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Keeping track of minor changes in the UI

Marta Zapatero_2jw0md

Small, but not insignificant

Big changes, such as new features or substantial modifications of the UI, are always highlighted with header banners, notifications, and popups.

But Cloud Jira (and Confluence)'s UI go through constant, tiny silent changes overnight.

Things that seemingly shouldn't impact users like reordering menu items, renaming buttons, or adding borders to a table.

However, they introduce almost daily confusion. Although it's not critical, the constant "Where did this button go?" and "I could swear this was not here before" is not only frustrating- the impact on our workflows adds up over time.

Hidden workload

Usual administration tasks are impacted only briefly- the time it takes to look for the new location or name of what we need to do.

The main issue is updating User Guides. We have many guides and user documentation to teach both end users and new admins how to use the apps and keep good hygiene. These guides do not only get outdated really fast- we have no awareness of when they do! Until a user raises a question or messes something up, that is.

Additionally, Community guides, questions and answers get outdated as well. While this is understandable- the fact that official Atlassian documentation can't keep up with these changes can be a problem.

Examples

A "before and after" comparison of the action menu of pages in Confluence.

We wrote a Confluence Hygiene guide for our users, and when we announced it the following day, the "Copy" option had been renamed to "Duplicate"!

While we understand it was hilariously terrible luck, it created some confusion among users, and the extra workload of having to re-take many screenshots.

Although not as polished, I have another "before and after" comparison of the "Custom Fields" screen in "Jira Admin > Work Items". You can see both the main section and the sidebar navigation are different. And these two screenshots are a single day apart!

Solution: Detailed changelog?

We don't want to ask Atlassian to not change anything ever again (there have been enough discussions around the New Navigation as it is!)

But I'd like to know if there is any blog or daily changelog that lists minor updates like these ones. Even if it's something like a Github commit log.

I know major updates are announced all over Atlassian websites now and then... but it would be tremendously helpful to be informed of minor changes as they happen.

Perhaps this already exists and I have simply not found it yet- if that is the case, I'd be very grateful if anyone can point me in its direction!

What are your experiences with minor changes in the UI? Do you have any other suggestions or ideas?

Comments

Anne Saunders

These unannounced minor tweaks are worse than the huge, broadcast ones in a way, not just for the training material, but because they make us doubt our own sanity, which disrupts flow. "The export option was right there..." "Did that always say 'Delete'"

I've had a couple of demos with my own team users in recent weeks where I have looked lost or incompetent because my cheese had moved since my prep. Saying, "Oh, that's new!" in front of teammates who look to me to be the expert is not a good look.

I love the idea of a UI changelog. I don't need all the commits that deal with every bit of underlying logic, but i'd love to be able to see what's coming, and tell my team, "See?? They changed it last night!"

Robert Nadon_4pwkst

I agree with this. Atlassian, please do not change nomiclature anymore. Improve things, add functionality, but simply changing names of things serves little to no value, and almost always causes more pain than good.

I defer to Shakespear on this one. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet"!

Gary Spross

The Cloud Release Blog can be found here.

Aaron Morris_49u8f7

Hi @Marta Zapatero -- You've raised a very common frustration among admins. Personally, I record a lot of Jira training videos, and yes, they sometimes become outdated quickly.

To your main question:

But I'd like to know if there is any blog or daily changelog that lists minor updates like these ones.

Yes and no.

Yes: There is an Atlassian Cloud Change Log you can monitor here:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/blog

I'm not sure if you're already watching this.

If not, you can subscribe to updates by going to Email and Privacy --> Email preferences center and selecting Cloud Release Notes.

Cloud Release Notes.png There's also a new third-party digest of these release notes that makes them a bit more searchable here: https://cloud-updates.released.so/

But no: Even this change log doesn't have the level of detail you're asking about. For example, I just searched for the change of "Copy" to "Duplicate" in the Confluence page menu and couldn't find it listed. (I'm assuming it didn't happen a long time ago.)

But here's the conundrum: This change log is already somewhat detailed and challenging to monitor without the small(ish) changes included. So, I'm really not sure how Atlassian could communicate the small(ish) changes without creating information overload for us admins. Which means we probably still wouldn't notice the changes until users complain. ☹️

It's a great question to ask. And I hope someone finds a solution, because I feel the pain too! It's just that, personally, I find it difficult to monitor all the changes they are communicating. 🙂

Bhushan Porwal

Hi @Marta Zapatero ,

True, this is normal with Confluence now a days. Sometimes user asked something and i am proposing a solution saying that - please try this, then both are clueless where that option gone just because that option is renamed or moved out.

