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A product manager is the person who identifies the customer need and the larger business objectives that a product or feature will fulfill, articulates what success looks like for a product, and rallies a team to turn that vision into a reality. After 10 years of studying the craft of product management, I’ve developed a deep understanding of what it means to be a product manager.

Nothing makes starting a new year as exciting as getting new, fun toys to play around with, and for Confluence we have five of them to talk about today! Not only will you get some nice new ways to present your pages and data withing, but we also get some features that might very well change the way you work. So let us dive in. #1 Page Status - a game changer? I don't think I have seen anyone using Confluence without having a status in the page properties to indicate the current status of a document. Now we get a built-in function for this that looks very useful indeed. I can think of a million uses for this, but the question is how this works with things like page properties reports and different listing macros. #2 Presenter Mode The presenter mode looked a bit weird at first, but it has quite a few use cases where it works very well. One being training or education, and another is to present reports to stakeholders. I think it is a pretty nifty feature to be honest! #3 Table visualization The wet dream of so many managers is to visualize data with graphs. While this may be a very limited experience compared to other tools, it is very much a step in the right direction. #4 Multiple Excerpt Macros For me who advocate the usage of one source of truth, this is a very good addition. I often use excerpts for design documentation and for non-functional requirements, and I have sometimes wished I could have two or more sections to embed in different ways. With his update, I can now manage these things more freely. I like it. A lot. #5 The new Confluence Home This change looks really great and I can't wait to see it live. If you want to read more about this change, then check out this article: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-Cloud-articles/Say-hello-to-the-new-Confluence-Home/ba-p/1892543 These are just a few of the new changes coming to Confluence in 2022 and I will do my best to cover all of them here on the blog and on the YouTube channel. Which is your favorite of these and why?

The first thing we need to do before we can actually build the setup in Jira and Confluence is to define the tools. What should be done in what tool. We also need to define how we will use the tools based on what need we have. This may sound easy, but it is actually a bit trickier than it sounds and it's the source of many failures when using Jira especially. Who are we building for? In our example, we will build a setup based on a development team. It is a traditional team that tries to adopt some agile methodologies. The company is medium-sized with dozens of teams distributed in several countries where waterfall methodologies are still the norm. Most development happen in projects, which cause some overlap, but overall this get done even if it is not always easy. Requirements have decent quality, but varies greatly between teams, and most work process related changes are driven by management and test. In short, it is a pretty common situation for many companies. There are some challenges, but the organization is moving towards a more agile and uniform way of working. There is a struggle over control and visibility because the teams want more freedom and the managers still want to feel that they have the control because they are still a bit too far away from the teams. The Areas of Responsibility In order to see what tool is best suited for what task, then we need to identify who do what. We start this by breaking down areas of responsibility so we know what areas we hand over responsibility to. In our setup, we identify the following areas: Business - This is where the need originates from. This is actually a whole process in itself, but we just consider the output as a responsibility area. This is represented by the Product Owner. Requirement - This is where the need is defined and translated to actionable information for the development team. We include design (UI/UX), technical design and non-functional requirements such as legal as part of this area as well. This is because they are supporting the requirement process. Development - This is where the need is realized in the form of code. Test - This is where we ensure the development have good quality. Acceptance - This is where business ensure that the need has been fulfilled. Doing so also conclude the legal agreement between business and development. Deployment - This is where the need is made available to the end users. Support - This is where feedback related to the need is managed. Since we are building in Jira and Confluence, all of these areas are not going to be represented due to the limitations and capabilities in those tools. In order to identify the best tool for the job, we identify the need for each area. Business - Jira Align This is a big area that are actually made up of multiple processes. In this area we need to be able to organize people, money and resources into initiatives that span the whole company. We need to follow up and see when cross initiatives have issues in order to mitigate. This area do not just deal with IT, but include things like marketing, product development, human resources and so on. Jira and Confluence are not a good match for this area. Instead, portfolio tools such as Jira Align or Portfolio for Jira are better choices. Requirement - Confluence This area work with documentation to break down a need into actionable items. Design is delivered in multiple versions and file formats. Technical design include flow charts and tabled specification of data. Legal and non-functional requirements are usually global, so we need to be able to link in from other locations. We also want to prioritize work, add estimations on multiple levels and eventually create work orders that can be traced back to the original need. Since a requirement is both a translation of a need to an actionable task and a legal agreement on what need to be done, we need to be able to control the requirement. This means that we need both version control to identify changes and the possibility to restrict editing when agreed upon. We will use Confluence for this area for the final documentation. We will also use Jira as an optional tool to drive the requirement forward until it is ready to be locked down in Confluence. Development - Jira Software This area work with code where they need to have tasks on what to do. This task is actually the work order, and as such it must be connected all the way to the need. This area also need to connect the work with the code in order to trace work to code packages. We need the ability to assign work, so someone is responsible to fulfill the need. We want to see what is ready to be worked on and if the code package is ready to be deployed. This means that we need to be able to see other areas as well in a workflow. For this purpose we use Jira and connect to the requirements in Confluence. The Development team will also use Bitbucket to manage their code. Test - Jira Add-On This area work with making sure that the code we produce are in accordance with the requirement and that it has good quality. We need to be able to create test cases for what to test and then a way to connect to series of test. These must be reusable so we can use them to make the same tests multiple times. We need a good way to report when something is not working so we can bring that back to the development team to be fixed. We need a way to get reports on progress and result of the tests. Jira and Confluence does not support this fully, so we will add an Add-On for this to extend that capability and connect it to the development tasks. Acceptance - Jira Add-On This area work with making sure that the need is fulfilled. It is testing in the same manner that the test area, but on a different level and with a different responsible group. We will use the same setup as for Test with the same Jira Add-On, but connect to the requirements instead of the development tasks. Deployment - Bitbucket Pipelines / Bamboo This area work with making sure that the code packages created by Development are moved to the different environments. In order to do this they need a way to deliver code between the environments. This in not something that we can do in Jira or Confluence. Instead, a tool like Bamboo or Bitbucket Pipelines will be used. We will however use the Release feature in Jira to connect the code base with the deploys for traceability. We will also use Confluence to document deployments to production for traceability. Support - Jira Service Management This area work with supporting the code that is available in production. This requires the ability to manage incoming support requests, identifying resolutions and when needed to create work tasks for different teams. Continuous communication with the reporter is a must, and there should also be a way to resolve repeating requests to reduce duplicated requests. For this Jira and Confluence is not fully what we need. Jira Service Management is a better option for this. As we can see from this our setup for Confluence and Jira will support Requirement, Development, Test and Acceptance. We will connect with Deployment as well, but the full capability will not be in our setup. Now that we know what we are going to support, then it is time to start looking at what work we actually do in each area so we can define the issue types. This we will go over in our next article: Setup Jira and Confluence for success - Part 2: Defining Jira Issue Types

