Throwback Thursday: An Atlassian Feature That Changed Things #TBT

[#1]

It's Thursday!

Once in a while, there is a breakthrough feature that gets released that really changes the way we work, think, and approach tasks and projects at work. Don't get me wrong. Atlassian does spit out bunch of good stuff. But in this post, I want to focus on a breakthrough feature.

I think for me it Atlassian Automation. I am not a software developer so I am not at coding (mind you, AI is changing all that but back then AI wasn´t available or good enough). But when Atlassian purchased the Jira Automations (I think it was called) and integrated Automation into Jira, that was a game changer. A huge breakthrough for me. Enabled me to tackle much more variety of problems than I had been able to solve before.

Soooo, what is a specific Atlassian feature or change (in Jira, Confluence, Trello, Bitbucket, etc.) that really changed the way you or your team worked?

What was it, and how did it impact you back then?

Let’s make it a great Thursday!
KGM

[Tomislav Tobijas]

For those who don't know or don't remember, here's the announcement when Atlassian acquired Code Barrel: Atlassian acquires Code Barrel, maker of Automation for Jira 😄

And for me, the latest breakthrough would be Whiteboards in Confluence. I use those daily, and they are a game-changer in some way.

Apart from that, JPD looked awesome the moment I saw it!! Orgs are starting to adopt it, but I've been using it for the last couple of years for some private ideations, and I don't know what I would do without it 😅

[Barbara Szczesniak]

For me, it is Create with Rovo. I never had the time to create a whiteboard, but I have already documented the processes of our application. Now, I can use Rovo to create a whiteboard with a process flow diagram based on these pages I've already written. 

[John Funk]

It's most definitely when Atlassian acquired Code Barrel. I used to work a lot of those guys prior to the acquisition and even talked with the venture capital guys before the purchase happened. Even now, I would say 60-70 of my time involves working with automation rules on a weekly basis. Love the tool and the continued enhancements!!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi, @Kristján Geir Mathiesen 

In my opinion...

On the positive-impacting side, I agree with you @Kristján Geir Mathiesen and others: the acquisition of CodeBarrel to integrate automation features without the need for addon apps was game-changing.  My runner up would be the addition of Jira Product Discovery (JPD) and out-of-the box, portfolio management features.

On the negative-impacting side, adding Next-Gen (later rebranded as Team-managed) projects spaces to essentially make every site admin, project space admin, and team member's use of Jira more difficult and error-prone due to the inconsistencies created.  (If I noted my predicted runner-up for negative-impacts, it might lead to an irrational set of responses from the community, so I will keep that one to myself ;^)

Kind regards,
Bill

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Ah yes, CodeBarrel! I knew Atlassian purchased Automation for Jira but I wasn't in the know of it though.

[Liam - DevSamurai]

It's the Live Doc feature in Confluence for me. Since I spend a lot of time on documents, it makes working with others much simpler. It’s much faster now that we don’t have to click Edit or Save anymore. 

[Matt Doar]

When Atlassian bought GreenHopper and Jira got Agile boards, and an agile outlook. That was huge.

Oh, and when they documented the REST API :)

[Barbara Szczesniak]

When Atlassian added a last updated date on their documentation pages, so you can tell if it includes a recent feature update.

No, wait; that hasn't happened yet. 🤣

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Oh, the thread is getting a bit spicy, @Barbara Szczesniak  :)

[Martin Runge]

Not having to write a script or do everything manually and using automations really empowered teams and made my day at the time. Over the past two months, for me, the feature that changed things is the capability to assign tasks to agents in Jira.

[Carsten Severin _KUMAVISION AG_]

As I've mentioned several times before, I'm a huge fan of whiteboards 😉

[Fabio Racobaldo [Catworkx]]

Since I've been working with Atlassian products since 2007 (I'm getting old), I think the acquisition of the greenhopper plugin (which became JIRA Agile -> JIRA Software) changed things. JIRA began developing specific modules to become an enterprise solution.

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Thanks for your comments. Fun to read them and also thought provoking.

[Anwesha Pan]

Thanks @Kristján Geir Mathiesen for posting this topic! ✨

For me creating "Automation" rules in Confluence and creating whiteboard or documentation using Rovo are the most used and appealing features that I have been using the most recently in my daily activities at work.