From reusing course sections and components across spaces to simplified course access and cleaner course card design, everything in this update helps you save time, stay organized, and keep your learning process flowing inside Confluence

Let’s explore what’s new!

Import Sections and Components Across Spaces

Before this release, only components and sections from courses published in the same space could be imported.
Now, you can import sections and components from courses created and published in other Confluence spaces, saving hours of setup time.

This update is handy for teams that manage training across multiple spaces, HR, Product, or Compliance… who can now reuse modules, quizzes, or whole sections without starting from scratch.

This new import capability keeps content aligned and up to date across your entire organization.

Improved Course Player Access

We’ve refined how learners access and interact with their courses to create a smoother, more intuitive experience.

The Play, Resume, and Revisit buttons are now located directly on the course landing page, providing a clear and consistent starting point for every learner. Learners can access the landing page by clicking a course thumbnail or title. This update helps users quickly pick up where they left off or restart a course without having to navigate multiple screens.

We’ve moved secondary actions such as comments, share, and delete to a three-dot (⋯) menu, keeping the card layout clean and focused. The status indicator now appears directly on the course card, allowing learners to see whether a course is ongoing or done instantly.

We’re continuously improving Smart Courses to make it the most seamless, native learning experience in Confluence.

Stay tuned for the upcoming release!

We’ll walk through methodology, side-by-side results, pros/cons, use-case recommendations, and a verdict. The goal: help Confluence users and decision-makers (especially those evaluating switching or upgrades) choose wisely.

Methodology & Benchmark Criteria

To make this comparison fair and meaningful, we defined the following criteria and approach:

Test setup & process

To ensure a fair and comprehensive evaluation, we created identical test tables and converted or wrapped them within each plugin. We then performed a series of common data-management tasks such as applying multiple filters, sorting by several columns, adding formulas (SUM, IF…), building pivots, exporting to CSV and PDF, and reverting changes. Throughout the process, we recorded errors, and noted points of friction that could impact the user experience.

To validate our findings, we also cross-checked vendor documentation, user reviews, and community feedback. The results below present a detailed comparison of each tool, complete with insights, commentary, and direct links to supporting documentation.

A full comparison: Smart Tables vs Table Filter vs Aura Table Filter

Below is a comparison table summarizing feature support (✓ = supported, ✗ = not supported).

Tables main features

Features	Smart Tables	Table Filter	Aura Table Filter
Live edit in Confluence pages
Consistent filtering
Calculations & excel like functions	Smart Tables supported functions	(Supports only 5 formulas for calculating columns and only 7 formulas for calculating rows)
Charts	(7 chart types, 4 themes, labels)	(15 chart types, Appearance, themes)	(Less configuration and customization)
Pivot tables
SQL queries
Spreadsheets macro
Collaborative editing in Spreadsheet
Convert Confluence tables into spreadsheet
Sorting
Grouping
Search in the entire table
Sample table
Revert to Confluence table
Export table	(XLSX, CSV, Word, PDF)	(CSV, Word, PDF)	(CSV, Word, PDF)
Import table	(XLSX, CSV)	(CSV, JSON)
Tabs mode
Pagination
Support	(For every subscription)	(Premium support for advanced plans)	(Only for pro plan)

Native Confluence macro support

Macro/App	Smart Tables ( Creativas)	Table Filter & Spreadsheets (Stiltsoft)	Aura (Appanvil)
Support Atlassian smart links (Confluence page, Jira ticket)
Support external smart links
Table respects the Confluence page width and does not exceed it when media files are used
Display attachments and media files in the page viewer
View attached files right from the page viewer
Faithful Confluence page PDF export style		(Wide media files cause the table to be cropped)	(Does not support macros)
Support expand macro			(Macro titles and buttons are not visible)
Support quotes			(Displays only the text)
Support code snippets		(The native line numbering is removed)	(Displays only the text)
Support Decision macro
Clicking the mentioned username directs you to their profile
Interaction with Action item macro			(Cannot be selected)
Support Info panel macro		(Except the note panel)

Keynotes & observations

Each of the evaluated Confluence table apps brings its own strengths and focus areas, offering different approaches to data management and collaboration within Confluence.

• Smart Tables for Confluence delivers a modern experience with strong performance, intuitive design, and advanced features like global search, sorting, grouping, and import/export. Its seamless integration with Smart Links, Live Docs, and mentions makes it a solid choice for teams seeking a complete, collaborative solution.
• Table Filter by Stiltsoft remains a well-established and reliable tool, offering comprehensive filtering and pivot functionality. While its interface feels more traditional, it continues to serve teams that value stability and proven analytical capabilities.
• Aura Table Filter for Confluence focuses on simplicity and visual presentation. It offers core filtering and sorting options, making it a great fit for teams that prioritize page design and readability over advanced data manipulation.
• Support, documentation, and community involvement matter greatly when users bump into issues. Creativas, Stiltsoft, and Appanvil are active on the Atlassian community and provide tutorial resources.