In the previous article we discussed what tools we should use for what purpose. Now it's time to define the work we want to do in the different Areas of Responsibility. We do that by defining what different type of work we do in each so we can create a separate issue type for each type of work. This way we can separate work and can evolve the way we work in each through fields and workflows for example. Before we dig into that however we should first identify what issue types really are and how we should use them properly. The three levels of issues in Jira In Jira we have 3 levels of issue types. Each level is used for different purposes so it is important to understand what that purpose is so we can map our issue types to the right level. Epic - This is the highest level in Jira and it's purpose is to group and categorize the lower levels. In itself an Epic has no value and you can see it as a box or a rubber band that simply is used to group other items. The term epic means a story that extends over a long period of time or that it is something grand and impressive. This is also how it is meant to be used in Jira as a way to mark stories that are connected and span over two or more time periods. Standard Issue Type - This is the middle level in Jira and it's purpose if to act as the transitional item to indicate what responsibility area currently own the responsibility to do something. This type is the one that we design workflows for that are flow chart based and not in the form of state diagrams. We will cover this when going over workflows in a later article. Sub-Tasks - Within each responsibility area we have a need to break down the work so we can mark them as complete. These are referred to as producing items and unlike the Standard Issue Type we do not always use a tranistional workflow, but more of a task management flow of open, in progress, done .We will cover this when going over workflows in a later article. The majority of our issue types will fall into this category. Identifying the work that need to be done With the issue types identified we can now begin to define what issue types we need for our setup. We previously identified Requirement, Development, Test and Acceptance as our areas that use Confluence and Jira, so we will break down the work in those areas and see what we can come up with. Requirement Requirement: Standard Issue Type (optional) - If we want, we can use a separate issue type to act as the object which we work through the requirement process. This should be done in a separate project as it will contain a large number of unprocessed need. This would make managing the development projects less efficient, but we will discuss that in another article. Story: Standard Issue Type - This is the output from the Requirement process and while the name might make you think it comes from the fact that many requirements are written in the form or user stories. This is not accurate however as requirements can come in many forms and shapes. Story refer to the fact that we get the need explained to us as a story, which is because as humans we communicate in the form of stories. Design: Standard Issue Type & Sub-task - Design (UX/UI) can be done separate, which is why we have a Standard Issue Type for it. It can also be done as part of a requirement which is why we have a sub-task for it as well. In some cases we need to make adjustments in existing requirements and there we also use a sub-task connected to a Story for that purpose. Technical Design: Standard Issue Type & Sub-task - Just like with Design we have both a standard issue type and a sub-task. Technical Debt: Standard Issue Type - This is a rare issue type in many companies, but it is used when decisions are made that create technical debt or when clean up need to be done to optimize systems and data. These are IT driven stories in nature with the intent to make sure IT driven concerns are logged and prioritized alongside business need. It is also used to highlight decisions that will have a cost in the future. Development Development: Sub-Task - It may seem strange that Development only exist as sub-task, but the reason for that is that development only happen when there is a need for it. This need is in the form of a Story or Technical debt. That is why development only exist as a sub-task and it is used for writing code. Build & Configure: Sub-task - Again this is only available as a sub-task for the same reason as for Development. This issue type is used when there is no code related to the task, just configuration. It is also used to build systems such as servers that are again configurations or physical assembly tasks. Common tasks are upgrades or adding new subset of a system through configuration. Defect: Standard Issue Type & Sub-task - The default way to create defects is as sub-tasks connected to a story. This block the story from deployment as it can never be closed with open sub-tasks. The standard issue type is used when defects are found without direct connection to a development or when you want to break out a defect as a known defect, but still close the story for deploy. Defect can only happen before code is put into production. I usually rename the standard Bug issue type to Defect if possible, otherwise I create a new issue type for it. Incident: Standard Issue Type - Incident is used for defects that are found after the code is put into production. It is separate from defect in order to properly identify where a defect has been discovered as that can affect legal aspects. It is also used to allow proper focus and prioritization as production defects usually need high attention. All incidents are standard issue types as the stories they comes from have already been closed. Feature Toggle: Sub-Task (optional) - This is a bit of an odd addition lately and it act as a way to determine what code is in what code based, even if it is not activated. We will not dig to much into this one as it's an article in itself. It is just added in case you work with feature toggle in your project. Test & Acceptance Test / Acceptance: Standard Issue Type & Sub-task (optional) - This is again an optional issue type due to the fact that most test add-ons have the functionality needed to keep track of time and effort. In the event that you need a way to add time and effort outside the add-on, then you can create an issue type for this as placeholder for that information. Generic Epic: Epic - This is standard in Jira and it is used, as described above, to group standard issue types. Task: Standard Issue Type & Sub-task - Tasks and Sub-tasks are standard in Jira and they can be used for any task not defined in other issue types. This can be things like scheduling meetings, organize workshop or buy cake for the team. Color coding for visual guidance In order to make it even easier to identify what the different issue types will be used for I always create custom icons and color code them. This visualize the area of responsibility as well as the purpose of the issue types. My way to color code is based on color theories and my own preferences, so feel free to adjust if needed. Requirements - This is an interpretation of the business need to Development. I tend to color Business in blue/teal as corporate colors and Development as red. The combination of those two is purple, so I make the Issue types related to Requirements as purple. Development - This is the heart of the work flow. We tend to want incidents and defects highly visible as well, so we pick the color that match those requirements. We tie this into the traffic sign colors used in test and acceptance as well. This is why everything related to development is red. Test - This is where code is either allowed to pass to acceptance, or pushed back to development for further adjustment. It is something we want to make sure it has good attention and we also follow the traffic sign color schemes used in development and acceptance. this is why test is yellow, sometimes with a orange tint to tie it closer to development. Acceptance - This is where a need is given the thumbs up or the big GO. We use the traffic sign color scheme to signal this and for that reason Acceptance is green. I use icons that I feel is matching the issue type itself to further clarify purpose. I also use en inverted design to distinguish between standard issue types and sub-tasks. You can see some of the icons in the download section. You are free to use the icons in your Jira instance as they are created by me using the free version of fontawesome. Setting up Issue Types in Jira Now that we have defined the issue types and designed the icons it's time to set this up in Jira. I will set this up in my Demo Jira which is cloud based. If you use Server or Data Center version the way you set this up will look a little different, but the functionality will be the same. In order to get the new issue types into our project we will need to do three things: Create the new Issue Types Create a new Issue Type Schema and add the Issue Types to that Schema Assign the Issue Type Schema to our project. Create Issue Types In Jira Cloud we do this under Jira Settings -> Issues -> Issue Types. Please note that you need admin access for this step. Here you will see a list of the current Issue Types and in the top right corner you will have a button that say "Add issue type". Clicking on that will give you a popup where you can create a new issue type. Once you add the name and description of the new issue type, then you select what type of issue type you want it to be. You can not add an image at the time I am writing this, so you will get a generic icon for it when you click add. Once created you simply find it in the list and click edit to change the icon by uploading a new one. Next to the icon click "Select Image" and then "upload avatar" in the popup. Select a new image, close the poup and then click on update to save the new image. Create a new Issue Type Schema Under Jira Settings -> Issues -> Issue Type Schemes you find a list of the different issue type schemes you currently have in your Jira. In the top right corner you find a button with the text "Add Issue Type Scheme". Click that to create a new scheme. Please note that you need admin access for this step. When you create the scheme you add a name for the scheme, a description and then you drag the issue types you want to add to the scheme from the list on the right to the list on the left. Once you have done that you can select "Story" as the default issue type. This will make Story the pre-selected issue type when we click on Create in a project using this Scheme. Once done, click save. Add Issue Type Scheme to your project Go to your project and then click on project setting in the left menu. It should be at the bottom of the list of areas for your project, but if you can not see it then you may not have admin rights for your project and you need to get some help with this step. If you have access then in the project settings go to Issue Types. This view will show you the current issue type scheme and the issues included in that scheme. In the top right corner you will see a drop list with a cog wheel that say "Actions". Clicking this will allow you to edit the issues in the scheme, but we want the other function called "Use a different scheme". Simply select the Issue Type Scheme created earlier by first making sure you select "Choose an existing issue type scheme" and then the correct issue type scheme in the list below. Click OK and your project will now be associated with the new issue type scheme we created and with that we now have our new issue types. We now have the proper issue types we need to work, but in order for them to really useful we need to make sure we have workflows that match the work we do. This is what we will focus on in our next article: Setup Jira & Confluence for success - Part 3: Defining Jira Issue workflows.

