Atlassian News, week 13, 2025 - Confluence removes macros, you can no longer create subtasks in Epics and Assets cloud to cloud migration EAP

Another week has passed, and I have been home sick this week, which has delayed things a bit. There has been a ton of news published this week, most of them fairly small, but some are quite important as we see removal of functions for both Confluence and Assets. In this blog post I will refer to the Stories, just to point you towards that section as well in case you have missed it.

Newsletter Content

• Atlassian General News

  • A new Atlassian Community is here

  • Query BYOK product data from Atlassian Data Lake

  • Connect your teams to Confluence spaces and Jira Projects

  • Curated Recommendations in Atlassian Home

• Jira News

  • Subtasks in Epics changes - you can no longer create subtasks

  • Schedule Work in Jira

  • AI JQL Fixer (BETA)

  • Create multiple boards in Jira Business Projects

  • How Atlassian work to future-proof expressions when working with the new Jira Workflow

• Confluence News

  • Atlassian is removing infrequently used Macros for Confluence

  • Nested Tables in Confluence

  • Real Time avatars of who is viewing a page in Confluence

  • New Sharing Experience for Confluence

  • Company Navigation Hub Changes in Confluence

  • Cards enhancement for Confluence

  • Sections in Confluence

• Jira Service Management News

  • Playbooks for agents in Jira Service Management

  • Okta user Lifecycle management in Automation

  • EAP: Assets Cloud to Cloud migration

• Compass News

  • Compass API changes and the Swagger App deprecation

• Rovo News

  • Rovo Connectors now display object counts

• Jira Align News

  • Jira Align Roadmap Q1

  • Unified OKR hub coming to Jira Align

• Trello News

  • Moving from Trello to Jira

• Bitbucket News

  • Bitbucket Pipelines Digest

• Loom News

  • Record your meetings with Loom

  • Speaker Notes in Loom

• Atlassian Marketplace News

  • Atlassian Marketplace Quarterly Digest

Atlassian General News

A new Atlassian Community is here

This was a surprise to me, but Atlassian rolled out a new community this week. The changes are not that big, except that when you go to the community link now you end up on a landing page where you have to choose one of the three community parts: Forum, Learning and Events.

It makes sense to combine the different parts into one community experience, and there are several reasons for why Atlassian did this. One is more control over your profile and especially privacy settings, which sounds good, but my profile is a broken, so I can't check it!

Query BYOK product data from Atlassian Data Lake

I am not sure how many users actually know about Atlassian Data lake, but for those of you that do and are using it this should be good news for you. According to the article Atlassian Data Lake now have support for BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) encryption. This means that you can query encrypted data and use it in Atlassian Analytics or via Data Shares. This is rolling out and if I understand things correctly you can add BYOK support to a new connection as well as update existing ones, but the data will not be affected until April 30, 2025.

Connect your teams to Confluence spaces and Jira Projects

According to the article we can now connect Teams to Jira Projects and Confluence spaces. You do this on the Teams page and from the look of the screenshot this is a Teams update I don't have yet so I can't check it. The new layout seems to have multiple columns, where you can connect Jira Projects, Confluence Spaces and Goals. I have not seen any information on this new design, so I can't tell much about it. The article say it will come soon, so I guess we have to wait for it.

Once you have connected the team to a Confluence Space or Jira project you can then see a new icon (a pink team icon) at the top of the page at the end of the title of the project or space. It only shows one team in the screenshot, so the question is what it will look like with multiple teams...

Curated Recommendations in Atlassian Home

Atlassian Home is getting another feature I can't say I have ever heard anyone wanting. This new feature will allow some form of help to recommend what you should do next, which seems a bit bizarre, but perhaps there are use cases for this? Is anyone even using Atlassian home today?

Currently these recommendations come from Atlassian Goals, Projects & Teams, Jira, Jira Service Management, Jira Product Discovery & Confluence. We are already working on adding new recommendations and functionality to make your workflow even smoother.