In the end, all three tools address different needs, from analytical power to visual clarity, allowing teams to choose the solution that best aligns with their workflows and goals.

Usecase: Project Management with Confluence

A project management team maintains a quarterly performance report in Confluence. The report includes multiple tables summarizing:

• Project timelines and completion rates
• Team workloads and logged hours
• Budget vs. actual spend per department

The team needs to combine data from several pages, perform calculations, and group information by department to prepare a shareable PDF report for leadership.

However, native Confluence tables make this process time-consuming and inconsistent; formulas aren’t supported, data formatting often breaks during export, and preserving Atlassian’s macro design in exports is unreliable while using some marketplace apps for Confluence tables.

Solution with Smart Tables

Smart Tables allows users to apply advanced formulas to calculate totals, variances, or completion averages directly inside Confluence. The team can then use grouping to organize results by department, sorting to highlight projects with the largest budget gaps or lowest completion rates.

For deeper insights, users can apply filters to focus on specific quarters, departments, or project statuses, for example, isolating only “In Progress” projects or reviewing results from a single department. In addition, Smart Tables supports pivot tables, enabling teams to summarize complex datasets into clear, aggregated views. For example, this allows them to compare total spend versus planned budget across all departments or review average completion rates per quarter. When exporting to PDF, Smart Tables preserves the original Atlassian macro design and table layout, ensuring that charts, panels, and formatting appear consistently. This makes report sharing with leadership smooth, professional, and visually accurate.

Solution with Table Filter

Table Filter by Stiltsoft supports the team’s need for data analysis through its pivot and formula macros, allowing basic calculations for light comparisons. The team can filter by department or project status and generate summarized overviews using the Pivot Table macro. While it does not support inline grouping in the same way as Smart Tables, grouping can be simulated through pivot configuration. PDF export works reliably for table data but may not fully preserve Atlassian macro styling or complex visual layouts, sometimes requiring post-editing. Overall, it enables solid analytical reporting within Confluence but demands slightly more setup and macro configuration.

Solution with Aura Table Filter

Aura Table Filter helps the team display their quarterly report in a clean, visually structured format. It supports basic sorting, grouping and filtering, allowing managers to quickly narrow down data by department, project status, or timeframe. However, it does not support adding formulas for calculations, which limits its analytical capabilities. Additionally, Aura Table Filter is not fully compatible with most native Confluence macros, which can affect how the layout and styling are preserved during PDF export. As a result, exported pages may not fully match the original design. Aura remains a solid choice for teams that value presentation and visual clarity over in-depth data processing.

In 2025, Smart Tables for Confluence offers one of the most substantial balances of interactivity, formula power, usability, and flexibility, particularly for teams that want to work inside Confluence rather than hopping to Excel. Meanwhile, Table Filter & Spreadsheets remains a compelling, macro-rich option for advanced users building dashboards, merging data, or needing deep macro integration. The Aura table filter still may serve in simpler environments where ease and minimality are priorities.

Keeping learners motivated along the way is just as important as delivering the right content. When employees can clearly see the skills they’re building, training stops feeling like a box to tick and starts feeling like progress toward something meaningful.

In this blog post, we’ll explore how the new Skills & Prerequisites feature in Smart Courses works, how you can set it up as an admin or creator, and the impact it can have on keeping learners motivated and engaged.

How to Set It Up

For course creators and admins

Setting up Skills & Prerequisites is simple and flexible. From the Smart Courses global configuration, admins can define which courses must be completed or which exams passed for a learner to earn a specific skill. This ensures that skills are directly tied to measurable achievements.

At the course level, creators can also add a skill as a prerequisite. This means learners cannot start a course unless they already hold the required skill. It’s an easy way to enforce learning structure, making sure employees build on a solid foundation instead of skipping ahead.

Admins and users with insights viewing permissions also get access to the new User Insights board, where they can check a learner’s completed courses, assigned courses, and earned skills. This visibility makes it easier to track progress and identify areas for development.

The User Dashboard button in the global catalog now leads you to the new User Insights for a general view.

The User Dashboard remains accessible from Course Insights, User Insights, and User Profile.

For learners

On the course landing page, learners can immediately see which skills are required before they can start a session. Their user dashboard displays all the skills they’ve already earned, helping them track their own growth over time.

Whenever an admin updates the requirements for an obtained skill by adding or removing courses, learners are notified right away. Notifications are also sent whenever a learner gains or loses a skill. This keeps everyone aligned and ensures employees always know where they stand, what they’ve achieved, and what’s needed to maintain or expand their skill set.

The Impact on Learning With Smart Courses

Adding skills and prerequisites makes training in Smart Courses more focused and effective.

For managers and HR teams, the benefits are just as clear. Training can now be aligned with business-critical skills, and prerequisites ensure that employees have the right foundation before advancing. This helps prevent knowledge gaps, improves retention, and makes it easier to measure the value of training efforts.

The result is training that feels purposeful: employees know what they’re working toward, and companies can trust that their people are growing in the right direction.