Meet Atlassian Assist, Halp’s new partner in crime

[#1]

A fresh new integration experience calls for a fresh new look and feel.

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two years since Halp joined the Atlassian family. 🤯

A lot has changed in those two years – new customers, new use cases, new features, and countless new learnings along the way. But our fierce commitment to providing the best possible ticketing experience for both agents and help-seekers in Slack and Microsoft Teams remains exactly the same.

As part of this commitment, we’ve completely revamped our Jira integration experience, making it easier than ever to bring Halp’s world-class conversational ticketing functionality to other Atlassian products. This includes launching a new Halp-powered Slack ticketing experience – and soon Microsoft Teams – specifically for Jira Service Management users (more on that here).

Since your favorite bot will now power conversational ticketing experiences for Halp and Jira Service Management (and hopefully many more Atlassian products soon), we decided a new look and feel might be in order…

(Re)introducing the app that powers Halp conversational ticketing

Atlassian Assist: the same old Halp bot, now with a brand new name!

This refreshed app look is part of our long-term vision to give help-seekers one central place in Slack or Teams to ask questions and get support across not only Atlassian products, but also 3rd-party ticketing systems. Halp will soon be one of many Slack and Teams experiences powered by Atlassian Assist’s world-class conversational ticketing – starting with Jira Service Management. No matter what tools you use to get work done, Assist will become a one-stop-shop to ask for and receive help.

While we think our makeover is pretty cool, we know change can be scary, and you might have some questions. We’ve taken a stab at addressing some of those below.

A few FAQs

Hang on, I’m confused. Are you still called Halp?

Yes! Halp is still Halp, the lightweight ticketing system you know and love.

How does this impact my Halp experience in Slack or Microsoft Teams?

Beyond a new blue logo and a different name, nothing else is changing. The app will continue to function the exact same way it always has to power your Halp ticketing system.

When will the change happen?

If you’ve logged into Slack today and interacted with a ticket or visited our app home, you might have already noticed our new look. The change is officially live for Slack users today, and is gradually rolling out to Microsoft Teams users over the coming weeks, so keep an eye out.

Does this mean I have to use Jira Service Management?

Nope. You can continue using Halp as you usually do, but you’re more than welcome to test out Jira Service Management if you’re interested in exploring Atlassian’s enterprise-grade ITSM solution. We’ve upgraded the integration experience to make it easier than ever to connect the two tools, and any paid JSM-enabled Halp queues will not be charged on your Halp bill!

What if my Halp bot is white labeled? Can I still use that feature?

Yep. If you’re a premium or enterprise Halp customer taking advantage of our white labeling feature in Slack, this option is still available to you, but you may need to reset the bot name and logo.

What if I have a question that isn’t addressed here?

We’d love to answer it! Feel free to get in touch with us here.

Keep following along on Halp’s journey

We’ve got plenty more exciting Halp updates coming soon, and this is just the beginning for Atlassian Assist. Be sure to keep an eye on the community for the latest news, and don’t miss us at Atlassian’s annual conference Team 22!

[Jimmy Seddon]

Very cool! Can't wait to hear more a Team '22!

[Rudy Holtkamp]

Hi @Nicole Pitaro , your shiny new logo is still on the internal site (https://author.marketing.internal.atlassian.com/dam/jcr:8b74aae6-e23c-47aa-8e06-2d6ea4b27106/atlassian-assist.png?cdnVersion=2), so we are missing out 😥

[Nicole Pitaro]

@Rudy Holtkamp fixed! Let me know if you still can't see it!

[Rudy Holtkamp]

It's magical! 🌈🦄

[Andy Gladstone]

This article was Halpful! Thank you!

[Ricky Jordan]

Why even call it halp anymore when the apps name in slack is different?  Just very confusing.

Highly disappointed in the lack of a heads up here.  Definitely a change for the worst....

I guess it's great if you want to cause a headache for your users so they can submit more tickets...

[Nicole Pitaro]

Hey @Ricky Jordan – I’m so sorry to hear you’re disappointed in this change. Our vision is that Atlassian Assist will be a central place for teams to ask questions and get support in Slack or Teams, no matter the ticketing system they use (which could be Halp, but could be another system!). Please know that this decision was not something we took lightly, and we appreciate your honest feedback about how we can do better. I know you’ve already connected with some folks on our team, but please do let us know if there is anything else we can do to halp make this transition smoother for you.

[96firm]

@Nicole Pitaro 

From a marketing standpoint it doesn't make any sense.  It's either Assist or HALP.  It's confusing to users that are already trying to find some help and don't need to ask for help to find how to ask for help if you know what i mean.

In marketing, inconsistencies and confusion isn't good for products and this is a bad reflection on the brand and an app that was very promising and worked JUST fine...

If things are going to be changed to Assist, then change ALL Halp references to Assist, why leave some crumbs to confuse everyone?

I would hope the marketing/product team would understand the simplicity and reasons behind this feedback.

