🍂🖥️ Apptoberfest '24 discussion: Apps for Business teams

[#1]

Hi Community! It’s time for the second discussion for Apptoberfest '24: Apps for Business Teams 🖥️📱

Atlassian Marketplace Partners offers many powerful apps to help business (non-technical) teams stay aligned and on track during complex projects.

What we want to know is: What are your favorite apps for business teams, and why? How do teams in non-technical roles use apps?

Examples of “business teams” might include Leadership, operations, data and analytics, legal, and sales.

Let us know!

Not sure what Apptoberfest is? Learn about this month-long event here. ⬅️

As a reminder, if you’re going for the “Bountiful Bavarian” badge, joining these weekly discussions is how to do it. Here is last week’s discussion on Apps for Marketing Teams.

[Stephen_Lugton]

Thanks for the reminder @Whitney Nicholes after seeing the marketing app demos I'm looking forward to see how the business app demos match up

[Patricia Modispacher _appanvil_]

For business teams looking to build a strong internal communication culture, I’d recommend checking out Mantra. While it’s often thought of as a tool for internal comms, it’s actually a game-changer for any business team that needs to keep everyone on the same page. 📢

Whether it’s leadership announcements, team updates, or shared resources, Mantra turns Confluence into a social intranet that fosters transparency and engagement across the entire organization. So while it might not be a “traditional” business tool like a CRM, it definitely helps operations, sales, and even legal teams stay aligned and informed. 🗂️

[John Funk]

Looking forward to the entries!

[Stephen_Lugton]

And I wasn't disappointed, I've already seen a disclaimer that 'No actual Iron Man suits or Tony Stark bank accounts were harmed in the making of this demo.'

[Susan Waldrip]

The Apps for Marketing Teams posts were great, looking forward to what the Biz Apps folks will show us! Our top management uses Smartsheet, so we're looking into adding the Jira Connector for Smartsheet (which is a Smartsheet app and not Jira). I'm keeping an eye out for good business apps for the future.

[vikram]

Looking to check the entries and try one.

Vikram P

[Laurie Sciutti]

We're mostly development-centered so we don't really use non-technical apps but I'm curious to see demos of what's out there and how we might be able to leverage them!

[Brant Schroeder]

We are still on data center so our favorite business app is proforma.  We use it to collect great information on requests in the service desk and on other issues. It has been a great tool for our business teams because the do not have to request custom fields to get information that they need.  

[Kristian Klima]

As a content/documentation person, I hate when companies dismiss Confluence as a CMS tool (and complain about apps cost)... and then go out and pay $30K for 5 seats on some tech doc tool.

If you are authoring your product documentation in Confluence, or have content that you want to make presentable, I recommend the Scroll apps family by K15t. Viewport, Documents, Variants.

Combine those with workflow and/or space sync apps like Appfox's Workflows, Appfire Comala document management / publishing apps, or Ricksoft's Space Sync, you can turn Confluence into a all-in-one solution on part with top tier dedicated docs CMS tools. Or better.

With Scroll apps, we do versioning, conditional content (single source authoring), etc. and it all comes together in Viewport. What I like about Viewport in particular is the fact that it's not just a theme app - it actually builds the site AWAY from Confluence.

I can have a public docs site, on my own domain, yet keep my Confluence private, no anonymous access needed. I can control access by our SAML SSO, so our customers can access private docs without Confluence seats, connect Support widgets, your analytics...

The workflow and sync apps allow me to have any number of pages as drafts, perfect for continuous delivery, there's almost no dependencies limitations they provide. In short, you can have all advantages of Confluence collaborative nature, Jira integration, etc. and, at the same time, you're not limited by it.

No coding needed, and after you install the apps, you can click you way from Confluence content to a public doc center in 30 minutes.

I did just that and that Confluence-Jira centric apps setup for our product documentation played a major role in winning Work Differently, Together award.

[Mersaydez]

One of my favorite plugins to use is Rich Filters for Jira. When I just want a really quick snapshot of what's going on with many different teams, it's nice to be able to just stay inside of Jira and take a peak at a dashboard. I love that it has dynamic filters, which allow me to see the data as it lives in Jira while being able to drill down into specific teams, projects, or types of issues. 

[Marc - Devoteam]

@Mersaydez

How much I do also like Rich Filters, I find Custom Charts more intuitive and I'm not in the need to create Jira filters first.

In Custom Charts I can just use JQL directly, this saves me a lot of time, I just mis the gauge gadget that Rich Filter offers

[Eduardo Oliveira - Mindpro Apps]

Hey everyone! 

