I got a chance to watch the #AtlassianTeam21 #Keynote video from Mike Cannon-Brookes and I made my notes not because I have to clear an exam but I think it is always good to know what the plan is moving forward. Personally I don't really worry too much about the latest announcements from Atlassian. It is always good to know what is going to happen in near future, but I can wait and usually if you are like me - totally invested in Atlassian tools for living then I am sure you already know lot of it. I watched the video and I thought I will share my notes with all of you so you can also learn about the direction Atlassian is taking.
The keynote started with of course the situation since last year and how companies used Atlassian tools to collaborate together. The COVID vaccination was developed quickly, teams used Atlassian products to effectively work together. It is really good to know on a personal level that I help others in using tools like Jira and help them get the most out of these tools.
Atlassian has been making set of resources based on the feedback gathered by teams working remotely call Team playbook, which I believe is like a guide for remote working. Check this link: https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook
Using Application links you can connect various Atlassian tools together and there are remote links as well. I knew about remote links in Jira but I was happy to see this new feature of Smart links as well. Looking forward to see it in action.
Machine Learning is used to improve experience of 1 million users every week. Well I believe this is used in the background for improved search?
Improved user profiles with picture and other details. There are apps in Confluence I believe for profile but there was never really a concept of proper feature rich user profiles. It will be good to see this improve in future.
Emoticons were introduced or improved across all products to express how people feel in a better way. I never use emoticon (or may be sometimes) but I don't like using these gifs and smileys. I in fact find them irritating, especially in Slack those dancing parrots should be banned. Fortunately in Slack you can disable them but that is just me. I guess it is good to have this feature. Most people like using them, not for me though.
Header images in Confluence page. Really? Nice. I actually quite like this. I recently made few videos on Confluence, I am not a massive Confluence user and I have to force myself to learn and work on Confluence :) but that's because there is not a lot of consulting needed when using it, it is a simple tool. Works well and integrates with Jira. I am saying this because I am a Drupal developer and because Drupal is a CMS based framework and open source so I unconsciously expect a lot from Confluence. I really wish if one day JSM can talk to other knowledge base solutions. May be I should explore this on my own. Probably a good idea for an app development using Forge :)
Data residency, soon all paid plans will have an option to choose the location. Someone asked me this question recently and I am happy that it will be an option for all paid plans soon. Good.
Cross-product search, this was introduced a while back I guess makes total sense to me. I believe it will continue to get more improvements.
Contextual Insights, this is an improvement in the dashboard gadgets to display information that matters. I need to see what this really is, but it sounds interesting. I always rely on eazyBI to build my reports but any improvement in native Jira report is always appreciated.
Cloud Enterprise Edition was announced last year if I am not wrong. Now Atlassian is planning more to improve this offering.
Plan is to support 20K users by June 2021 and eventually goal is to support 35K. That's a good news.
Cloud Enterprise Edition is focused on security and scale.
Customers can create unlimited instance with 99.95% uptime and 24/7 support. Ok that's good.
Atlassian handles 10 Billion network requests, daily! yes that is a lot.
Automation in Confluence!! Am I dreaming? I hope not. I will be happy when Automation rules also covers Confluence. May be they do already and I don't know it yet? Need to check and I will keep an eye on it.
Atlassian products' performance was improved by 60%. That is a significant improvement. I guess I should start paying for a standard plan. May be or may be not :)
Atlassian Point A. This was I guess the highlight of the keynote. You can read more about it here: https://www.atlassian.com/point-a
There are 5 new products under Point A.
1. Halp: I never got a change to play with Halp. It is built for Slack and Team and if I understand correctly it can be used with Jira Service Management as well. I need to explore the use cases and learn the gaps Halp will fill.
2. Jira Work Management: I already covered it in one of my recent video where I talked about new features in Jira Business projects - List, Calendar, Timeline and Forms.
3. Jira Product Discovery: This one looks interesting. So this will offer a way to capture ideas at a single place, brainstorm on them and link them to the delivery team which I assume would be Jira Software projects. I like this idea, would love to play with it. Usually I rely on Confluence for ideation so I want to know more about this new offering.
4. Compass. Honestly I didn't quite get what compass will do. It seems like it will be some module that will integrate all the tools and show the overall landscape of where all those tools fit in the big picture. May be I wrong but need to explore this a bit more.
5. Team Central: This seems like a place where the status, progress, cross product search and visibility.
I might watch couple of more videos and post another update but honestly I am also occupied with work and investing few hours of my time on watching videos is not always my top priority. Unless I have been asked to watch them which can happen but I hope not. Usually I wait for the right opportunity to learn about new features. Atlassian is doing so many things in different areas, new products, new acquisitions and partnerships. It is overwhelming for a consultant like me or anyone to keep up with all this and that is why I am not always bothered.
I wrote this post hoping to help someone who is like me and want to get an update by spending few minutes by reading this post and also my insignificant view on this.
Overall I am happy with the updates I was able to consume so far, nothing astonishing that will affect me immediately but good to know where Atlassian is heading. I just want to know how I should shape my career based on these announcements.
Ok that's it for today.
Enjoy.
