Introduction to the Atlassian Ecosystem - Part 2

[Alina Urbaniak [Deviniti]]

This is the second part of the introduction to the Atlassian Ecosystem. Read the first part to learn about the Atlassian's partners, vendors, and knowledge resources. 

What can you do in the Atlassian Ecosystem?

Using even only one of the Atlassian products, already makes you a part of the Ecosystem. Make yourself at home! You can explore the rest of the Atlassian tool suite through testing and discussing it with your peers on the Atlassian Community. However, it’s just a fraction of what you can do in the Ecosystem. Let’s take a look at the other engagement opportunities it gives. 

Trying and buying the Marketplace Vendors’ apps

You’re sucessfully using the Atlassian tools, but it may happen that over time you’ll need an answer to your specific needs. Ask the Community if there are some features that will help you, but you aren’t aware of. When the answer is no, open our guide to choosing the Marketplace extensions. Followingly, go to the Atlassian store and discover the wide choice of the add-ons.

Having Jira trainings and consultations with the Solution Partners

Does the amount of the apps at the Marketplace defeat you? Or maybe you don’t know what will work best with your Atlassian tool? Whether you’re looking for Jira Cloud plugins or Confluence add-ons, the Solution Partners are fully qualified to advise you. They can also give you a helping hand with using the Atlassian toolset, as well as teach your team about it.

Meeting Atlassian team, partners, and users in person

Reading or watching valuable content created by the professionals is great, but it’s even better if you can meet the experts and ask them questions. The Atlassian team members can reveal the mysteries of its company’s tools and give you some cool tips. Talking with the partners builds trust towards their solutions and services and can give you an insight into the functionalities and possibilities you didn’t even think about. Whereas the other Atlassian products’ users can share their experience, best practices, and actions to avoid. Where to meet all those people?

• The Atlassian Summit – the biggest event in the Ecosystem, hosted by Atlassian. It’s always packed with the product keynotes and inspiring sessions led not exclusively by the Atlassian employees, but also other members of the Ecosystem.
• Jira Day – the largest Atlassian conference in Central Europe.
• Atlas Camp – an event with the latest tips and tricks from the Atlassian developer community.
• Atlassian Team Tour, Atlassian Open – the series of events with the experts who educate on the solutions for unlocking the teams’ potential and making their work more productive and fulfilling.
• App Week – an event during which the Atlassian employees and the vendors work together on building the next generation of apps for the Marketplace. You can check other Atlassian events here.
• Atlassian partners’ events – there’s something going on almost every month. You can look for the information either on the Atlassian Partner Portal or on the particular companies’ websites.
• Atlassian User Group meetings  (the name has recently changed to Atlassian Community) – here you can meet the Atlassian products’ enthusiasts, listen about their use cases and ask your questions. Check if there’s such a community in your city. If you can’t find anything nearby, become a Community Leader and create your own group!

Developing your professional skills in the Atlassian University

Atlassian provides you with a bunch of learning resources, especially at their Atlassian University landing page. In the Training tab, you can pick up your learning path like Jira Administrator, Jira Project Administrator, Jira Service Desk Administrator, Confluence Administrator, Confluence User or the course for Agile Team Member. The trainings in every path are paid but you can also find some free tutorials on this website. Also, check out Free Skillbuilders – deep-dive technical courses on subjects such as Customizing Jira Workflows, Confluence Content Management or Configuring and Troubleshooting Permissions in Jira. Once you finish learning, you can try to become an Atlassian Certified Professional by taking one of the certification exams. It’ll bring you more career opportunities, as well as inspire trust from your clients.

Sharing your experience and helping others in the Atlassian Community

We’ve already mentioned Atlassian Community as a place where you can ask your questions and look for support from different users. However, you can also engage in conversations to help others. Sharing your experience with the Atlassian products can help develop the Ecosystem members’ skills or avoid being stuck with problems that you already know the solutions for. When you’ll feel like supporting and motivating are your things, you can step up and apply to the Community Leaders program. The leaders are meant to be an extension of the Atlassian team and the go-to people. They should encourage knowledge-sharing, serve as the ambassadors of the Atlassian brand, answer questions online and in person, and organize events. Besides glory in the Community, the leaders also get free vouchers for each of Atlassian’s certification exams and badges, the opportunity to earn a free ticket to the Atlassian Summit, and access to a private Slack instance for Community Leaders, just to name a few.

Building your own app

As said at the beginning, Atlassian brought the Ecosystem to life, not only for their profit but also to foster the entrepreneurship. It would have taken forever for some small companies to build their businesses founded on the Atlassian products, if they had done it on their own. Being part of the larger network, the companies get publicity and a large audience (due to the Atlassian’s reputation) as well as the access to the Jira creators’ know-how. Then if you see some pain point or simply have a brilliant idea for the app, think no more and start working on it! After polishing your last functionality, go to the Marketplace and try to sell your extension.

Developing plugins is not your thing? You can offer Atlassian services and the vendors’ apps as the Solution Partner.

Let the adventure begin

Now when your Ecosystem onboarding is over, feel free to make most this amazing network! Try out different paths to stick to the ones which will turn out to be your favorite. And whenever you’ll feel lost in the Atlassian world, you can count on a helping hand from your peers in the Community.

We're an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner Enterprise and Platinum Top Vendor in the Ecosystem. We’ve been working hard on helping improve Jira Software and Service Desk by adding useful functionalities for over 5000 teams around the world. We’re developing apps on the Atlassian Marketplace, providing expert services and sharing knowledge on the subject with useful tutorials and guides. Check our other articles in the Community: 

• Choosing an app from the Atlassian Marketplace - Part 1
• How to work faster and easier in Jira Software
• Requirements management in Jira - the basics pt.1

[Fernando Bordallo]

Atlassian's bet in building an ecosystem around its suite of products is a top bet that has led the company from its early days ❤️Together is how we rock! 

[Alina Urbaniak [Deviniti]]

@Fernando Bordallo Definitely! We're proud to be a part of this wonderful Ecosystem!