I noticed some of you mentioned Rich Filters and Custom Charts as great tools for working with Jira dashboards. I wanted to jump in and recommend another awesome app: Mindpro Insights.

Mindpro Insights is an intuitive solution that works wonders for both technical and non-technical teams.

It works with two different types of dashboards that might complement some of the features you're using with other tools:

• Standard Jira Dashboard: Teams can use the Insights gadgets just like they would with Rich Filters—either completely independently or with a search controller for dynamic filtering.

• Interactive Insights Dashboard: Teams can create fully customizable interactive dashboards where all the gadgets are connected to a single data source, allowing for instant filtering and easy drill-down of data.

If you're looking for something simple but powerful to help you get deeper insights from Jira data, this app could be worth checking out! - Here is a quick overview: Mindpro Insights - Quick Overview [Loom]

Full disclaimer: I'm part of the team responsible for this solution, so feel free to reach out if you have any questions about it.

- Eduardo from Mindpro team 🚀 

[Florian Schmidt]

I am exited for the apps and comments!

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Eduardo Oliveira - Mindpro Apps 

Seems interesting ad worth a trail.

One question what is the difference between the Mindpro apps Insight, Dashio and Graphy?

Are features a like or to use all feature I seen mentioned, I need to buy 3 different apps?

[Ojelola Ojelabi- Rallybetter_com]

Looking forward to the entries. 💪🏻

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Eduardo Oliveira_Mindpro 

Seems interesting ad worth a trail.

One question what is the difference between the Mindpro apps Insight, Dashio and Graphy?

Are features a like or to use all feature I seen mentioned, I need to buy 3 different apps?

[Kalin U]

Prior to the List view in Jira and Goals in Atlassian Home, business teams needed to see and track objectives (as issues in a dedicated Jira project) visualized as if they were in Excel.

JXL came to the rescue listing the full hierarchy and highlighting approaching deadlines as well as dependencies. Business team members loved the organization. The app also helped them make quick edits like changing the status of completion or re-assigning the objective to a fellow colleague.

eazyBI is another wonderful data visualization tool.

[Alberto Estévez]

We just posted a new discussion to introduce our approach to Email directly from Jira issue cards. Not 100% sure if that is the correct way to participate in Apptoberfest though. 
Hope you like our short demo 
https://youtube.com/shorts/UQ7Erzb2nlI

Happy Apptoberfest'24 everybody!

[Brant Schroeder]

@Alberto Estévez - I believe you did it correctly.  I am reading your post now.

[Marc - Devoteam]

How much I do also like Rich Filters, I find Custom Charts more intuitive and I'm not in the need to create Jira filters first.

In Custom Charts I can just use JQL directly, this saves me a lot of time, I just mis the gauge gadget that Rich Filter offers

[Dave Mathijs]

Here are my top 5 apps for business teams:

• Mantra by Seibert Group - appanvil
• KARMA Page Builder for Confluence by Seibert Group - appanvil
• Cosmos - Intranet for Confluence by Caelor 
• Scroll Viewport for Confluence by K15t 
• Scroll Documents for Confluence by K15t 

[Frankie C.]

I'd be remiss if I didn't give a huge shout-out to Confluence... Specifically, the PRDs templates come in super-handy for scoping and sizing with our biz partners. 

Also, we continue to onboard more use cases to our JSM portal -- game-changer in centralizing support requests for our stakeholders. 

Keep up the great work, Team!

[Shivam Sharma]

It's exciting to see how apps are evolving to better support business teams. I’d like to share my experience with a plugin that’s made a big impact for us. As part of a non-technical team, I needed a tool that provides end-to-end traceability and visibility into issue relationships and dependencies. Our workflow typically looks like this: “Support Request → Feature → Stories → Epic”

For this, we use the Links Explorer plugin. This tool displays linked issues in a unified, tree-like hierarchical format, making it easy to trace connections down to the smallest detail while keeping the full context of the primary issue with customizable filters.

Additionally, It offers tabular views to display various kind of relationships on the basis of Issue types & Link types

These features help us improve issue tracking without the need to open multiple tabs, maintaining the context of the original issue. Ultimately, it helps us focus more on the problem at hand by providing all the relevant information within a single screen.

[Susan Waldrip]

I can tell my DEV instance is going to get a workout in the next few months! Karma, easyBI, Gliphy, more Loom, Links Explorer, Automated release notes & reports, and more. Thank you to everyone posting this info!

[Brant Schroeder]

I also need to add that we love Draw.io We use this all the time in Confluence.