Grow an internal Atlassian champion community
Build a network of Atlassian champions to accelerate your cloud adoption. Internal champions drive change, share knowledge, and inspire lasting engagement.Inside the champions community
A champions community is one of the biggest secrets to a successful rollout. Your team of Atlassian advocates will be a group of people from across your company who you can engage, train, and deploy to help teams adopt Atlassian Cloud. Champions are often power users, but at their core, they are trusted colleagues who can guide others through change with credibility and confidence.
Why you should build one
Champions act as force multipliers. Because they sit within the departments where change is happening, they are usually the first to use new tools and processes. They can highlight department-specific use cases, train peers, and build excitement. More importantly, they bring trust because teams are far more likely to listen to a familiar, friendly voice than to an outside directive.
See who can be a champion
Anyone in your company can step into the role, whether they are a new hire, manager, or executive. Champions don’t have to start as experts, as long as they're willing to learn and are motivated to improve how their teams work. Power users often make great recruits, but passion and openness to change matter just as much.
TIP: If your organization spans multiple teams, departments, or regions, make sure your champions community reflects that diversity. The closer champions are to end users, the stronger the connection and trust.
Benefits of being a champion
When you ask people to take on this role, be sure to share what is in it for them:
- Expand skills: Learn Atlassian Cloud apps in depth while sharpening leadership and communication.
- Grow careers: Gain visibility by driving change at an organizational level.
- Get hands-on with innovation: Experience new tools and features early, even outside traditional technical roles.
Role of a champion
Champions do more than cheerlead. They actively help your rollout succeed by:
- Testing changes, validating learning resources, and sharing user feedback.
- Modeling the behavior you want to see by showing how new tools fit into daily work.
- Training peers through drop-in training sessions or by sharing quick tips, easing the load on support teams.
- Surfacing ongoing feedback (how change is going, how users are adjusting, ways to improve) and best practices to the adoption team.
- Staying engaged long-term so future changes have a ready network of advocates.
How to identify champions
Great, you’re interested in building a champions community! But how do you go about identifying the right people for the job? Start by looking for people who are already showing strong engagement. Audit logs can help you spot power users who frequently log in, create Jira work items, or edit Confluence pages. From there, expand to other motivated colleagues, even if they are not technical experts.
To access Audit logs for individual apps, go to Settings > Troubleshooting and support > Audit log.
TIP: Check out our support documentation to learn more about audit activities in Jira Cloud and Confluence Cloud.
To access organization-wide audit logs, which displays data across all Atlassian apps in a single view, go to admin.atlassian.com and then navigate to Insights > Audit log. There, you can search for recent in-app actions, such as logging in, creating new sites, or deleting pages, to quickly spot your most active champions.
Logged in to account
Created a new site
Deleted a Confluence page
NOTE: In Atlassian Cloud, you can access organization-wide audit logs with an active subscription to Atlassian Guard Standard, which is included with all Enterprise plans or can be bought separately. Tracking user-created activity with organization-wide audit logs is exclusively available with Enterprise plans.
TIP: If you're on a Premium plan or higher, use Confluence Analytics to highlight your most active contributors.
How to train champions
Your champions may be experts in Atlassian apps, or they may be new to Cloud. Either way, consistent training ensures they are aligned and prepared to support others.
Adopt a “train the trainer” model. When champions are trained not only in Cloud apps and features, but also in how to teach, they listen with a dual perspective: how to apply knowledge themselves and how to share it with their teams.
Encourage your champions to pursue Atlassian credentials for added career development. You can also test your end-user training programs with champions first to ensure they are effective before scaling them to the wider organization.
TIP: The Atlassian Champions program offers dedicated resources, support, and recognition for people improving ways of working and driving adoption in their organizations.
How to nurture a champions community
Your champions community should be active well beyond the initial rollout. Keep them engaged, connected, and motivated with regular touchpoints:
- Create a dedicated Slack or Teams channel for updates, feedback, and collaboration.
- Host monthly office hours to exchange best practices and highlight wins.
- Reward your champions and recognize their hard work through shoutouts, leadership notes, or career opportunities so that they feel valued.