My assignment was to implement Jira & Confluence at Martin & Servera. Configure a new setup in Jira and Confluence, create documentation and train the teams to use the new setup. I had this assignment extended twice to manage Phase 2 and Phase 3. Phase 1 - Configure and train In Phase one of the Project, I designed the setup in Jira and created a standard setup for all Jira projects according to the Flexible Atlassian Setup. For Confluence, I set up a standard 7+1 structure as a standard for system documentation. I also created two education packages, one for Jira Software and one for system documentation in Confluence. Each education package contained a 2-hour theoretical part and a 2-hour practical part. I also added education packages for iteration planning and retrospective to help with those two aspects specifically. As part of Phase 1 I also reviewed the need for additional training, or system support. I also acted as support for architect questions and security questions. I made a special analysis for a large project that was in planning to see what was needed for that project as a driving force for driving the new changes. Based on these findings, I presented a project plan for Phase 2. Phase 2 - Portfolio, Test & Requirements In Phase 2 we focused on Requirements in Confluence, testing in QMetry and Portfolio Management in BigPicture. Initially I was going to use Advanced Roadmaps, but due to the change to that feature just before Phase 2 started we had to re-evaluate and selected BigPicture as the new portfolio tool. For requirements, we invited a large selection of people with various degree of experience with requirements. This meant that we had some people that felt this was a little too complicated, while others felt they already knew what we showed in the education. As a result, I also complemented with individual coaching and on request coaching to ensure everyone felt they got the right level of training. For test, we had two workshops to test the capabilities of QMetry and how it would fit into the test strategies that were defined during the period. I then only provided coaching on demand when needed. For Portfolio in BigPicture I built a custom setup in Jira for time management using a special subtask for time allocation during the planning phase of projects. I also set up BigPicture in the different portfolios and held several workshops to define the workflows and visualizations so it would fit the existing processes, where it made sense. In addition to this, I also held additional educational sessions for Jira and Confluence, as well as on demand coaching. I also provided a suggestion for a phase 3. Phase 3 - Supporting and preparing for maintenance In phase 3 I had four main focuses: Ensuring the rollout of Jira and Confluence was completed, supporting the rollout of Portfolio in BigPicture, ensuring the big project had everything it needed to successfully use Jira and Confluence when it started and finally to make sure the systems were ready to go into a maintenance mode. During this phase I worked with different vendors and the architects to be able to set recommendations for integrations as well as the flows for support and incident management. I also reviewed potential replacements for me, both short term and long term. I mapped existing systems to make sure all were represented in Jira and Confluence, and supported the implementation of an external tool for architecture in Confluence. Furthermore, I supported with daily questions in a coaching capacity and worked with the teams to make sure they worked correctly and that they felt comfortable doing so. I also held extra education sessions for Confluence with focus on macros as that was requested. For the big project, I supported the new requirement analysts in all matters related to Confluence. I also set up the program in Jira and Confluence and held education in how to use them. I supported the rollout of BigPicture and also reviewed the project process to see if a move to Confluence for Projects could be done. This included creating several templates for Confluence and a slight adjustment of the workflow in BigPicture. This job also tied into a review of the onboarding and offboarding processes for projects. I identified two areas that I recommended creating two projects for in as the project moved over to maintenance mode. Deliverables in the project: A new setup in Jira for development A standard Confluence structure for System documentation Documentation of the setup in Jira and Confluence Training for Jira and Confluence Jira Basic Confluence Basic Iteration Planning basic Retrospective Training for QMetry A standard setup for Portfolio Management in Jira Training for Portfolio Management A Maintenance plan A maintenance organization How to support the Atlassian systems Incident management for the Atlassian systems Support for the teams Support for other initiatives

Atlassian Cloud Your cloud-hosted products are supported by the Atlassian Cloud platform. This section usually includes changes related to multiple Atlassian Cloud products, site administration, and user management. Email users with suggested account changes ROLLING OUT From the Change details button, you can suggest that a user changes their account details to make their profile more consistent and easier to identify. Read more about administering Atlassian accounts. Give your users a Trusted permission ROLLING OUT From a user's Permission options, select Trusted to give certain users more responsibility. These users will be able to install and configure new products on your site and invite new users themselves. Claim accounts after verifying a domain ROLLING OUT To start managing accounts on your domain, we’ve included an additional step that requires you to claim accounts after verifying that you own the domain. From the table on the Domains page, click Claim accounts next to the verified domain. Read more about verifying a domain. Jira platform Changes in this section usually apply to all Jira products. We'll tell you in the change description if something is only for a specific Jira product. New user profile cards ROLLING OUT When you hover over someone’s name in directories, on dashboards, and in user picker fields, you’ll now start to see rich profile cards with more information and a link to the user’s profile (if you have permission to see it). New issue view: Rich user profile cards ROLLING OUT Get to know your team even faster. Our new user profile card provides more user information and a link to the user’s profile (if you have permission to see it). You’ll see it when you hover over someone’s name in user-picker fields (assignee, reporter, and other custom fields) and in issue activity feeds (comments, history, and the work log). Jira Software We're rolling out a new type of project known as next-gen. By default, any Jira Software licensed user can create their own next-gen project. These projects don't affect existing Jira projects, shared configurations, or your schemes. You can manage who's allowed to create next-gen projects with the new Create independent projects global permission. Read more about next-gen projects. New issue view for Jira Software ROLLING OUT Get a consistent view and edit experience with our new issue view for Jira Software. Click an issue to see its details, edit any field with a click, and add content with the quick-add buttons (under the issue summary). Take a look at the documentation for more info. We're adding new features and refining the design all the time, so click Give feedback on the issue view to let us know what you think. GitHub app on the Atlassian Marketplace ROLLING OUT We've partnered with GitHub to build a new and improved integration, which you can install at the Atlassian Marketplace. This replaces the DVCS connector in Jira's system settings. Current GitHub integrations set up under the old method will continue to work, but new integrations must be set up using the app on the Atlassian Marketplace. We're rolling out this update gradually, so it may not be on your Jira Cloud site yet. This won't affect GitHub Enterprise integrations, which must still be set up via the DVCS connector. Jira Service Desk Issues with the customer organizations field now use the organization name instead of ID when exporting to CSV ROLLING OUT NEW THIS WEEK When exporting Jira issues to CSV from the Jira Issue Navigator, the Custom field (Organizations) now contains the name of the organizations linked to the issue. The field previously contained the organization ID, which was not valuable for exports used for reporting. As part of this change, a CSV import can now match organizations by both their ID and their name. No changes are needed if you use CSV export files for import. Maintenance complete on the Request and Approvals pages ROLLING OUT NEW THIS WEEK We've completed some maintenance to the customer portal, you may notice some cosmetic updates to the Request and Approvals pages. New issue view for Jira Service Desk ROLLING OUT The new issue view groups key actions and information in a logical way, making it easier for you to scan and update requests. Learn more about the new issue view. Use keyboard shortcuts in your queues ROLLING OUT Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around your queues and get your work done faster. You can now move through issues, select their fields, and go to the issue view from your queues just by using your keyboard! Customer portal request details page redesign ROLLING OUT We have redesigned the customer portal request details page to make it easier to use. You’ll notice we have added a rich text editor, sorted the activity stream from old to new, and have moved the location of the request fields, share button, approval and comment boxes. Easier configuration for the new issue view ROLLING OUT If you have the new issue view, you can now easily configure how your issue view looks for each request type. From your service desk project, go to Project settings > Request types and you'll find the new layout for making changes. Improved interface for your customer portal settings ROLLING OUT We’ve given the customer portal page in your project settings a visual overhaul. Settings are under suitable headings, text sizes are aligned, and overall, the page has a cleaner interface. Don’t worry, we haven’t removed any functionality. To see the new design in a classic project, go to Project settings > Portal settings. To see the new design in a next-gen project, go to Project settings > Channels > Customer portal. Confluence Portfolio for Jira plan macro ROLLING OUT NEW THIS WEEK The Portfolio for Jira plan Confluence macro lets you embed a Portfolio for Jira Server and Data Center plan in a Confluence page. Join key stakeholders in the spaces where business goals are built and tracked, and share how work is progressing across multiple projects and teams. Blogs are getting the first round of editing improvements ROLLING OUT If you've ever thought 'I wish it was easier to read blogs on mobile.... or on other devices', then this change is for you. Blogs are getting fixed-width layouts to improve readability across all devices. We're making a bunch of other updates to improve editing reliability and clean up your editing experience, so some macros may be temporarily unavailable while they're under maintenance. You can read more about these changes on our docs site. Teams have arrived in Confluence retrospectives! ROLLING OUT Instead of having to individually add each member of your team to a retrospective, Confluence now lets you assign people to Teams, so you can bulk add everyone at once. Use the retrospective template to see Teams in action. You can edit Teams through the retrospective-creation process, and add or edit other attendees for each retrospective you create. We're extending editing improvements to all pages on Android ROLLING OUT The editing improvements we made to blogs a few months ago are coming to the rest of your Android mobile pages, too. In addition to being faster and more reliable, your new pages are also responsive, optimized for readability, and have advanced tables. Some macros are still missing as we rebuild them, but you can check the list of changes and track updates to macros on our docs site. Confluence Cloud recent pages drawer ROLLING OUT We’ve made it easier to get to the pages you visited or worked with most recently. A new action has been added to the global sidebar that presents you with a list of your recent pages; interaction-specific tabs help you narrow the list based on your actions, like visited, edited, or saved as draft. Share pages directly with your team ROLLING OUT It’s now easier to share pages with everyone on your team, all in one go. When you click Share on any page or blog post, Confluence now lets you add a team – no need to enter each person individually. Learn more Bitbucket Retarget stacked Pull Requests ROLLING OUT NEW THIS WEEK Bitbucket will retarget the dependent pull requests to the branch that you're merging into, before closing the branch of the pull request you're merging. Previously, if there were dependent pull requests, you needed to update them manually with the new target branch. You will now see a checkbox with a link to the affected pull requests that will be retargeted.

