Analytics On Atlassian Forum Questions

[#1]

I enjoy spending a few hours each week skimming through the Forum Questions as a way to stay current on what other admins are doing and to see if there is something lurking in my background I can offfer.

I'm interested in some aggregate metrics on the suggested answers to the questions:

1. How many questions result in "its not possible"?
2. How many end up with Plugin solutions being offered?
3. How many have workarounds?
4. What about the % that either become a Suggestion or Bug For Atlassian.
5. How often is Automation the solution versus say "core" features?

That is obviously a sample of suggestions.  And a Question might result in suggested answers across multiple categories.

Of course, knowing what the final resolution is would be important too. (that one will be a 1:1 Question to Answer Accepted count)

As I point out in many of the answers I offer.  I'm a REST API proponent as well as an advocate for what I might start calling "Forgotten Atlassian Features".  I am specifically thinking about the number of admins who don't seem to know about Filter Subscriptions for email notifications.

Atlassian is been around for 2 decades+ and much of it's early functionality is still in place (I believe).    

I'll leave you with this fun timeline (IMHO).  Jira was being used 10 years before some of the other common Cloud SAAS tools you may know.

1994–1996	CASE tools fade; data warehousing rises (Informatica, Cognos, Business Objects). The first corporate intranets appear.
1997–1999	Y2K leads to mass code reviews, documentation, and PMO formalization. ITIL and process governance rise. Fiber-to-the-home pilots begin.
2001–2002	Agile Manifesto published (2001). Atlassian launches Jira (2002) — a “flexible bug tracker” for technical teams tired of bureaucracy.
2003–2006	The social web and early SaaS emerge: LinkedIn, YouTube, AWS, Twitter.
2007–2010	The iPhone, Git, and GitHub redefine “modern software.” Cloud-first startups reshape expectations.
2011–2015	Smartsheet, ServiceNow, and Slack appear. Atlassian’s GreenHopper becomes Jira Agile. Power BI launches.
2016–2020	DevOps mainstreams. Atlassian acquires Trello. COVID accelerates remote collaboration.
2021–2025	AI and natural-language tools (ChatGPT, Copilot, Atlassian Rovo) emerge. Process tracking gives way to context awareness.

[Susan Waldrip]

Great questions about the Forums, @David Nickell . One I might add is, How often are coding and scripting the solution versus say "core" features and Automation? And thanks for the trip down memory lane with your timeline, although I may have nightmares tonight about my days of Y2K!

[David Nickell]

@Susan Waldrip  thanks.  Funny about Y2K... my career started as a mainframe COBOL/IMS/DB2 programmer. Luckily for me I had moved into Project Management and Data Warehousing when everyone else was trapped converting date logic.

It's interesting how many people think Y2k was a hoax. Anyone with their hands in code at that time will tell you, there was definitely risk and a bunch of code to be updated.

[Chad Parker]

One suggested metric I might add is to this one:

4. What about the % that either become a Suggestion or Bug For Atlassian.

add "... and how old is that suggestion or bug."

In my experience, the most disheartening responses on the community are those that end up with a link to a suggestion that has been around for 7+ years with no comments or feedback from Atlassian.