Weekly published Change log for such minor things will work.

Thank you

Luísa Ribeiro

On top of that, I am under the impression (expectation?) that Atlassian also does A/B tests, or otherwise running different experiences for different user groups from time to time.

I've recently experienced the case of "adding a new issue to an ongoing sprint directly from the Active Sprint Board" - sometimes the button is there, sometimes it is not. It goes away and comes back. 😅 It's confusing and builds up the "am I going crazy... ?" train.

Rune Rasmussen

This has to be my biggest gripe with how Atlassian is running things, and has been for years now.

To the best of my knowledge there is no one place with all changes.
You have:
The public cloud roadmap which has basically no information
The Product Updates page in Atlassian Admin which has a lot of information
The posts here on the community forum
The public Jira board (JAC)
The banners that appear and disappear on a whim
The things that are important enough to warrant an actual email to the Org admins
The Tuesday changelog email

None of these places have all changes and, as you mention, a lot of minor changes just goes unannounced.

We have stopped images in user guides.
Now when they are incorrect, and we become aware of it, they just get removed.

My advice:

Bitch and moan about it any time you have a chance to communicate with Atlassian.

I have mentioned this to all our past and current contacts at Atlassian, who have all expressed agreement and understanding, but nothing has changed and the situation remains the same.

Also join every group here on the community forums and sign up for every newsletter under the sun.

Here is my bitching and moaning, just in case anyone from Atlassian sees this.

What then happens is that me and my fellow admin on a regular basis has the conversation of "Has this always been a thing, or am I going mad?" and "That button wasn't there yesterday, was it?"

We also have users asking why we never informed them about some change, and we have to tell them that "it just wasn't announced (at least not in any of the seven channels we know of) so either Atlassian is unable or unwilling to communicate."

The same kind of situation plays out when a change is actually announced, and we tell our users that it will happen.
They will invariably ask "Ah, so when is this happening?" to which we can only respond "I don't know. In the next couple of months, probably. Atlassian either can't or won't tell us when it's expected to hit our site".

At the end of the day I see the following scenarios.

1. Atlassian is unaware that their change communication is partial and fragmented, causing frustration and confusion.

2. Atlassian knows that their change communication is partial and fragmented, causing frustration and confusion, but are unwilling to do anything about it.

3. Atlassian knows that their change communication is partial and fragmented, causing frustration and confusion, but are unable to do anything about it

Either way it's not painting them in a positive light.

My suggested solution, in case anyone from Atlassian sees this:

Have a single repository of changes.
Use components, labels, tags, and whatever to split them up and make them searchable/filterable.
No change gets released unless it is in this repository.

The public cloud roadmap and the Product Updates page in the admin portal can be populated from this central change repository. (Maybe use APIs or something)
The public cloud roadmap of course has everything.
The Product Updates page is default scoped to the products the organization has.
Org admins are automatically given notifications of new changes and updates to unreleased changes.
Everyone else can sign up for whatever notifications they want.

I know this will slow the rate of changes down a bit, but I don't think that is a bad thing.

Marta Zapatero_2jw0md

@Gary Spross @Aaron Morris

Thank you! This is better than nothing, but it's still not as straight-forward as we wish

Each of these weekly updates have a lot of fluff... 95% of the entries are the same as last week's, listing all the features still being "rolled out" and many that are "coming soon". (The third-party site does help with that, though!)

Besides, I am not seeing much information about minor UI changes or renames in particular.... "Improvements to navigation" without saying exactly what changed.

(Atlassian in general suffers from overload of information scattered across many sources- it's so easy to get lost in duplicated information and circular links)

The ideal would be to have a page (perhaps in our Product Admin page, since each organization gets updates at a different pace) that shows an audit log like:

22/07/2025: 'Confluence > Page "More actions" > Copy' has been renamed to 'Confluence > Page "More actions"> Duplicate'

This level of detail may not be doable, but I think it's reasonable to have some awareness when a rolled-out feature or update reaches our organization

Marta Zapatero_2jw0md

I wish I could super-like this!

I agree the main problem is Atlassian's style of communication- an overload of information in many different places, often duplicate, and usually too vague to be actually helpful....

...while the official documentation at https://support.atlassian.com is not always up to date

So yes, all we can do is keep complaining... even if it our feedback will have little weight if we're not a company with 3 million users

Gary Spross

@Marta Zapatero, not sure if this was mentioned, but there is the App Updates page within the admin console (Apps -> App Updates). It's a pretty nice, searchable layout. It is limited in scope however, but it does include the main apps (Jira, JSM, JPD, & Confluence). It also provides a somewhat more precise timeframe as to when an update should be rolled into your specific instance. All that said, I'm sure there's still the same issue of "smaller" updates not being communicated within this UI as well.

