Community FiveByFive Round-up: December 2025

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Hello Everyone!

This will be my final edition of the monthly Community Round-up posts. I would like to thank everyone who has engaged with these posts over the past 5 years. I really appreciate all the support you have given each iteration of this series. That having been said, I guarantee there is something here for everyone. Let’s get started one more time!

Community Updates & Highlights:

As always, there are a TON of amazing things happening and here is just a small sample of all the great things you don’t want to miss out on!

• First up, The Community team has rolled out several quality-of-life improvements to the forums, including mobile fixes and a new way to give kudos to authors you appreciate. They also polished navigation and display elements to make browsing smoother and more intuitive for everyone.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Community-Announcements-articles/Community-release-notes-for-December-3-2025/ba-p/3157314

• Throughout December, the Community has been celebrating the Month of Good with local and virtual events that spotlight nonprofits and social impact initiatives around the world. Members are invited to attend sessions like Mary’s Meals and CareerVillage to learn, connect, and give back together. Did you make sure to join at least one event?
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Nonprofit-articles/Join-Atlassian-Community-s-Month-of-Good-December-2025/ba-p/3155670

• Next, in addition to feeling good about joining an event, you could have earned a special edition badge for your participation in events as part of the Month of Good, including planting trees and attending ACEs. The challenges available replaced the usual badges offered you extra points and recognition.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Community-Kudos-Feedback/New-challenges-alert-Join-community-events-in-December-for/ba-p/3156283

• Atlassian is inviting community members to reflect on how they’ve improved teamwork this year by sharing their Team Changer moments, from new processes to collaboration wins. Everyone who contributes a story gets a special badge and a chance to celebrate teamwork successes together.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Teamwork-Lab-Improving-our-ways/Are-you-a-Team-Changer-Share-your-story-and-earn-a-badge/ba-p/3147532

• Lastly, the final webinar in the “AI-powered ITSM” series took place on December 10 showcasing the latest AI features in service management with demos and real-world examples. Attendees can earn yet another badge, this one was the AI-Powered ITSM Pro badge.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-Service-Management-articles/Don-t-miss-our-final-AI-for-service-teams-webinar-and-your-last/ba-p/3150575

Atlassian Announcements:

This month there were a number of important announcements made that I thought deserved extra attention! Be sure to read through these if it sounds like it might have an impact on your company!

• First up, Atlassian’s most useful support channels, learning paths, documentation hubs, and community spaces have been gift wrapped in this “all-in-one“ resource to help you find the right help at the right time. It’s designed to reduce overwhelm by pointing newcomers and experienced admins alike toward tutorials, events, and expert groups that support success with Atlassian tools.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-Cloud-Admins-articles/Atlassian-Resource-Guide/ba-p/3159287

• Next, the Trello & Confluence teams, are retiring the old Confluence Power-Up in Trello in early 2026 as part of broader platform changes, but reassures users that existing links won’t break and no action is needed to preserve connected content. The update also outlines how you can still embed Confluence pages in Trello cards using built-in methods for smooth integration going forward.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Trello-articles/Update-on-Confluence-within-Trello/ba-p/3157181

• Next up, a major overhaul of Jira’s field management beginning in April 2026, unifying field configurations and schemes into a simpler “Field schemes” model that aims to streamline admin workflows. Admins are invited to join an early beta, which will explain how the migration tools will preserve existing setups, and detail how the new approach will change the way fields are controlled in spaces and work types.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-Cloud-Admins-articles/Say-goodbye-to-field-configuration-schemes-and-hello-to-the/ba-p/3160315

• Bitbucket Cloud will stop allowing new forks to be created outside their original parent workspace after February 27, 2026. Existing cross-workspace forks will be consolidated back into their parent workspace where feasible. This change aims to improve reliability and support stronger enterprise controls, though it may affect workflows that rely on open-source-style contributions across workspaces.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Bitbucket-articles/Deprecation-of-Forked-Repositories-Outside-the-Parent-Workspace/ba-p/3155743

• Finally, Atlassian has gathered key resources to help teams prepare for the announced end-of-life of Data Center products by March 28, 2029, including migration guides, learning sessions, and change-management templates. This resource collection is meant to support customers in understanding the transition to cloud, planning technical migrations, and managing organizational change.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Data-Center-articles/Sunsetting-Atlassian-Data-Center-Resources/ba-p/3161952

Member Article Highlights:

As always, there are a TON of amazing articles written by many of your fellow community members. This is just a small sample of all the great content you don’t want to miss out on!

