[Episode 6] The Tiniest Change That Transforms Your Integration Architecture

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Hello Atlassian Community! 👋

I'm back again with another use case story, Episode 6 already!

In this series, I try to share interesting real-world scenarios we’ve come across around security and integrations, and how we’ve solved them in a way that makes things easier (and a lot smoother!) for teams.

Today’s use case is…

In many organizations, API automation begins with one team building small scripts or integrations to simplify daily operations. As interest grows, other teams adopt similar patterns and often use the same OAuth client for authentication. While this is convenient at the start, sharing a single client quickly becomes a limitation as the number of integrations increases.

When multiple automations depend on one shared OAuth credential, it becomes harder to understand which integration executed which action, and any key rotation or troubleshooting effort affects every team at once. This creates unnecessary operational risk and makes ownership unclear.

A more robust and future-ready approach is to provide each team with its own OAuth application. Every application has its own client ID and secret, giving each integration a clear identity and its own lifecycle. This separation immediately improves traceability, eliminates the single point of failure, and allows teams to manage their integrations independently.

Here’s a simple, real-world illustration:

• Release Automation drives deployments and runs continuously.
  
  
• Data & Analytics pulls information for dashboards and reporting.
  
  
• Partner Integrations fetch routine data on a schedule.
  
  

All three connect through the same Jira or Confluence gateway, but each uses a dedicated OAuth app. The gateway instantly knows which integration is calling, and each team manages its own credentials without impacting the others. When Release Automation rotates its keys before a major rollout, Analytics and Partner Integrations continue without disruption. When Partner Integrations pauses for a week, nothing changes for anyone else.

Shared credentials may seem efficient early on, but shifting to a model with multiple OAuth applications creates a cleaner, safer, and more scalable architecture. It enhances audit clarity, reduces cross-team dependencies, and helps teams work faster without stepping on each other.

If you’ve adopted another pattern that balances isolation and velocity, I’d be interested in hearing how you approached it.