Notion.so is a relatively new product, but it is already making some waves and is often mentioned in comparison with Atlassians products. At first glance it has a good spread of functionality and a price that can really challenge the Atlassian giant, especially for small to medium companies. "Write, plan, collaborate, and get organized. Notion is all you need — in one tool." Notion.so started in 2016 in San Fransisco and it has already attracted many users to its simple, yet powerful features. On their website they have 4 areas that they see as their core: Notes & docs, Knowledge base, Tasks & Projects and Database. If we compare these with the Atlassian suite it is pretty much Confluence with Trello baked into one product. The editing capabilities are not bad and Notion.so uses an inline editing function rather then the old click to edit function in Confluence. It is very nice and uses the "/" command to access the functions rather than a toolbar. The permissions system is a bit different, but seem pretty solid from what I can tell. Once you get the hang of things it is very, very easy to build content with Notion.so. The capabilities for Tasks & Projects are very similar to Trello so if you know how to work with Trello you should have no issues with Notion.so. If anything I feel that Notion.so actually have a more capable feature set than Trello by allowing a ton of fields that can be customized to create some pretty sophisticated setups. While not nearly as powerful as Jira for development purposes, this is is more than enough for many other situations. Databases follow pretty much the same capabilities as for tasks and pages. In fact tasks comes from a database by default. This means that you can create pretty awesome databases with multiple views, including tasks, lists and even a calendar view. Personally I love the feature that each row in my table can be edited as a separate page. At a very affordable price compared to Confluence and Jira with pretty solid features this is not a bad alternative. There are some concerns regarding security as Notion.so do not have any ISO, SOC 2, HIPAA certificates, but considering they have passed reviews from companies such as Slack and Intercom that is probably not a big thing for it's user base. I see Notion.so as a good alternative for small to medium non-development companies. It can work for smaller development companies as well as for large non-development companies, but I think the sweet spot is in the small to medium non-development area. The price also suggest that as it is user based and at the top tier with 20 dollars per user it is getting pretty expensive. I like Notion.so and I think it definitely have a place in some organizations. It is clearly being developed with passion where the goal is not to make money, but to make people's life easier and more organized. As always they get an extra gold star for giving students and educators this awesome product for free. Notion.so comes as an online cloud solution, a mobile app as well as downloads for mac and windows that even allow offline editing....and did I mention it has a dark mode that is simply amazing? If you have not tried it, then go and sign up for a free account today and give it a go.

In the coming months we will see some changes to the navigation in Jira and Confluence for the cloud versions. This after a round of feedback was done in July this year on the new experience. This change will roll out slowly and you can delay the change if you need time to prepare the users for the change. There has been some negative feedback regarding the current navigation in Jira and Confluence cloud as it is a bit difficult to use. This is why a new experience was designed and tested during the summer by 350+ users. The feedback on the new navigation was positive and so now it is going live to cloud users in a slow rollout. This is a rollback to the old navigation experience which is good as it will make the transition from Server and DC versions easier. I like the new apps and people sections in the navigation as well. That should make it easier to group things to keep navigation organized. The fact that Jira and Confluence now get a uniform navigation is also excellent. On the documentation page for the new Confluence navigation we find more details on the new navigation and it's design. App switcher - Switch to other Atlassian Cloud apps, like Jira, and go to recent Confluence spaces and Jira projects. Confluence logo and name - Click this to go to the Confluence Home page. Home - Begin your Confluence journey and reorient yourself when you’re moving on to a new piece of work by easily accessing the spaces, pages, and updates that are important to you. Recent - Access pages you’ve recently visited and worked on as well as pages saved as draft or starred. Spaces - Get to spaces you’ve recently visited and starred. People - Search for people on your site by visiting the people directory. Apps - Access content from apps like Analytics, Calendars for Confluence, or Questions for Confluence. Create - Click to create a new page, either blank or from a template. Search - Find pages, spaces, and other content. Notifications - Find out what's happening in Confluence and other Atlassian apps, like Jira. Help - Get online help, and find out what's new in your Atlassian Cloud apps. Your profile and settings - Go to or create your personal space, find out about the new Confluence experience, and adjust your Confluence settings. New Homepage In addition to the new navigation we will also get a new start page, or home page as it is called. This will appear in both Jira and Confluence cloud at the same time as we will see the new navigation. For Confluence it will give an overview over: Spaces - Get back to the spaces you care about, starred or recently visited Recent pages - Find pages you’ve drafted, recently published, visited, or starred All updates - View the updates across your site The Home page for Jira follow that principle, but is a bit slimmed down. I think there are more things that can go in this view and I hope we will see the same structure as for Confluence in the future. So instead of spaces we would have projects and then I would like to have a list of favorite boards somewhere.