Screenshot 2025-08-01 103411.png

Rob_8c9igz

Yeah, those are the best times. Here today, gone tomorrow.

But will it be back next week?

Has somebody already raised an issue with Atlassian? Or do I need to raise one?

Lara Bailey

The change log could have levels of importance, so people who want to know/subscribe to everything can (or at least search it after the fact when they're questioning themselves), and those who don't can filter out the "small(ish)" changes.

Atlassian should already know whether their change is important or not, as this classification should necessary for determining what approval is required to implement the change. Assuming they know, why not share these classifications (and then include ALL changes)?

This should be an easy win / first step.

More difficult would be linking product documentation (and even more difficult, community forum) to the affected changes, so that when something changes, there's at minimum an automated note that comes up. Ideally, the person responsible would update at least the atlassian documentation at the same time as the change is released, but..

Bill Goetz

This is a solid idea in theory, but realistically, I don’t see it working for most Atlassian admins. The level of detail that would need to come from Atlassian is huge, and honestly, who has the time to dig through logs like that? I’m already just trying to keep up with the steady stream of new features across all the products we use. My team definitely doesn’t have the bandwidth to cross-check logs against documentation changes. Maybe AI will bail us out on this someday…

That said, I definitely feel your frustration when the changes occur. I would suggest having a note within your current documentation, and add something like this:

Note: Atlassian regularly updates Jira and Confluence. While we aim to keep this documentation current, some details may change over time.

@Gary Spross hit on the App updates section in the Admin section. I do think Atlassian should consider opening this up to not just Org admins.

Also should mention Org admins can tweak the release track for the Atlassian apps from continuous to bundled. (Admin > Apps > Release Tracks) A "Bundled Release Track" provides changes and features as a bundle, once a month. It might make absorbing changes just slightly easier.

Marta Zapatero_2jw0md

I’m already just trying to keep up with the steady stream of new features across all the products we use

This is precisely why we're looking for a neater way to keep track of them 😅

Would be nice to have a neat little list of changes that are already live in our site. No "coming soon" fluff.... Currently it's hard to know if a feature that's being rolled out has reached our organization yet or not.

I imagine their backend must be keeping some track of it, at least. It should be feasible to add an audit log entry to the script that pushes a new feature to a site... now if they don't want us to have that info, it's a different issue

The "bundled releases" are a fantastic idea, though! I will send this information to our higher admin staff and see what they think about it.

Matt Doar _Adaptavist_

I wrote a couple of books about Jira years ago, and I understand the frustration of tracking changes. I avoided screenshots as much as possible, mostly for the reason that they go out of date faster than almost anything else.

But now I think of docs as "eventually consistent", meaning that I expect to see a mismatch between any product and its docs. Instead of accuracy I look for features. "The feature XYZ must still be here, maybe just not called XYZ any more". This approach means that you can concentrate on telling users about features, not the exact steps to use the features.

Not what I would have wanted, but it is life in the cloud where deployments are daily.

Sami Shaik

Brilliantly raised, @Marta Zapatero !

The frequency of these “micro UI shifts” may seem negligible individually but for admins, trainers, and documentation teams, it’s death by a thousand paper cuts. From button renames to subtle menu reordering, the lack of consistent visibility truly impacts our ability to deliver reliable onboarding and support.

The suggestion of a granular UI changelog even if just a line-item diff per rollout would be a game changer. I echo the sentiments shared here: Atlassian already knows what’s changing internally, so surfacing those deltas in a searchable, org-specific feed would empower us all.

✅ Until then, we've resorted to lightweight banner notes in our internal guides stating:

“Atlassian UI is subject to silent changes. If your screen looks slightly different, don’t panic—explore nearby options.”

Thanks again for sparking such a much-needed discussion clearly, you’ve hit a nerve across the admin community!

Josh

As Aaron described below, the Cloud Release Blog often doesn't include every user-facing UI change.

Josh

I've also noticed many times that the weekly release notes will be posted and then there will be some standalone Community article announcing something impactful that should have been included in the release notes.

It seems like not all teams that make customer-facing updates are adding their content to the weekly notes.

Kelly Arrey

"These guides do not only get outdated really fast- we have no awareness of when they do!"

@Marta Zapatero Congrats! You've just identified a hole in Atlassian's development process and Definition of Done!

Wurm Peter

They should add a date to every not-so-little change for each instance. It can't be that the rollout hits an instance by chance. At least it should be possible to name the exact week.

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