A Call for a Sanity-Saving, Consolidated Cloud Change Log for Admins 🙏

[Josh]

The pace of change at Atlassian is fast and relentless. It's a testament to the team's relentless drive to innovate and, for those of us on the receiving end, a reminder that we picked a job that's never, ever boring.

But let's be honest: Keeping up is a full-time job in itself. For platform administrators, trying to stay on top of weekly changes feels less like "continuous improvement" and more like "death by a thousand tiny, undocumented cuts." The information is so scattered, it's like trying to assemble a puzzle with pieces from three different boxes while blindfolded. 🫣

This post is a humble plea from the trenches of the admin community. We're not here to complain - we're here to work with you to find a solution that helps us all keep our heads above water. The stakes are high. Missing a key update isn't just an inconvenience; it can lead to real consequences for our organizations from broken integrations to missed opportunities for vital new functionality.

The Current Atlassian Admin Hunger Games 🕵️‍♀️

When it comes to tracking changes, we're currently engaged in a weekly scavenger hunt. Here are the main pain points:

• The Weekly Cloud Changes Blog Post: A valuable resource, sure, but it's a marathon, not a sprint. We're grateful for the effort, but wading through a sea of old news to find what's actually new feels like a special kind of torment. A simple filter for "new this week" would be a game-changer.

  • The great folks at Released have been tackling this unofficially and have made tremendous strides. That said, it'd be great to see Atlassian take on improving the Admin Experience (AX) themselves and doing it in a more comprehensive way.

• The Great Information Scattershot: Our change log is less of a log and more of a digital breadcrumb trail. We're left hopping between:

  • The Atlassian Developer blog for API updates that feel like they should be on the main stage. (A deprecated API endpoint can break an entire integration.)
  • Random Community posts and emails for major announcements.

  • Our own admin.atlassian.com site for org-specific news.

  • Atlassian feature requests ("JAC" tickets) that can be resolved without a whisper of an announcement. Don't be shy.

  • Atlassian Support articles that sometimes hold a magical nugget of change information not found anywhere else.

  • The Atlassian Community release notes - yup, we now need to track those too.

• The Wild West of Marketplace Apps: There's no centralized system to watch out for app changes.

  • Theoretically, each developer can add meaningful release notes in the Marketplace. In practice, that's rarely the case. Most of the time the updates we receive there are completely generic.
  • It's also *one more place* that we have to take the time to check regularly.

A Proposal for a Single Source of Sanity ✨

I believe a consolidated change log would be a monumental step forward to making life better for Atlassian admins. Why is it important to make our lives better? We're the ones that deliver solutions with Atlassian products, teach users how to use the tools (driving growth / revenue), and make purchase recommendations. Here's what I'm thinking:

• One Log to Rule Them All: A dedicated page or tool that brings together Cloud product updates, API changes, and Marketplace app announcements. One place.

• Filters, Glorious Filters: Give us the power to filter by product, Marketplace app, change type (new, deprecation, bug fix), and announcement date.

• Personalized Feeds: The ability to subscribe to updates for the products and apps our specific organization actually uses. Don't make us hunt for what's relevant.

A more consolidated approach wouldn't just save us time and stress; it would ensure we're better prepared to manage and communicate these changes to our own organizations. This directly impacts our ability to prevent outages and adopt new features that can significantly improve our users' experience.

Thank you for your consideration.

P.S. If you decided to deliver what I'm proposing and wanted to add a gigantic cherry on top, it would be awesome if we could leverage something like Rovo to generate an audio overview of the changes. 🎧

[Josh]

Adding credit where credit is due for other community members and Atlassians that have called for similar concepts:

• @Emma Yee and @__ Jimi Wikman
  • https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Atlassian-Platform-articles/Atlassian-Administration-notifications-are-now-in-beta/ba-p/2590735
• @Charles Matasker and @Bill Sheboy
  • https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Atlassian-Platform-questions/How-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-Atlassian-releases/qaq-p/2927197
• @Karri Adkins 
  • https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Atlassian-Platform-questions/Exhausted-from-constant-changes/qaq-p/2854540

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Josh 

Yes, and...

For our Data Center colleagues, remember to check the Security Hub: https://confluence.atlassian.com/security/security-hub-for-data-center-229839985.html

For our automation-using peeps, I hope to one day see automation audit log, REST API endpoints to improve detection of failures with log tracking and to build "canary rules" when features stop working as expected.

And for our webhook integration folks, the ability to detect activity and errors with webhooks without requiring the highest Atlassian license levels.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Josh]

I completely agree! Thanks for sharing, Bill.