Jira News

Subtasks in Epics changes - you can no longer create subtasks

I am surprised that this has not been fixed before, but Atlassian is finally fixing that you can not attach subtasks to Epics. In the article we get some examples on why this change is rolling out. These include Bad hierarchy data, confusing user experience and experience limitations and I can't agree more.

This has been a pain for a while and I am glad they are finally fixing what I consider to be a bug. You should never be able to break the work item hierarchy and this is now finally fixed.

In work item view, you can no longer create subtasks within epics via the subtask panel. Instead, all existing subtasks will be merged into the work item panel, alongside other child work items. New work items can still be created, but only one level down in the hierarchy.

Schedule Work in Jira

This is a great new addition where you will get a GUI for creating automations for the specific purpose of creating scheduled work items. This is basically a much nicer and less frustrating ways to create a cron job for your automations where you don't have to know how to create the regex!

When the work item recurs, it inherits the automation rule which will be turned on automatically. All fields and child work items will be copied to the newly created work item; except for Attachments, Start date, Due date, and Links

The due date of the recurring work item will be automatically set based on the scheduled frequency. For example, in a weekly schedule, the due date will be set to seven days after the creation date of the work item.

A “recur” icon will appear next to the Due date field in the work item view and next to the work item summary in the Calendar view.

I like this a lot and I know several clients that has this setup manually and now they can transition into this new solution for much better experience.

This new feature also come with Admin controls so you can manage it if you don't want to use it or if you want to manage it in other ways.

AI JQL Fixer (BETA)

I am not sure who needed this feature as we already have the AI function where you can write a query ising normal language and get the JQL syntax, but here it is. This function is only available to Premium and Enterprise customers.

Is JQL too complicated to learn and use to get the results you want? We're thrilled to announce the beta release of the new AI JQL Fixer, designed to simplify your Jira experience by using AI to correct your JQL mistakes.

This is going to show up when you get an error in the JQL and AI will then try to fix the issue for you by suggesting changes that are valid. Just click accept and you will have an updated JQL query and can move on whith your day.

Not a bad change and it would be interesting to see this included in Confluence as well in the future.

Create multiple boards in Jira Business Projects

If you have a business project in Jira, then you can add multiple boards (up to 5) to it. If you like me had no idea that there was still something called a Business Project it seems that it is related to to the template selection, but I am not really sure which templates creates a business project rather than a Software one.

How Atlassian work to future-proof expressions when working with the new Jira Workflow

While not really a new feature it is a nice insight into the thought process and design decisions from an architecual point of view. This particular article walk us through how Atlassian approached future proofing Jira Expression when building the new workflow transition experience.

Confluence News

Atlassian is removing infrequently used Macros for Confluence

Confluence is having several macros removed, and you may already have noticed this. The article about the infrequent macros in Confluence being removed came out on March 28th and the first step has already rolled out. There are no product updates for this as I can see, which makes this very, very, very bad. The first change will have the macros show a (deprecated) suffix to their name and no fixes will be done for them. This rolled out on March 25th, 3 days before this announcement.

The second step will happen on September 25th, 2025. This is where these macros will be removed, and you will get a message that the macro is no longer available. This will not be fun if you are not taking actions today and inform your users that the following Confluence Macros will be removed in 6 months. In the article you have suggestions on how to replace these macros, and you also have a FAQ page with a much longer list of Confluence macros being removed than these that comes from the article.

• Chart

• Contributors Summary

• Gallery

• Google Drive (Legacy Editor only)

• Page Index

• PowerPoint, Excel, and Word macros

• Recently Updated Dashboard

• Related Labels

• Spaces List

• Span

• User List

Nested Tables in Confluence

We now have the ability to nest tables, which means that you can add a table inside a cell in another table. This can be very useful when you have complex presentations that require structures like that. You can create Nested Tables by inserting a table through the toolbar or the slash command while inside another table cell. You can also simply drag a table into another table cell.

Nested Tables do not support connected data or charts, and they are only functional within the primary table; they do not extend into the nested tables. Additionally, Nested Tables occupy the full width of the cell, but otherwise, they provide a similar experience to the full cloud editor tables.

I have to try this to see how this work because the description is a bit confusing to me.