This is a repost from Atlassian's blog where the latest updates to the Atlassian cloud platform is posted. It is reposted here since the Atlassian blog does not have an RSS feed and so we can discuss the changes to the Atlassian Cloud architecture. You can follow these posts withe the tag "atlassian cloud changes". Atlassian Cloud Your cloud-hosted products are supported by the Atlassian Cloud platform. This section usually includes changes related to multiple Atlassian Cloud products, site administration, and user management. Email users with suggested account changes From the Change details button, you can suggest that a user changes their account details to make their profile more consistent and easier to identify. Read more about administering Atlassian accounts. Give your users a Trusted permission From a user's Permission options, select Trusted to give certain users more responsibility. These users will be able to install and configure new products on your site and invite new users themselves. Claim accounts after verifying a domain To start managing accounts on your domain, we’ve included an additional step that requires you to claim accounts after verifying that you own the domain. From the table on the Domains page, click Claim accounts next to the verified domain. Read more about verifying a domain. Set your language and time zone for Jira and Confluence in your Atlassian account profile Rather than individually setting your language and time zone in Jira and Confluence, these preferences will soon come from your Atlassian account profile. Visit your account preferences to update these settings. It may take up to 10 mins before your updated preferences are reflected in Jira and Confluence. Jira platform Changes in this section usually apply to all Jira products. We'll tell you in the change description if something is only for a specific Jira product. New issue view: Print an issue or export it to Microsoft Word or XML Print or export individual issues in the new issue view. Open an issue and choose more actions (•••) at the top-right to print it or export it to Microsoft Word (DOC) or XML format. Changing the "Issues and filters" navigation item to "Filters" In preparation for the rollout of our improved navigation for Jira Cloud, we've updated the "Issues and filters" menu item in the Jira sidebar to simply be "Filters." When we move to the new horizontal navigation, this name will better reflect what you'll find in the menu—filters, filters, and more filters. This is purely a label change at this point, and won't change any functionality. New user profile cards When you hover over someone’s name in directories, on dashboards, and in user picker fields, you’ll now start to see rich profile cards with more information and a link to the user’s profile (if you have permission to see it). Next-gen: Epic panel in backlog You can now manage epics on the backlog of your next-gen project via the Epics panel, similar to how epic management works in classic Jira Software projects. Changes you make in the panel on the backlog will reflect on the Roadmap, and vice-versa. Advanced search (JQL): Search for content updated by a specific user Use the updatedBy() function to search for issues that were updated by a specific user, optionally within the specified time range. For example, if you want to find issues updated by John Smith between June and September 2018, enter issuekey IN updatedBy(jsmith, "2018/06/01", "2018/08/31"). Read more about the updatedBy() function. Jira Software We're rolling out a new type of project known as next-gen. By default, any Jira Software licensed user can create their own next-gen project. These projects don't affect existing Jira projects, shared configurations, or your schemes. You can manage who's allowed to create next-gen projects with the new Create independent projects global permission. Read more about next-gen projects. GitHub app on the Atlassian Marketplace We've partnered with GitHub to build a new and improved integration, which you can install at the Atlassian Marketplace. This replaces the DVCS connector in Jira's system settings. Current GitHub integrations set up under the old method will continue to work, but new integrations must be set up using the app on the Atlassian Marketplace. We're rolling out this update gradually, so it may not be on your Jira Cloud site yet. This won't affect GitHub Enterprise integrations, which must still be set up via the DVCS connector. Next-gen: Roadmap issue hierarchy You can now expand an epic on your roadmap to see its child issues and their statuses. Learn more about managing epics on the roadmap. Next-gen: Create child issues on your roadmap You can now add child issues directly on your roadmap. Just hover over an epic, click the + icon, and give your issue a name. Learn more about managing epics on the roadmap. Next-gen: Environment system field in JSW Add Jira’s built-in Environment field to your issue types in next-gen projects. In your project, go to Project settings > Issue types and drag the Environment field into the Description section of the issue layout. Jira Service Desk New issue view for Jira Service Desk The new issue view groups key actions and information in a logical way, making it easier for you to scan and update requests. Learn more about the new issue view. Use keyboard shortcuts in your queues Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around your queues and get your work done faster. You can now move through issues, select their fields, and go to the issue view from your queues just by using your keyboard! Customer portal request details page redesign We have redesigned the customer portal request details page to make it easier to use. You’ll notice we have added a rich text editor, sorted the activity stream from old to new, and have moved the location of the request fields, share button, approval and comment boxes. Maintenance complete on the customer portal user profile page We have just completed some maintenance on the customer portal user profile page. We also introduced a new layout that is easier to use on mobile devices. Go team! Easier configuration for the new issue view If you have the new issue view, you can now easily configure how your issue view looks for each request type. From your service desk project, go to Project settings > Request types and you'll find the new layout for making changes. Next-gen projects: Approve or decline requests You can now add an approval stage to requests that should be approved before they’re resolved in next-gen projects. If a request has an approval stage, approvers can approve or decline the request from the issue view. Add an approval stage to a workflow by going to Project settings > Request types and then clicking Edit workflow. Learn more Global create can select request type and raise on behalf of You can now create a request on behalf of your customers and set them as the reporter. Use the global create button ( + ), then select Raise this request on behalf of and add in your customer's email. Introducing multi-line fields to the issue view in next-gen projects You can now add multi-line fields to the issue view. These fields communicate long-form information to your team members and aren’t visible to your customers. To add multi-line fields, go to Project settings > Request types and add fields to the Description fields bucket. Confluence Your editing experience just got an upgrade The new Confluence editor allows anyone to create beautiful, powerful pages effortlessly. Check out the editor roadmap to learn more. We're extending editing improvements to all pages on Android The editing improvements we made to blogs a few months ago are coming to the rest of your Android mobile pages, too. In addition to being faster and more reliable, your new pages are also responsive, optimized for readability, and have advanced tables. Some macros are still missing as we rebuild them, but you can check the list of changes and track updates to macros on our docs site. Annotate images in the new editor Annotate images by adding text, inserting shapes and lines, using brushes, or adding a blur to a certain area. Confluence Cloud recent pages drawer We’ve made it easier to get to the pages you visited or worked with most recently. A new action has been added to the global sidebar that presents you with a list of your recent pages; interaction-specific tabs help you narrow the list based on your actions, like visited, edited, or saved as draft. Share pages directly with your team It’s now easier to share pages with everyone on your team, all in one go. When you click Share on any page or blog post, Confluence now lets you add a team – no need to enter each person individually. Learn more Jira issue URLs are converted to smart links When you paste a Jira issue link into a Confluence page, the URL is converted to a smart link that displays the page icon and the page title. This works if the Jira and Confluence sites are linked or if they are both cloud versions. Convert pages to use the new editor You can now convert your existing pages that were created using the legacy editor to use the new editing experience! Learn more Confluence navigation just got better Get to information faster with improved navigation – making what you need visible from anywhere in Confluence. Learn more Align and resize images in tables in the new editor When images are inserted in table cells, you now have the ability to align and resize them. Portfolio for Jira plan macro The Portfolio for Jira plan Confluence macro lets you embed a Portfolio for Jira Server and Data Center plan in a Confluence page. Join key stakeholders in the spaces where business goals are built and tracked, and share how work is progressing across multiple projects and teams. Improved expand element replaces the macro Content creators just got a better way to control the way information is presented. The existing expand macro has been replaced with a quicker, easier way to include the expand functionality. Insert the improved expand element using /expand or by inserting the element from the editor's Insert toolbar. Bitbucket New Code Review - Limit the amount of rendered diff content Limits the amount of pull request content rendered in the diff and file tree to improve browser performance. Limits include the overall # of files and # of lines for the entire diff. Learn more

My assignment is to set up, configure and design an Atlassian setup as a proof of concept for the new work processes.

The assignment is to conduct a prestudy to assess how to add Jira and Confluence as standard tool within the organization. This assessment is delivered as a suggested implementation plan with timeline, budget and activities required.

Atlassian is ending their support of four gadgets for Confluence Cloud at the end of May. The gadgets will still work after that if you are already using them, but you will not be able to add them into the legacy editor or the new editor using the macro browser, slash command, or a shortcut key. Three out of four gadgets are replaced with macros. The time has come for gadgets to fade away and be replaced by the more modern macros for Confluence Cloud. While the gadgets will still work on your confluence pages, you will no longer be able to add them to pages. That goes for legacy and new editor as well as for macro browser, slash command and shortcut. If you want similar functionality then there are macros suggested for all but the news gadget. Activity Stream gadget The Activity stream gadget shows a list of recently changed content in your site. Atlassian recommend using the Recently Updated macro as an alternative in Confluence. Confluence Page gadget This gadget displays the contents of a Confluence page. Atlassian recommend using the Include Page macro as an alternative in Confluence. Confluence Quick Nav gadget This gadget provides a search field that can be used to search for page titles in Confluence. Atlassian recommend using the Livesearch macro as an alternative in Confluence. News gadget This gadget previously displayed blogs and other news from Atlassian. It has no suggested alternative. End of support means that Atlassian will no longer fix bugs for these gadgets. If your Confluence site is integrated with a Jira site, any Jira gadgets installed in Confluence ARE NOT IMPACTED by this change. You can continue to insert Jira gadgets into any Confluence page.

Michael is passionate about test, QA, requirements work and agile a way of working. He is happy to work hands-on as test leader / test coordinator / tester. Michael has worked on developing complex system solutions where quality in business and deliveries are important. In many cases, his work has led to an increased productivity for the test area. Michael is a problem solver where his dedication inspire the team. He like to support others and to share his knowledge. He thrives best when he can combine test management with testing and requirements work in close collaboration with customers and developers. Michael speaks and writes freely in Swedish and English and has extensive experience working in international environments.