• First up, @Artem Taranenko explores the ongoing tension in Jira administration between giving teams freedom to configure their own tools and enforcing centralized governance to keep the system scalable, consistent, and reliable. It argues that governance isn’t about slowing teams down but about reducing risk, improving transparency, and creating predictable processes that support growth.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-articles/Jira-Governance-Navigating-the-Space-Between-Autonomy-and/ba-p/3156269

• Next, @Staffan Redelius presents a simple model for diagnosing why agile teams struggle with on-time delivery, suggesting that understanding actual delivery outcomes and tracing them backward through progress, commitment, prioritization, and strategy helps identify root causes. Clear commitments backed by measurable progress tracking and strategic prioritization are key to reliable agile delivery.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Agile-articles/The-secret-to-delivering-on-time-when-doing-agile/ba-p/3158294

• Next up, @Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_ explains that you can’t fully disable Atlassian’s AI-driven Rovo experience across your site, but you can turn off the large language model features or restrict specific permissions to limit how much Rovo’s AI functionality is used. It outlines practical workarounds for administrators, such as disabling LLM features and controlling who can create Rovo agents, to align Rovo with governance needs.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Rovo-articles/Disable-Rovo-why-you-can-t-and-what-to-do-instead/ba-p/3159063

• @Bill Sheboy offers best practices for testing automation rules in Atlassian tools, emphasizing the importance of planning, defining test cases, using sandboxes, and leveraging audit logs to ensure rules behave as expected before they’re deployed. It also highlights collaborative approaches like pair programming and documenting rules to improve maintainability and team knowledge sharing.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Automation-articles/Automation-concepts-Testing-Practices-for-Rule-Writing/ba-p/3159253

• Finally, @Patricia Modispacher _k15t_ reviews Confluence’s new Audio Narrations feature, which reads an entire page aloud verbatim and shows promise for improved accessibility and multitasking, while noting current limitations like basic image handling and macro descriptions. The author encourages thoughtful content structure to help the narration feature deliver the best experience and sees it as a strong foundation for future updates.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Atlassian-AI-Rovo-articles/Testing-Confluence-s-New-Audio-Narrations/ba-p/3160670

New Features & Product Changes:

Want to keep up to date on all the cool things Atlassian has announced about their products? Be sure to read through these, then go check out all the others for your favorite product!

• First up, Atlassian now lets you designate specific users as editors for individual Goals, giving tighter control over who can modify strategic outcomes while others can safely view, follow, and connect work. This update brings familiar sharing and permission controls to Goals, helping teams reduce accidental edits and keep strategy content accurate and accountable.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Focus-articles/Introducing-editor-permissions-for-Goals/ba-p/3157079

• Next, Compass now auto-populates a comprehensive software catalog as soon as you onboard, eliminating tedious manual setup by automatically creating components from your connected Bitbucket or GitHub repositories. This gives teams instant, context-rich visibility into their architecture with metadata like descriptions, owner teams, and activity already filled in for you.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Compass-articles/Introducing-Auto-Population-for-the-Compass-Catalog/ba-p/3157148

• Next up, Jira’s new Development feature brings all your engineering work and insights — including code, metrics, and security data — together in one unified view right inside your Jira space. This means teams can stop toggling between tools and start seeing progress, risks, and actionable recommendations without leaving Jira.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-articles/Introducing-Development-feature-in-Jira/ba-p/3156891