Real Time avatars of who is viewing a page in Confluence

I am not sure about this because I feel like this is just adding more queries just to get an extra kick, but since we can turn it off I guess it is fine. So, what this does is that it adds profile images at the top of the page, indicating who is currently viewing the page you are looking at. To make this more complicated than it has to be, they are also dividing what users you can see based on your contribution to the page...

On Pages – viewers will see other page viewers, while editors of the page will be able to see other editors. On Live Docs (currently in open beta) – both viewers & editors will see other viewers & editors due to the openness of this content type.

If guests and anonymous access are allowed in your organization, you will be able to see those users with clear “guest” and “anonymous person” identification for deeper visibility!

New Sharing Experience for Confluence

The new sharing experience will not just allow you to share content, but Atlassian is putting everything into the sharing experience. By everything I mean you will have content restrictions, access management, and sharing options all in one flow. This means that the old setup with the padlock for permissions and the share button are now merged into just the share function that also show the padlock icon to indicate permission status. You will also find the Copy Link function in this section after it roll out for you.

I like this change as it reduces the clutter and put several functions into one easy to manage area.

Company Navigation Hub Changes in Confluence

More changes to teh Company Hub and this time we get a change in teh navigation. It seems that the Company Hub entrypoint, as in the link that takes you to it, is moving. This is related to the new navigation for Confluence and the Company Hub entrypoint will be shown in a new section in the left side navigation when that roll out for you.

It seems that the Company Hub will also be available in the App Switcher, which is what you use when you jump between Atlassian products. This is a bit weird to me as it indicates that the Company Hub is a new product and not just a feature in Confluence? In Atlassian Home you will also see the Company hub in a separat section in the left side navigation.

Cards enhancement for Confluence

Cards on Confluence, which is available to Premium users, are getting some enhancements. For example you can align your cards and you can turn your cards element into a scrollable section so you can have a nice row, even with more cards than can fit in the row you placed it. For some reason we also get AI help to suggest descriptions for the cards if we are feeling lazy. Finally we have dynamic cards that are based on filters and you can now sort those of "true cronological order", so it will also take updates into consideration and not just created date.

Sections in Confluence

This is a weird one as I don't understand if this feature is just for the Company Hub, or if it will also be generally available? In short this allow us to add a new element that is called sections. The section can then have a title, a description and one of three elements: Cards, Carousel and Spotlight by default. Each of the elements then have multiple styling options and you can remove or add elemnts as you see fit.

Sections just seem to be a container with some standard elements, so I am not sure what this is for or why we need it, but perhaps it is a part of larger vision to move Confluence towards a more CMS like experience?

Jira Service Management News

Playbooks for agents in Jira Service Management

We already covered this last week, but Atlassian have now published an article about it. You can also check my article about Playbooks that I wrote a while back.

Okta user Lifecycle management in Automation

If you are using Okta to authenticate your users, then this is going to make you very happy! Atlassian has announced that you now can manage users directly in Okta using automations in Jira Service Managment. This is going to make things a lot easier to add users to Okta, but also to fetch user details from Okta.

This is managed using two new automation actions called Create user in Okta and Retrieve user details from Okta.

This is apparently just the beginning and the team is working on more functionality for Okta and they want to hear from you what functionality you want to see. So drop by the article and make your wishlist right away!

EAP: Assets Cloud to Cloud migration

This is an announcement for an Early Access Program for migrating Assets between cloud instances. Not all of Assets will be available in the EAP:

• Migrating the Services schema or the Service Registry. We’re focusing on the core object schema and data first, with more to come in future updates.

• Migrating Data Manager. Support for Data Manager migrations will be added in a future iteration after Data Manager becomes generally available (GA)

This makes perfect sense to me since Services is a hard coded part of Assets (which I question why it is there now that we have to pay extra for objects) and the data manager is pretty barebone at the moment.

So, if you want to migrate Assets between cloud instances and you are not afraid of bugs, then join this EAP.