This is a repost from Atlassian's blog where the latest updates to the Atlassian cloud platform is posted. It is reposted here since the Atlassian blog does not have an RSS feed and so we can discuss the changes to the Atlassian Cloud architecture. You can follow these posts withe the tag "atlassian cloud changes". Atlassian Cloud Your cloud-hosted products are supported by the Atlassian Cloud platform. This section usually includes changes related to multiple Atlassian Cloud products, site administration, and user management. Email users with suggested account changes From the Change details button, you can suggest that a user changes their account details to make their profile more consistent and easier to identify. Read more about administering Atlassian accounts. Give your users a Trusted permission From a user's Permission options, select Trusted to give certain users more responsibility. These users will be able to install and configure new products on your site and invite new users themselves. Claim accounts after verifying a domain To start managing accounts on your domain, we’ve included an additional step that requires you to claim accounts after verifying that you own the domain. From the table on the Domains page, click Claim accounts next to the verified domain. Read more about verifying a domain. Jira platform Changes in this section usually apply to all Jira products. We'll tell you in the change description if something is only for a specific Jira product. Need help with next-gen projects or service desks? Try searching for what you need We’ve improved how to get help with your next-gen project or service desk. We’ve moved our documentation into Jira Software and Jira Service Desk to help you find relevant help to your questions. To search for help content in next-gen projects or service desks: If not already there, navigate to your next-gen project or service desk. From the navigation bar, select Help. When you reach out for help, Jira will suggest relevant content based on the screen you’re currently viewing. To find other help, use the search bar. Next-gen: Epic panel in backlog You can now manage epics on the backlog of your next-gen project via the Epics panel, similar to how epic management works in classic Jira Software projects. Changes you make in the panel on the backlog will reflect on the Roadmap, and vice-versa. Find issues you've recently worked on We’ve added a new Worked on tab to the Your work page. This tab lets you quickly find and resume work on issues you’ve updated recently. Head to Your work > Worked on to get started. Improved navigation in Jira Cloud We’ve created an improved navigation experience that always appears at the top of the screen, with clearly labeled buttons and menus to help you search, create, and resume your work. Find out more about our improved navigation experience and when you can try it out. New issue view: Improved date formatting in the history feed Dates in the history are now more consistent. They’ll correctly show when changes happened relative to your time zone and be translated into the language you’ve chosen for Jira. Select your email notifications for issue activity from personal settings Jira sends email notifications when certain activities occur on issues. In your personal settings, you can now choose whether you want these notifications. If you do, you can toggle notifications for issue activity when you’re a watcher, reporter, assignee on an issue, when someone mentions you, and when you make changes to an issue. Learn more about choosing email notifications. Issue collector no longer matches the submitter's user session to make them the reporter We’ve adapted our issue collectors to the Chrome browser’s new cookie security features, but have had to change how they work. The issue collector no longer matches a submitter’s user session to make them the reporter. You can still match them by email address. To improve issue security, project and issue keys are no longer displayed in the success message after submitting feedback on an issue collector (unless the project is open to anyone on the web). Learn more about using the issue collector. Jira Software We're rolling out a new type of project known as next-gen. By default, any Jira Software licensed user can create their own next-gen project. These projects don't affect existing Jira projects, shared configurations, or your schemes. You can manage who's allowed to create next-gen projects with the new Create independent projects global permission. Read more about next-gen projects. GitHub app on the Atlassian Marketplace We've partnered with GitHub to build a new and improved integration, which you can install at the Atlassian Marketplace. This replaces the DVCS connector in Jira's system settings. Current GitHub integrations set up under the old method will continue to work, but new integrations must be set up using the app on the Atlassian Marketplace. We're rolling out this update gradually, so it may not be on your Jira Cloud site yet. This won't affect GitHub Enterprise integrations, which must still be set up via the DVCS connector. Kanban boards just got faster Is your team so productive, their 'Done' column is always overflowing? Too many issues on a board can slow it down and make you scroll way too much. To fix this, we’re bringing what we’ve codenamed “Fast Kanban”—a way to keep your board fresh and clean, and as quick as a flash. The idea behind it is simple. The ‘Done’ column will now show only issues that have been updated (in any way) in the last 2 weeks, hiding the rest. Less noise on your board means happier teams. Any project admin can change the retention period, or choose to display all issues, if they prefer. Learn more Quickly copy a link to an issue in your next-gen project backlog When viewing your backlog, you can now copy a link to an issue to your clipboard. To try it out: Navigate to your next-gen project backlog. Locate the issue you want a link for. Select More (…) > Copy issue link. The link to the issue is copied to your clipboard, ready for you to paste into a Confluence page, Slack message, or anywhere you might want to share your issue’s link. Jira Service Desk New issue view for Jira Service Desk The new issue view groups key actions and information in a logical way, making it easier for you to scan and update requests. Learn more about the new issue view. Use keyboard shortcuts in your queues Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around your queues and get your work done faster. You can now move through issues, select their fields, and go to the issue view from your queues just by using your keyboard! Remind agents to update empty fields when moving a request in your next-gen service desk We added another rule to your next-gen service desk workflows. Now, you can prompt your agents to complete an empty field when they use a specific transition to change an issue’s status. The rule removes a burden on your teams to remember to fill in specific fields until they matter. It keeps them focused on the important work of helping your customers. To learn more about the rule, and get an example of how to use it, check out our complete documentation on next-gen workflow rules. Confluence You can now create spaces on Android mobile Android users can now create spaces on-the-go in the Confluence mobile app. You can find this action in the overflow menu (•••) in the top right corner of the app. Your editing experience just got an upgrade The new Confluence editor allows anyone to create beautiful, powerful pages effortlessly. Check out the editor roadmap to learn more. End of support for nested tables As we work on creating a more stable editing experience, we will no longer support nested tables - that is, a table within a list, block quotes, or another table. Existing nested tables will not be affected, you simply won't be able to create new nested tables. We're extending editing improvements to all pages on Android The editing improvements we made to blogs a few months ago are coming to the rest of your Android mobile pages, too. In addition to being faster and more reliable, your new pages are also responsive, optimized for readability, and have advanced tables. Some macros are still missing as we rebuild them, but you can check the list of changes and track updates to macros on our docs site. Jira issue URLs are converted to smart links When you paste a Jira issue link into a Confluence page, the URL is converted to a smart link that displays the page icon and the page title. This works if the Jira and Confluence sites are linked or if they are both cloud versions. Convert pages to use the new editor You can now convert your existing pages that were created using the legacy editor to use the new editing experience! Learn more Confluence navigation just got better Get to information faster with improved navigation – making what you need visible from anywhere in Confluence. Learn more Portfolio for Jira plan macro The Portfolio for Jira plan Confluence macro lets you embed a Portfolio for Jira Server and Data Center plan in a Confluence page. Join key stakeholders in the spaces where business goals are built and tracked, and share how work is progressing across multiple projects and teams. Bitbucket A merge checklist has been added to the right sidebar of the new pull request experience In the new pull request experience, you can now view any merge checks via the sidebar located on the right side of a pull request. Merge checks allow admins to recommend (on standard plan) or require (on premium plan) specific conditions on merges for individual branches or branch patterns. Merge checks work in tandem with branch permissions to give your team flexibility and control over your development workflow. New Code Review - Limit the amount of rendered diff content Limits the amount of pull request content rendered in the diff and file tree to improve browser performance. Limits include the overall number of files and number of lines for the entire diff. Learn more Diff comment replies limited to one level of indentation In the new code review experience, replies to diff comments are now limited to one level of indentation, meaning all replies are still displayed but they are all at the same level of alignment. Along with the updated display, Bitbucket Cloud now auto-populates the @mention of the person to whom you are replying. Enable git clone options at step level You can now enable git clone options at a step level. Check out the docs to learn more.

