🤔 Frequently asked questions about Atlas

[#1]

Got a question about Atlas? Check out the below, or find more FAQs in our collection.

Got any suggestions to include? Comment below! ⤵️

What’s the difference between a project and a goal?

Our simple definition is:

Projects: Think of this as a team (e.g. two or more people working to produce something for two or more weeks).

Goals: Think of this as an outcome one or many project teams are trying to achieve. For simple setups, one project could map to one goal - but as organizations and teams grow, often many teams have local goals but contribute to bigger department or company-wide goals. Atlas helps your teams grow.

Learn more in our article.

How do I use Atlas with Jira Software?

It’s important to remember that Atlas and Jira Software solve different problems.

Jira Software solves the problem of planning and task management within teams. It offers granular detail and context for stakeholders within a team.

Atlas solves the problem of communication and alignment across teams. It brings clarity to the complex, detailed work happening in Jira Software to all teams in an organization.

Atlas provides curated (not automated!) updates and shows how work happening in Jira Software contributes to bigger objectives.

For more information, check out this article.

How do I use Atlas with Confluence?

Check out our article on how they work together.

How is Atlas different from Jira Work Management, or other project management tools?

Project management tools, such as Jira Work Management or others, help teams plan and manage their work down to the smallest detail.

Atlas helps teams communicate context and progress about work happening, whichever tools are used.

What is the Loop framework?

The Loop is a framework for healthy and effective communication across teams. We use it at Atlassian, and it can be applied to any organization, whichever tools they use.

Learn more about the Loop.

What’s the difference between free and paid Atlas editions?

Check out our pricing info and costs here.

How do I setup Atlas and add users?

Learn how to setup Atlas here. Users need to be added by the organization or site admin, learn more.

Where can I find tips and ideas for using Atlas in my organization?

You can find ideas, tips, and best practices for using Atlas here.

How do other companies use Atlas?

Read our customer stories here.

I’ve just started with Atlas. How can I get help in rolling it out across my organization?

Check out our downloadable Champion starter packs under the Guides section.

Where can I get support?

From inside Atlas - simply click the purple widget button in the bottom right corner and choose Help or Send us a message to get support.

From the Community - head over to the Atlas Product page and ask your question!

[Dan Keshet]

Is it possible to define a custom week?  Adjust which day of the week project owners are required to submit an update by?

[Jimmy Seddon]

Thanks @Daniella Latham!  This is a really great single source for anyone wanting to get started with Atlas!

[Daniella Latham]

Hey @Dan Keshet - not currently possible, but we'd love to know more about what would be the ideal situation for you?

[Dan Keshet]

@Daniella Latham I'd love to be able to select which day of the week is the "last day of the week".  The day that the submissions are due, and the next day the week rolls over and all submissions are "Last Week".

Here's my use case: we have a weekly leadership meeting. By the time that meeting happens, leadership should already have read status updates and invited project owners to come speak if there are questions. Therefore, we want it two days after the final day of the week. For example, reports due Friday. Monday to read them, Tuesday is the meeting.

This meeting has traditionally been Wednesday and I'm a bit embarrassed to tell a bunch of high-level people with very tightly-packed calendars that we have to shift the meeting to Tuesday because that's what the tool tells us to do.

[Ryan Sorensen]

I'd also love a configurable week :-) We're doing scrum-of-scrums style work on Wednesdays each week. Tuesday cut-off would set us up well.

[Ruby]

My organization is closed on Fridays during the summer so I too would very much like customizable weeks! As it is I never even see the prompt to add updates until it's Monday and by then the digest is already sent out. 

I would love to be able to choose days of the week for prompting and sending updates in the Workspace settings.

[Jessica Wernham]

Where can I submit a feature request for Atlas?

[Alex Seeholzer]

I would also request configurable weeks. We have a meeting on Thursday that could benefit from a Wednesday evening update cutoff.

[Casey Gould]

+1 On needing to be able to customize the deadline to even consider the tool. Atlas seems to be trying to solve the same problem we are -- get everyone to submit weekly updates, aggregate them, pull out the relevant highlights, send summary to stakeholders. Today we're accomplishing that with a custom text field on epics, which we then use the Jira Cloud for Google Sheets feature to sync to sheets, sort, collate, and format for an exec-ready view. If Atlas wants to take care of all that for us, that would be great -- but the current schedule has updates due Thursday for org leadership to review Friday and send out to the C-suite ready for Monday morning. I can't tell the C-suite we're not going to hit their Monday deadline because a tool doesn't let us adjust a deadline.

We'd also realistically need a good way to export the updates to a readable, organized (ideally by Jira issue hierarchy) format to paste into an email.

[Tony Stark]

Where can I submit a feature request for Atlas?

[Julia Murphy]

Atlas seems to be a good comms tool for agile teams but it does not meet the needs of a larger PMO or Portfolio which is a shame, as we could really do with the status reporting feature.

There is a problem with taxonomy of features - specifically the word 'project' we use Jira projects to manage one or more business projects and then there are Atlas projects which may have one or more Epics from different Jira projects.  

[Kate]

Hi @Daniella Latham 
Apologies if this is the wrong place for this;

Is there anything roadmapped for Atlas that would allow for multiple connections for Goals and Projects?

I'm currently conducting a pilot/investigation to see if we can utilise Atlas as a means to connect work streams to strategy and everything was looking workable until I found that a child to parent relationship is singular.

For us, a Business Unit's goal may be derivative of and deliver towards two strategic goals, so a "one parent" option forces us to simplify/not reflect the full relationship of Goals. Any chance there is any changes to this being considered?