Thank you: Atlassian Navigation Chrome extension and what's happening with Jira & Confluence Nav

[Sherif Mansour]

Hi Community,

A lot of you have been involved in giving early feedback for some possible improvements we're making towards the navigation system in both Jira and Confluence. 

We've taken all your feedback into account and will commence rolling out this new navigation pattern to Jira Software, Jira Service Desk and Confluence in Cloud. 

You can learn more about what's happening here:

• Jira announcement
• Confluence announcement 

Thank you to the many of you who have tried the Chrome extension and given feedback. We're now going to turn off the Chrome extension as we've received overwhelming feedback from all of you that this is the direction we should head. Much appreciated 🙌

The rollout will commence shortly and you can learn more at the links above. 

UPDATE: Thank you for all your feedback below. After some discussion, we've made the decision that we will re-enable this for Jira Cloud (Software and Service Desk) customers only. Given the longer timeframe we have for the Jira rollout, this makes sense. For Confluence Cloud customers, it will be disabled as the rollout should be commencing much earlier and we're hopeful some customers will start to see this before the end of the calendar year.  

Cheers,
Confluence, Jira and Atlassian Platform teams 

[Adam Karmiński]

Why didn't you let us keep the modified navigation until you ship the new one?

[Dan Fellenz]

I second @Adam Karmiński you are aware we very much are displeased with the current functionality and then removed the  thing that allows us to resolve it for an undisclosed amount of time!

I need to use this everyday now not just in 2020

[David Washburn]

Yeah, my coworkers are pretty devastated. The new UI was great, and it's confusing to have it stripped away without having the replacement ready yet.

[Justin Wilson]

Yeah removing it until you ship is ridiculous.

[Earl McCutcheon]

Hello Y'all,

Thanks for the feedback, and I too am missing the features provided by the extension as we are in the transition period to bringing this to Jira as a native option.  But the reasoning behind pulling the extension is because we are making sure this gets done right with a more rapid deploy and quicker turn around to making it avaliable to everyone.

Deactivating the extension means the feature set will get rolled out to you faster than if we kept it active, as all development efforts can be directed to the roll out of the native design elements rather than simultaneously removing features from the extension as the native option is added in to prevent any conflicts and Bugs that would occur from having both active in tandem.

The Groundwork and a lot of testing has already ben laid out via the extension, so don't fret as this is coming down the pipeline really soon and we are all excited to see the features returned.

Also, we have had a few questions pop up regarding if it is safe to remove the extension from the browser and just to let everyone know, Yes, removing the add-on as the browser extension is now inactive it is safe, and to do so:

• Go to the More Tools > Extensions menu under "Customize and control Google Chrome" dropdown in the upper right corner of the chrome browser window or type chrome://extensions/ into the browser to access the extension setting
• Select "Remove" for the "Atlassian navigation extension"

Regards,
Earl

[John Blanch]

O well, back to the dark ages for a few months, wonderful.

[Kurt Fairfield]

Thanks Earl.

I really appreciate knowing the 'why' it makes sense to turn it off for the beta group; 'to put all hands on deck for a full rollout to everyone'. Helps me get on board and feel okay about a perceived inconvenience.

Cheers, and good work on the beta, much improved!

[David Cameron]

Good to have this available as a permanent fix. It's a pity you need to break it to fix it.

Actually I've just had a look at the planned release date: Q1 2020. That's pretty poor. You should reconsider.

You might recall also that the reason that this extension was rolled out was that you broke the navigation in the first place. You choose to make it harder to access different parts of Jira and confluence. This initial choice was then patched with the extension, which you have now disabled.

The focus on supporting customers could be improved.

[Adam Karmiński]

@Earl McCutcheon - Thank you for the explanation. As a PM myself, I actually understand your reasoning. Refactoring the existing solution AND maintaining the extension could be painful.

I just think what you see here is a growing frustration caused by the basic UX shortages we experience daily. The new nav seemed like the light at the end of the tunnel and now it's dark again. :)

Anyway - fingers crossed for the development. We hope to see the new nav released soon!

[Raphael Galmiche]

Can you make it that loading a jira issue doesn't make 150+ http calls

[Sherif Mansour]

Ha! thanks @Raphael Galmiche

I'll make sure the next requirements document I write to tell engineers to reduce the number of calls to < 150 😉. Probably hasn't helped to put a Chrome extension (temporary experiment) on top of that. In all seriousness, the software doesn't age very well, and the Jira team are well aware of the performance improvements which we need to make and are actively working on that.

[David Washburn]

Would it be possible to leave the Chrome extension available while we wait for you to launch these changes? Many members of our team use this extension and it doesn't seem like it would be a huge hassle to leave the extension available until the rollout is complete and we can use the new native UI.

[David Washburn]

To be fair, when agreeing to the terms of the Chrome plugin we all agreed that Atlassian could pull the plug at any time. It just seems like this is a simple solution - to leave the UI plugin available.

[Sherif Mansour]

Thanks for the suggestion, David. Unfortunately leaving it isn't "free". Every time something changes in Jira or Confluence (which is a lot!) the plugin has to be maintained, sometimes new bugs appear etc. The same team working on that could be spending their time implementing the navigation for everyone (properly).

That being said, as per my message below - we're seeing what other trade-offs we could make - will post an update. 

[David Cameron]

Continuing to provide functional navigation should be a priority.

[Sebastian Tischer]

I can only confirm what was said already, please keep the plugin running until the official rollout is done! :)

[Micheli Lermen]

omg, I just install the plugin yesterday and now its out......

there´s no need to keep it out.

[Sherif Mansour]

Bah, sorry about this Micheli.

[Jan Polanowski]

So to sum up:

first, you replace the top navigation panel with the menus on the left, then release a chrome extension with the old nav panel and because people liked it so much you take it away again for an undisclosed amount of time to include it in Cloud.

Again.

Wow someone over there is really hurt that their left panel idea didn't catch on.

[Sherif Mansour]

@Jan Polanowski sorry about this thrashing. 

We could have done a better job at communicating this was a temporary experiment to help us understand how we could best solve this problem. 

[Sherif Mansour]

Hi team,

Wow, we didn't expect this kind of response! I really appreciate the enthusiasm. If anything it highlights to our team how much of a pain point we can solve by improving this navigation for everyone -  so appreciate the passion here.  

It's all about trade-offs. Every minute we spend maintaining the navigation experiment (Chrome extension), is one less minute working on implementing it for all your users. 

That being said - we've heard you loud and clear. We're huddling across Jira and Confluence over the next few days to work out if we can extend this period and what the implications are. No promises... Oh... and I also checked with Santa 🎅and he didn't say anything about any requests for a Chrome extension in the Christmas stocking this year - but will see what we can do! 

Stay tuned, appreciate the candid feedback. 

[David Washburn]

For whatever it’s worth, at least you know you’ve made a good product when people are so passionate about it. 

I personally loved the sidebar navigation until I stumbled across your chrome extension and it became my new preference. Excited to see whatever you guys launch when it’s fully ready. You’re on the right track.

[Sherif Mansour]

Thanks for your support, David!

[Sherif Mansour]

Thank you all for your feedback - I've updated the community post. Summary: we're going to re-enable this for Jira. You can read above for all the details.

My designer would be ashamed of my Photoshop skills, but here we go:

[David Cameron]

Thanks, it's much appreciated. The extension has been really fantastic.

[John Blanch]

Thanks for keeping the Chrome extension running for us while you reinstate the (original and best) top navigation bar!