Atlassian ICYMI October & November 2024
Good day to you all. Firstly I want to apologise for missing October, but it comes with a good reason. October was a very busy month for me as I got married & had my honeymoon. I was STRONGLY encouraged to not be working. But don’t worry, I have included all of the big announcements over the last two months into a single blog post for you all. So let’s get started.
In this series we take a look back over the last month for Atlassian products. This blog is not going to be a complete catch up of everything I or someone in the community has noticed over the last month, but more on the larger release items or the new EAP & other important announcements from Atlassian.
With so many updates, we’ll go ahead and take a look over each of the following four tracks:
Agile & DevOps.
Work Management & Collaboration.
Service Management.
Platform.
So without further or do, let’s get started!
In Case You Missed It
Agile & DevOps
Back in early October, following the announcement of the combining of JWM (Jira Work Management) & JSW (Jira Software), we got the first glimpse of Jira having a language change. That’s right. Issue may no longer be what you call, well an issue. Rather than being more developer language led, Jira’s issues have an opportunity to change to either a “work item” or “task” (not to be confused with the task issue type).
In order to get involved, right now you just need to download a browser extension which you can learn about more here.
It has been known for a long time that the archive issue functionality has been missing from cloud. However a very recent update is that the archive issue functionality moves out of a closed EAP (just API access) to full GA. Simply click more actions and archive away. To check out more information click here.
Jira is getting a UI change, which you can be a part of. This EAP will be allows users to customise their navigation so that they have the most relevant options only available. The sidebar will also encorporate goals, starred information while the top nav will be focusing on their powerful more encompassing search powered by Rovo. To sign up to the EAP click here. You can also read the full new Jira experience over on workflife.
Jira projects never stand still. Just like the teams that work in them. They evolve. And so to do the project keys. However, Jira projects are hoarders of previous keys. As companies start to look at consolidating their instances or even just over a decent period of time more and more options disappear without even realising. Well luckily, admins now have the power to delete previous keys. This change is currently rolling out to instances, but simply head to the project settings, and details and then delete previous keys. Simple, yet powerful.
Work Management & Collaboration
As always I seem to have a lot to say about automation. This ICYMI is no different. So let’s get going:
Automation rules can now help auto organise content by moving pages into folders. Using the AI condition to look for key words, you can then move pages directly to the correct position within the space. Check out the community post here or watch this loom.
During the create new confluence page action, you can now have page content directly created within the rule. This isn’t just from within Confluence rules, you can now automatically add text to new pages during Jira automation rules.
Finally, we have Avi’s 10 mind-blowing additions to confluence automation. In this community post, We can see new automation triggers being added such as:
Jira project created
Atlassian Guard detection triggers (great for information security)
Loom
Rovo AI
We have also see additional actions:
Rovo AI
Loom
Create Jira issue smart buttons
New smart button templates
If I can encourage anything, go check out Avi’s many posts above.
Confluence spaces now go to a space trash for 60 days before being permanently deleted. In order to protect against lost information, Atlassian created the space trash with a dedicated area to restore spaces within the admin console. To check out how this all works, go check out the support doc.
Service Management
Forms are nothing new for JSM, but what has always been a struggle was getting the data out of the forms to be used within automation rules. A new announcement from Atlassian is the introduction of forms smart values. You can access submitted form values on an issue by using {{forms}} and combining them with the list smart values.
Atlassian’s JSM virtual agent has a new beta program launched. This time with the ability to work with incoming emails. As customers email your service team, your virtual agent can be the first team member to respond by using the AIntelligence answers. Click here to learn more.
Finally, for JSM, Atlassian has announced the ability to manage your customers in bulk. This comes as it aims to reduce the headache and increase efficiency for your admin team when they work on managing customers and their organisations. You are now able to select up to 1000 customers at the same time to reduce manual effort.
Platform
Loom, Atlassian’s latest acquisition finds its way to become fully integrated within the rest of the ecosystem. You can record loom videos directly from within both Jira and or Confluence to post on comments, descriptions, you name it!
Alongside this update, you are also able to now manage loom from within the Atlassian admin panel right where you would expect.
Outside of new functionality, there are still other areas within the Atlassian ecosystem that need a bit of a shout-out. The Atlassian Marketplace, your admin’s playground, has had a completely new makeover. Everything from the homepage to new app categories, the way you as a team can discover new apps has evolved. There are also new filtering options, including product, hosting, pricing options as well as trust signals, a great one for your security team. There are even new badges to be aware of. Ultimately there is too much to fully discuss here so go check out their announcement over on the Atlassian blog.
And finally, a new training & certification program has been announced. This program is a replacement for what was the Atlassian Certified Experts. While the full release is too long for here so please go read the community post here, a quick note is that while there is still the main administration expert, there are also more specialist designations following the specific topic areas that you may wish to specialise in. “such as Agile DevOps (ADO), IT Service Management (ITSM), Teamwork foundations, the Atlassian Cloud Platform, and more. This opens up exciting opportunities for growth and recognition for a wider range of roles and teams.”
As mentioned, due to the holidays, this was a nice short and sweet update but still, which one of the latest updates is your favourite? Until the next time.