This is a repost from Atlassian's blog where the latest updates to the Atlassian cloud platform is posted. It is reposted here since the Atlassian blog does not have an RSS feed and so we can discuss the changes to the Atlassian Cloud architecture. You can follow these posts withe the tag "atlassian cloud changes". Atlassian Cloud Your cloud-hosted products are supported by the Atlassian Cloud platform. This section usually includes changes related to multiple Atlassian Cloud products, site administration, and user management. Email users with suggested account changes From the Change details button, you can suggest that a user changes their account details to make their profile more consistent and easier to identify. Read more about administering Atlassian accounts. Give your users a Trusted permission From a user's Permission options, select Trusted to give certain users more responsibility. These users will be able to install and configure new products on your site and invite new users themselves. Claim accounts after verifying a domain To start managing accounts on your domain, we’ve included an additional step that requires you to claim accounts after verifying that you own the domain. From the table on the Domains page, click Claim accounts next to the verified domain. Read more about verifying a domain. Jira platform Changes in this section usually apply to all Jira products. We'll tell you in the change description if something is only for a specific Jira product. Next-gen: Epic panel in backlog You can now manage epics on the backlog of your next-gen project via the Epics panel, similar to how epic management works in classic Jira Software projects. Changes you make in the panel on the backlog will reflect on the Roadmap, and vice-versa. New issue view: Add web links Save time and add context to your issues by adding web links in the new issue view. Web links are links to any URL, but they appear prominently below the issue description where they’re easy for you and other issue viewers to find. Use them to link to important sites that teammates might need to better understand an issue. We’re also moving all issue link types, including web links, into the Link issue button. Click Link issue to quickly link related issues or click the down arrow on the button to add links to web pages and Confluence pages (if you have a linked Confluence site). Find issues you've recently worked on We’ve added a new Worked on tab to the Your work page. This tab lets you quickly find and resume work on issues you’ve updated recently. Head to Your work > Worked on to get started. Improved navigation in Jira Cloud We’ve created an improved navigation experience that always appears at the top of the screen, with clearly labeled buttons and menus to help you search, create, and resume your work. Find out more about our improved navigation experience and when you can try it out. New issue view: Improved date formatting in the history feed Dates in the history are now more consistent. They’ll correctly show when changes happened relative to your time zone and be translated into the language you’ve chosen for Jira. Prevent cross-project commenting when replying to an email thread This release ensures that the comments added to a ticket, sent to the specific project email address, will only appear on the ticket in that project. Previous behavior Bruce receives an email notification about ticket - ABC-123 from his next-gen project “Facilities” Bruce comments in the body of the email, “This contract needs input from legal” and forwards the email to the next-gen project “Legal”. Bruce’s comments would be added to the ABC-123 ticket in the “Facilities” project. New behavior Bruce’s email will create a new ticket in the “Legal” project. Select your email notifications for issue activity from personal settings Jira sends email notifications when certain activities occur on issues. In your personal settings, you can now choose whether you want these notifications. If you do, you can toggle notifications for issue activity when you’re a watcher, reporter, assignee on an issue, when someone mentions you, and when you make changes to an issue. Learn more about choosing email notifications. Issue collector no longer matches the submitter's user session to make them the reporter We’ve adapted our issue collectors to the Chrome browser’s new cookie security features, but have had to change how they work. The issue collector no longer matches a submitter’s user session to make them the reporter. You can still match them by email address. To improve issue security, project and issue keys are no longer displayed in the success message after submitting feedback on an issue collector (unless the project is open to anyone on the web). Learn more about using the issue collector. Jira Software We're rolling out a new type of project known as next-gen. By default, any Jira Software licensed user can create their own next-gen project. These projects don't affect existing Jira projects, shared configurations, or your schemes. You can manage who's allowed to create next-gen projects with the new Create independent projects global permission. Read more about next-gen projects. Next-gen: More epic colors on the roadmap There are now 8 additional colors for your epics on the roadmap. Simply click on an epic to see its details, and select the epic color to view the new options available. Learn more about managing epics on the roadmap. GitHub app on the Atlassian Marketplace We've partnered with GitHub to build a new and improved integration, which you can install at the Atlassian Marketplace. This replaces the DVCS connector in Jira's system settings. Current GitHub integrations set up under the old method will continue to work, but new integrations must be set up using the app on the Atlassian Marketplace. We're rolling out this update gradually, so it may not be on your Jira Cloud site yet. This won't affect GitHub Enterprise integrations, which must still be set up via the DVCS connector. Next-gen: Create child issues on your roadmap You can now add child issues directly on your roadmap. Just hover over an epic, click the + icon, and give your issue a name. Learn more about managing epics on the roadmap. Kanban boards just got faster Is your team so productive, their 'Done' column is always overflowing? Too many issues on a board can slow it down and make you scroll way too much. To fix this, we’re bringing what we’ve codenamed “Fast Kanban”—a way to keep your board fresh and clean, and as quick as a flash. The idea behind it is simple. The ‘Done’ column will now show only issues that have been updated (in any way) in the last 2 weeks, hiding the rest. Less noise on your board means happier teams. Any project admin can change the retention period, or choose to display all issues, if they prefer. Learn more Quickly copy a link to an issue in your next-gen project backlog When viewing your backlog, you can now copy a link to an issue to your clipboard. To try it out: Navigate to your next-gen project backlog. Locate the issue you want a link for. Select More (…) > Copy issue link. The link to the issue is copied to your clipboard, ready for you to paste into a Confluence page, Slack message, or anywhere you might want to share your issue’s link. Jira Service Desk New issue view for Jira Service Desk The new issue view groups key actions and information in a logical way, making it easier for you to scan and update requests. Learn more about the new issue view. Use keyboard shortcuts in your queues Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around your queues and get your work done faster. You can now move through issues, select their fields, and go to the issue view from your queues just by using your keyboard! Remind agents to update empty fields when moving a request in your next-gen service desk We added another rule to your next-gen service desk workflows. Now, you can prompt your agents to complete an empty field when they use a specific transition to change an issue’s status. The rule removes a burden on your teams to remember to fill in specific fields until they matter. It keeps them focused on the important work of helping your customers. To learn more about the rule, and get an example of how to use it, check out our complete documentation on next-gen workflow rules. Global create can select request type and raise on behalf of You can now create a request on behalf of your customers and set them as the reporter. Use the global create button ( + ), then select Raise this request on behalf of and add in your customer's email. Confluence Your editing experience just got an upgrade The new Confluence editor allows anyone to create beautiful, powerful pages effortlessly. Check out the editor roadmap to learn more. End of support for nested tables As we work on creating a more stable editing experience, we will no longer support nested tables - that is, a table within a list, block quotes, or another table. Existing nested tables will not be affected, you simply won't be able to create new nested tables. We're extending editing improvements to all pages on Android The editing improvements we made to blogs a few months ago are coming to the rest of your Android mobile pages, too. In addition to being faster and more reliable, your new pages are also responsive, optimized for readability, and have advanced tables. Some macros are still missing as we rebuild them, but you can check the list of changes and track updates to macros on our docs site. Jira issue URLs are converted to smart links When you paste a Jira issue link into a Confluence page, the URL is converted to a smart link that displays the page icon and the page title. This works if the Jira and Confluence sites are linked or if they are both cloud versions. Convert pages to use the new editor You can now convert your existing pages that were created using the legacy editor to use the new editing experience! Learn more Confluence navigation just got better Get to information faster with improved navigation – making what you need visible from anywhere in Confluence. Learn more Portfolio for Jira plan macro The Portfolio for Jira plan Confluence macro lets you embed a Portfolio for Jira Server and Data Center plan in a Confluence page. Join key stakeholders in the spaces where business goals are built and tracked, and share how work is progressing across multiple projects and teams. Bitbucket Pull requests now include a Jira issues panel In the sidebar of the new pull request view, you can now see a list of Jira issues related to this pull request and Jira issues created in this pull request. New Code Review - Limit the amount of rendered diff content Limits the amount of pull request content rendered in the diff and file tree to improve browser performance. Limits include the overall number of files and number of lines for the entire diff. Learn more Show Jira issues assigned to the current user on dashboard You can now see your assigned Jira issues on your Bitbucket work dashboard. Recent repo cards on Bitbucket dashboard We’ve improved the way you see your recent repositories by adding a new section on your Bitbucket work dashboard.