Compass News

Compass API changes and the Swagger App deprecation

For Compass we have received some updates for the Compass API:

1. OpenAPI specification are now automatically discovered and synced to the API tab from repos on GitLab.com (cloud hosted). 

2. Every endpoint in now searchable, making it easy for engineers to find relevant APIs to whatever they are working on. Rolling out to all sites this week! 

3. New API for uploading an OpenAPI/Swagger spec to a Component has launched.

This last point is related to the removal of the Swagger App from the Atlassian Marketplace. Users of the app should have received a message that the app will be fully deprecated on March 31, 2025. Note that the Curl command is NOT being deprecated so it will continue to forward uploads to the API tab. This is because the Curl command has been uploading to the API tab since february in parallel so the latest version should already be there.

More information on the Compass API can be found using this link.

Rovo News

Rovo Connectors now display object counts

This new feature will, according to the article, show how many objects have been indexed and are available to use in Rovo for third party Rove connectors. This is a good change since you will affect your Quotas where indexed objects will be billed at 1500 per billed users. So keeping track of the number of indexed objects will be important for that reason.

If you want to learn more about how indexed objects affect quotas you have an article about that here: https://support.atlassian.com/rovo/docs/rovo-usage-limits/

Jira Align News

Jira Align Roadmap Q1

This is a fairly extensive list of things on the roadmap for Jira Align. It also announces the new Jira Align product leader, which is Jamie St. Onge. I will not list all of the things coming to Jira Align, especially since this is a roadmap and roadmaps can change, but here is a list of the things you can read more about in the article.

Unified OKR hub coming to Jira Align

According to this article Atlassian is consolidating objective tracking into a single new area that they call the OKR Hub. It is scheduled to roll out to deploy to sandboxes on March 28, 2025, and for production environments on April 11, 2025. It will roll out to On-prem on April 30, 2025.

The OKR hub will replace the legacy Objectives tree page in the sidebar navigation, and selecting it will land you in the new experience by default. On your first visit, there will be a quick spotlight tour to review the Tier filter and the option to return to the legacy objectives tree page.

The Tier, Team, and Program Increment filters will respect the options selected in the sidebar, and are open to allow the selection of additional teams and program increments.

Trello News

Moving from Trello to Jira

In this article Melody from Atlassian is going over the steps to move data from Trello to Jira. If you are considering this move, then this article is an excellent guide to how to make this move from Trello to Jira in a nice step-by-step guide.

Bitbucket News

Bitbucket Pipelines Digest

This is a nice summary by Oleksandr Kyrdan from Atlassian where he describes the new Bitbucket pipelines and the updated Bitbucket pipelines in one easy to digest list. You find the Bitbucket Pipelines digest for March here.

Loom News

Record your meetings with Loom

I believe I have seen these a while back when working with Atlassian and they are pretty good. In short you connect you Loom account with you Google or Outlook calendars to record your meetings and when the meeting is concluded you get AI powered meeting notes and automatic recap emails. It is pretty neat!

Speaker Notes in Loom

If you are using Loom, then you can now add some simple speaker notes in Loom as you record your video. While hardly a replacement for a prompter, this is a nice and lightweight way to keep some simple notes available for when you record a video using Loom. The speaker note is only visible to you and it appears like a little sticky not that you can trigger from the Loom interface.

Atlassian Marketplace News

Atlassian Marketplace Quarterly Digest

This one was new for me, but it is a summary of the updates that has been made, or will be made, to the Atlassian Marketplace. Some interesting things include the ability for marketplace partners to display verified third party trust center links directly in their listings. You will be able to see app audit logs in Atlassian Admin (atlassian.admin.com) and Atlassian have partnered with Bonterms to help marketplace partners standardize and adapt customizable legal agreements.

Atlassian Platinum marketplace Partners will get new requirements that go live on July 1, 2025, which means that they must be SOC2, Type II or ISO27001:2022 compliance. They also must have a third party validated Trust Center. Gold partners will also need to be in the process to have one of those two certifications by that date.

There are quite a lot of things happening in the Marketplace space it seems, so I would like to hear more from Marketplace partners on how you experience these changes?

Sign off in the comments or send me a message.