DevEx Roundup: Create components from YAML, connect feature flags, unfurl components in Slack

[#1]

Compass Communique: May 2023

Hello Compass Community,

From new guides and visualizations to integrations with Slack, we’ve got tons of features and enhancements for Compass, your developer experience platform (log in here if you're already signed up).

What’s new this month:

• 🧭 Compass guides and visualizations

• ⚙️ Create components with config-as-code

• 🚀 Connect feature flags and component health with LaunchDarkly

• 🤝 Jira Service Management assets harmonize with Compass

• 💬 Slack integration - unfurl your component details

• 🧠 Reduce cognitive load with manageable metrics

• 🌒 Share your thoughts on Compass dark mode

• 🎙️ Connect with us

🧭 Compass guides for your DevOps journey

Ever wondered “How do I get started with Compass?”, or, “What does a healthy catalog look like?” We’ve now made it easier with brand new guides to help you get started with Compass!

The first three guides we’ve released focus on getting started with DevOps and setting up your catalog, tracking and improving delivery performance for your engineering teams, and setting up a healthy operations culture and insight into how Atlassian does it. Take a look at it today!

Visualizations for scorecards

Know which components need fixes with visualization for scorecards! Now when you click into a scorecard, you’ll see a visualization like the above - showing you a breakdown by scorecard status on the left, and a breakdown by criteria status on the right. Read more about it here.

⚙️ Create components with config-as-code

You requested it, we delivered: now you can create components in Compass from YAML with config-as-code. Now you can completely manage your software catalog from your Git repository, in addition to the Compass UI or API. Learn more about config as code and how to create components from YAML.

🚩 Connect feature flags and component health with the LaunchDarkly integration

The Compass activity feed now brings more contextual information with feature flags from LaunchDarkly. Understand how feature changes affect component health by viewing feature flag events alongside other component events. Users can even subscribe to a subset of feature flags with a given tag in a project, allowing them to see only relevant flag statuses and change events. Learn more at LaunchDarkly.

🤝 Jira Service Management assets harmonize with Compass

Looking for a way to harmonize your CMDB assets with Compass? The Jira Service Management integration has you covered. You can now use either product’s native UI to create navigational links between both systems and bring together your organization’s IT and DevOps practices. Adding the integration is easy 👇

1. 💻 Navigate to your Components UI in Compass or sign-up for free today

2. 🔍 Select the desired component

3. 📌 Paste the desired link into “Other”

You can also paste the Compass component link into your Jira Service Management asset

Plus, import services from Jira Service Management

Already built out your CMDB/service catalog in Jira Service Management? Now you can import and link those services in Compass. That’s a huge shortcut to populate your catalog and pull in incidents and events alongside contextual engineering data. It’s easy to do:

1. 💻 Navigate to Compass, click “Create” in the top nav, then select “Import.”

2. Scroll down to Jira Service Management, then click “Import” next to it.

3. Follow the import wizard to pull in and link assets into Compass.

Learn more about using Compass and Jira Service Management together.

💬 Component details unfurl in Slack

“Hey @here does anyone know who owns the payment gateway service?” Now you can share rich component information and timely updates where your teams collaborate with the Compass Slack integration. Unfurl and share component links on Slack, pulling in real-time info for context and clarity.

We’ll soon be adding Slack notifications to alert you when a software dependency or relevant scorecard changes, helping you respond quickly and efficiently to reduce disruptions and improve software performance.

Connect Slack on your Compass site and let us your thoughts on the Compass Slack community.

🧠 Reduce cognitive load with manageable metrics

Focus on the metrics that matter most to your teams with manageable metrics. Mark crucial metrics that need to stay top-of-mind without limiting what your organization measures. Have a unique metric that matters to your team? You can mark it as a crucial metric and make sure it stays top-of-mind.

1. 🔍 Navigate to your Health UI in Compass

2. 👉 Click the Metrics tab

3. 📌 Click the pin toggle on the metrics of your choice

🌒 Share your thoughts on Compass dark mode

Would Compass dark mode brighten your day? We’re always looking to improve the developer experience, and we want to know - should we prioritize dark mode in Compass?

Want to join the dark side? Tell us what you think!

🎙️ Connect with us

Join us at the PlatformCon 2023 Watch Party!

Atlassian is an official flagship sponsor of this year's PlatformCon and we’re excited to host the PlatformCon watch party on Thursday, June 8th. Sign up now to join us in person at our San Francisco and Austin offices! Connect with fellow platform practitioners, learn from the best in the industry, and engage directly with the event speakers. Plus, you’ll get to enjoy refreshments and take a chance at winning a LEGO set!

Can’t make it to our watch party? You can still sign up for free to hear from top DevOps and platform engineering leaders and fellow platform engineers on one virtual stage.

Get a LEGO, become a Compass Champion

Compass is better with friends. Sharing your free component catalog across your organization reduces cognitive load and knowledge silos, and helps your devs collaborate effectively with greater autonomy. Simply bring 10 or more of your colleagues into your Compass instance to become a champion and earn your prize. Here's how:

1. 💻 Log in to your Compass instance or learn more

2. 🙋‍♀️ Invite at least 10 of your colleagues and get them to explore the Compass home page

3. 🎁 Be on the lookout for your LEGO set!

Got a question? Get an answer - at Compass Office Hours!

Join Atlassian engineers and product managers at our weekly office hours to learn best practices and tips to adopt a developer experience platform and service catalog for your team. Bring your questions and connect with us in the timezone of your choice.

👉 America (AMER) 11am PT | 1pm CST | 2pm ET Register here

👉 Europe (EMEA) 7am PT | 3pm GMT | 4pm CET Register here

👉 Asia-Pacific (APAC) 11am AEDT | 8am SGT Register here

Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Leave your ideas in the comments or Slack us in #office-hours.

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Want to share your thoughts or ideas? Let us know with a comment below, or sign-up to chat with a Compass PM! Haven’t tried Compass yet? Sign-up today!

[Nate Whitehead]

@Wayne Dailey - all I'm asking for is a little bit of warning in the following flow:

• Create a component
• Sync up to a GH repo and creating a PR with a compass.yaml
• Make changes to the component / building it out
• Merge the PR
• OMG – there goes all my changes because the compass.yaml was instantiated before the following changes were made ☹

If Compass could update the commit of the YAML when changes are made :awesome:. If that's not possible, please alert the users somehow that they are going to obliterate their changes.

[Wayne Dailey]

Hi @Nate Whitehead - that's a great suggestion on automatically updating the PR. I passed along your feedback and we backlogged that feature request. Would adding a message in the body of the PR warning of this scenario be useful until we can get the PR updating implemented?