This is a repost from Atlassian's blog where the latest updates to the Atlassian cloud platform is posted. It is reposted here since the Atlassian blog does not have an RSS feed and so we can discuss the changes to the Atlassian Cloud architecture. You can follow these posts withe the tag "atlassian cloud changes". Atlassian Cloud Your cloud-hosted products are supported by the Atlassian Cloud platform. This section usually includes changes related to multiple Atlassian Cloud products, site administration, and user management. See location details in the audit log The audit log has a new Location column that displays the IP address where the activity took place. Read more about audit logging. Email users with suggested account changes From the Change details button, you can suggest that a user changes their account details to make their profile more consistent and easier to identify. Read more about administering Atlassian accounts. Give your users a Trusted permission From a user's Permission options, select Trusted to give certain users more responsibility. These users will be able to install and configure new products on your site and invite new users themselves. Claim accounts after verifying a domain To start managing accounts on your domain, we’ve included an additional step that requires you to claim accounts after verifying that you own the domain. From the table on the Domains page, click Claim accounts next to the verified domain. Read more about verifying a domain. Set your language and time zone for Jira and Confluence in your Atlassian account profile Rather than individually setting your language and time zone in Jira and Confluence, these preferences will soon come from your Atlassian account profile. Visit your account preferences to update these settings. It may take up to 10 mins before your updated preferences are reflected in Jira and Confluence. Jira platform Changes in this section usually apply to all Jira products. We'll tell you in the change description if something is only for a specific Jira product. New user profile cards When you hover over someone’s name in directories, on dashboards, and in user picker fields, you’ll now start to see rich profile cards with more information and a link to the user’s profile (if you have permission to see it). Next-gen: Epic panel in backlog You can now manage epics on the backlog of your next-gen project via the Epics panel, similar to how epic management works in classic Jira Software projects. Changes you make in the panel on the backlog will reflect on the Roadmap, and vice-versa. Having trouble with next-gen projects? Better help is here. We improved our in-product help experience. Try the Help button in the navigation bar to see help articles related to your next-gen project or service desk. Advanced search (JQL): Search for content updated by a specific user Use the updatedBy() function to search for issues that were updated by a specific user, optionally within the specified time range. For example, if you want to find issues updated by John Smith between June and September 2018, enter issuekey IN updatedBy(jsmith, "2018/06/01", "2018/08/31"). Read more about the updatedBy() function. Portfolio for Jira - Scheduling Team Sorting When scheduling work, Portfolio now prioritizes teams that have associated issue sources over teams that don't. Also, teams without issue sources will only be considered if they have capacity to complete work earlier. Jira Software We're rolling out a new type of project known as next-gen. By default, any Jira Software licensed user can create their own next-gen project. These projects don't affect existing Jira projects, shared configurations, or your schemes. You can manage who's allowed to create next-gen projects with the new Create independent projects global permission. Read more about next-gen projects. Enforce CSFR protection on Agile 2.0 mutations If a user attempts to perform any JSW create/update action with a stale Xsrf token, they will be presented with an error flag with a message: Our session has expired Refresh the page and try again GitHub app on the Atlassian Marketplace We've partnered with GitHub to build a new and improved integration, which you can install at the Atlassian Marketplace. This replaces the DVCS connector in Jira's system settings. Current GitHub integrations set up under the old method will continue to work, but new integrations must be set up using the app on the Atlassian Marketplace. We're rolling out this update gradually, so it may not be on your Jira Cloud site yet. This won't affect GitHub Enterprise integrations, which must still be set up via the DVCS connector. Next-gen: Roadmap issue hierarchy You can now expand an epic on your roadmap to see its child issues and their statuses. Learn more about managing epics on the roadmap. Next-gen: Create child issues on your roadmap You can now add child issues directly on your roadmap. Just hover over an epic, click the + icon, and give your issue a name. Learn more about managing epics on the roadmap. Next-gen: Environment system field in JSW Add Jira’s built-in Environment field to your issue types in next-gen projects. In your project, go to Project settings > Issue types and drag the Environment field into the Description section of the issue layout. Jira Service Desk Automatically clear the value of a request's field when changing its status in your next-gen service desk We improved our “Update a request field” workflow rule. Now, you can use the rule to clear your request’s fields when someone moves the request using a specific transition. New issue view for Jira Service Desk The new issue view groups key actions and information in a logical way, making it easier for you to scan and update requests. Learn more about the new issue view. Use keyboard shortcuts in your queues Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around your queues and get your work done faster. You can now move through issues, select their fields, and go to the issue view from your queues just by using your keyboard! Customer portal request details page redesign We have redesigned the customer portal request details page to make it easier to use. You’ll notice we have added a rich text editor, sorted the activity stream from old to new, and have moved the location of the request fields, share button, approval and comment boxes. Maintenance complete on the customer portal user profile page We have just completed some maintenance on the customer portal user profile page. We also introduced a new layout that is easier to use on mobile devices. Go team! Easier configuration for the new issue view If you have the new issue view, you can now easily configure how your issue view looks for each request type. From your service desk project, go to Project settings > Request types and you'll find the new layout for making changes. Global create can select request type and raise on behalf of You can now create a request on behalf of your customers and set them as the reporter. Use the global create button ( + ), then select Raise this request on behalf of and add in your customer's email. Confluence Convert legacy editor pages to the new editor Our goal is to allow you to convert your pages from the legacy editor to the new editor without data loss and with little to no changes to the look and feel of the content, which is why you’ll have control over which pages get converted and when. You'll also have the option to preview any page before converting it. We want you to feel comfortable with the process. You'll also have the chance to restore a page to its previous, legacy editor version after conversion. Learn more Your editing experience just got an upgrade The new Confluence editor allows anyone to create beautiful, powerful pages effortlessly. Check out the editor roadmap to learn more. We're extending editing improvements to all pages on Android The editing improvements we made to blogs a few months ago are coming to the rest of your Android mobile pages, too. In addition to being faster and more reliable, your new pages are also responsive, optimized for readability, and have advanced tables. Some macros are still missing as we rebuild them, but you can check the list of changes and track updates to macros on our docs site. Annotate images in the new editor Annotate images by adding text, inserting shapes and lines, using brushes, or adding a blur to a certain area. Confluence Cloud recent pages drawer We’ve made it easier to get to the pages you visited or worked with most recently. A new action has been added to the global sidebar that presents you with a list of your recent pages; interaction-specific tabs help you narrow the list based on your actions, like visited, edited, or saved as draft. Share pages directly with your team It’s now easier to share pages with everyone on your team, all in one go. When you click Share on any page or blog post, Confluence now lets you add a team – no need to enter each person individually. Learn more Jira issue URLs are converted to smart links When you paste a Jira issue link into a Confluence page, the URL is converted to a smart link that displays the page icon and the page title. This works if the Jira and Confluence sites are linked or if they are both cloud versions. Convert pages to use the new editor You can now convert your existing pages that were created using the legacy editor to use the new editing experience! Learn more Confluence navigation just got better Get to information faster with improved navigation – making what you need visible from anywhere in Confluence. Learn more Align and resize images in tables in the new editor When images are inserted in table cells, you now have the ability to align and resize them. Portfolio for Jira plan macro The Portfolio for Jira plan Confluence macro lets you embed a Portfolio for Jira Server and Data Center plan in a Confluence page. Join key stakeholders in the spaces where business goals are built and tracked, and share how work is progressing across multiple projects and teams. Improved expand element replaces the macro Content creators just got a better way to control the way information is presented. The existing expand macro has been replaced with a quicker, easier way to include the expand functionality. Insert the improved expand element using /expand or by inserting the element from the editor's Insert toolbar. Bitbucket New Code Review - Limit the amount of rendered diff content Limits the amount of pull request content rendered in the diff and file tree to improve browser performance. Limits include the overall # of files and # of lines for the entire diff. Learn more