• Next, Atlassian has made Multiple Sandboxes generally available, allowing Premium and Enterprise teams to create isolated sandbox environments per product site for safer change management and parallel testing. These sandboxes help organizations validate changes, new configurations, and onboarding processes without impacting production, and additional sandboxes can be purchased as needed.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-Cloud-Admins-articles/Multiple-Sandboxes-Now-Generally-Available/ba-p/3150480

• Finally, Jira is launching Individual Capacity Planning, a new experience that lets managers visualize and plan each team member’s capacity across major work streams, including time off and non-project work. Early Access participants can provide feedback to shape future enhancements like time-based allocations and AI-assisted planning, giving teams better clarity and alignment.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-articles/Introducing-Individual-Capacity-Planning-in-Jira-Join-our-Early/ba-p/3161425

AI & Rovo Corner:

There is enough chatter about Rovo that I felt it deserved it’s own category this month. If you have joined the AI hype train, you are going to enjoy reading all of these exciting updates!

• First up, RovoCon is a free, full-day series of hands-on AI events where Atlassian experts help teams move from theory to practice by building and applying AI solutions you can use immediately in your workflows. It’s designed for anyone from strategists to builders, with workshops, labs, and community networking to inspire practical, scalable adoption of Rovo agents and AI tools.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Atlassian-AI-Rovo-articles/RovoCon-The-hands-on-AI-event-to-put-AI-to-work-for-your-team/ba-p/3157948

• Next, Rovo Dev is now integrated into the Atlassian extension for Visual Studio Code, letting developers stay in their IDE while asking Rovo Dev about code, generating changes, and validating work against requirements. This contextual AI assistance reduces context switching and enhances productivity by bringing Jira, Bitbucket, and code insights directly into VSCode.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Rovo-for-Software-Teams-Beta/Rovo-Dev-is-available-in-your-VSCode/ba-p/3158426

• Next up, This guide highlights why clear, structured prompts are essential for getting accurate and useful responses from Rovo Agents, and walks through how to avoid common pitfalls like vague instructions or unstructured output. With expert tips on setting roles, output formats, and handling edge cases, it helps you craft more effective and reliable agent prompts.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Rovo-articles/Tips-and-Tricks-Level-Up-Your-Rovo-Agent-s-Prompts/ba-p/3157378

• Next, Drawing on the success of Atlassian’s own onboarding agent NORA, this article shows how defining purpose, curating knowledge sources, and tailoring your agent to your users can dramatically boost AI adoption. It mixes practical guidance with real adoption results to help you design Rovo agents that deliver measurable value for workflows like HR, support, or onboarding.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Atlassian-AI-Rovo-articles/How-to-Create-a-High-Impact-Rovo-Agent-Lessons-from-NORA/ba-p/3157915

• Finally, Atlassian’s product team for Rovo Search is inviting users to participate in brief research sessions to share their current search workflows and pain points. By contributing feedback, participants can help shape future improvements to the Rovo Search Box based on real use cases and user experience insights.
  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Atlassian-AI-Rovo-articles/Help-us-improve-the-Rovo-Search-Box-30-min-research-sessions/ba-p/3155815

It’s hard to believe another month has already come and gone. Please be sure to stay healthy, stay safe and I wish you all the best in 2026.

Take care!

[Trudy Claspill]

Thank you @Jimmy Seddon for the effort you put into these monthly round ups!

[Josh]

@Jimmy Seddon I concur with @Trudy Claspill ! It's not easy to keep up with all the relevant posts each month, and I have found that your round-ups are a good way to ensure I haven't missed anything important. Thank you for doing this!

[Artem Taranenko]

Thanks for the mention in your highlights!
I found a few interesting items I had missed during the month

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

5 years! That is amazing, @Jimmy Seddon  Well done.

[Andy Gladstone]

You are one of a kind @Jimmy Seddon. I look forward to many more years of friendship, and thank you for the years you dedicated to making the Community a better place for all of us.

[Stephen_Lugton]

Thanks for the roundup @Jimmy Seddon it's as useful as always!

[Monique vdB]

you are an icon, @Jimmy Seddon! This has been such a delightful feature.