[Chris Chipman]

I agree that the execution on this was slipshod at best. My team was just about to deploy Halp and then this news completely muddied the waters and left us in a lurch trying to figure out what out next move should be now. Altassians lack of a single point or person we can talk to about this makes it even worse. The response I got about this was basically RTFM:

"Atlassian has a slightly different support model than other organizations. We don't actually have traditional Account Managers. We have multiple teams that specialize in certain areas that are here to support all of your needs. We do this so you can get the most accurate response as quickly as possible.

Atlassian Assist is the the same old Halp bot, now with a brand new name. Kindly check the article here - Meet Atlassian Assist, Halp’s new partner in crime .

Additionally, you may also reach out to the Halp Support team via their portal."

So now I am pretty much left up to guess what the next right steps are. My best guess is we deploy Halp and it will change into Assist. But who knows. Not the customer, thats for sure

[Jensen Fleming]

@Chris Chipman -- thanks for the feedback and apologies if you’ve found this update confusing. I just sent you an email and would love to hop on a call and talk through it with you.

[Nicole Pitaro]

Hey @96firm  – we hear you, and we really appreciate the feedback. We understand that this can be confusing as it's a different way of thinking about Halp, even though its functionality remains the same. We're essentially separating the Slack/Teams app (Assist) from the ticketing system (Halp) so that other ticketing systems like Jira Service Management and Zendesk (which many of our customers use) can also benefit from the power of our Slack and Teams integration in a more seamless way. While the app will remain central to our value, we will continue to build out our lightweight ticketing experience for Halp customers beyond that, including our web and end user experiences. Your feedback along the way will be critical, and if there's anything we can do in the meantime to help clarify things or smooth out the transition for your team, please let us know how we can halp.

[Jonas Lerch]

Creating confusion on a channel for a helpdesk by doing a breaking renaming isn't much appreciated. Please make such changes opt-in.

[shayne.christie]

@Jensen Fleming I would appreciate an email as well to setup a call discussing these changes.

[Zeno]

Ahh so this is why atlassian was too busy to fix all the bugs and lack of features in bitbucket and pipelines.

right.

but then i'm also reminded that atlassian was always a Acquisitions company compared to Github, which explains why they never really were able to innovate accurate market expectations compared to Github.

Perhaps its also sad to see that the only innovative energy at Atlassian comes from the marketing department. What power does the marketing department have within Atlassian to initiate great user experience change, to review all the long standing issues that plague Jira, Bitbucket and Pipelines? 
None i'd imagine.

[Matt Lane]

So what used to be Halp "Answers Bot", and was only available in Slack to this point, is being rebranded as "Atlassian Assist" , and is also coming to MS Teams soon?

@Nicole Pitaro Did I understand correctly? Just wanted to check.

Thank you for the update.

[N_Lou Figueras]

Aww yay I was sad Halp was losing it's fun name but was intrigued by the new Assist bot. Glad to see they're just getting even cooler.

[Are Eliassen]

Not much we can do (except look at Zendesk again), but this was just not the update I was waiting for.

I have used 2 years to "evangelize" and get my users to partly remember Halp. Now you changed it to Assist in Slack searches, logo and bot, but the /halp command still is there.

At least tell us when /halp disappears and /assist comes into play. I'm pressing on, hoping my users don't get too confused.

Get back to fixing stuff. Like orphaned replies when tickets change channels (assigned to people),or making it possible to use a rich editor in Answers and give us the option to include pictures = screenshots in Answers. 

[Ricky Jordan]

I couldn't agree more with Are,

It's like the HALP team (or do i call it the Assist team now?), decided to mix things up, and change something that didn't need to be changed, and now maybe a hodge podge of confusion.  Users don't know if they should use /assist in Slack or /halp in slack since the app is no longer called /halp.  Why not focus on features and improvements and stability items?

All of our onboarding documentation on how to submit HALP tickets, is now a mixture of submit HALP or ASSIST or whatever it wants to be called for the day.

Not sure how something so simple like this could get passed qualified marketing, sales, and developer's desks.  Would love to be a fly on the wall in those meetings or Zoom.  :(

[Jensen Fleming]

@Matt Lane -- Answers coming soon to MS Teams! 🎉

[Jensen Fleming]

Hey @Are Eliassen 👋 -- Slack hit a hiccup with the script they ran with the slash commands. They are working to add /assist to existing accounts, hoping to have that for you soon. As for /halp, we don't plan on sunsetting the /halp command. We are keeping all our existing slash commands, but also adding /assist on top of those 👍

[Joel Scott]

@Jensen Fleming I'm struggling to understand what the difference is between Halp and Assist.  I have assist installed on my service desk project and configured in slack, and I have a halp trial separately configured in slack but they seem to be the same?  Is there an article that compares features or are they literally the same, but you need the halp subscription if you don't have service desk?  Thanks for your time :)

[Jensen Fleming]

Hey @Joel Scott -- sorry for the confusion! Assist newly named Slack bot, it is the App your requesters and agents interact with. Halp the tool that powers the backend and is a lightweight ticketing system. But Tl;DR, if you connect your queue to JSM, you don't need to pay for a halp subscription, it is included. 

This FAQ should be able to answer all your questions in more detail: https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/halp

[Jack Ingram]

Will Halp/Assist support Zoom chat in the near term. With their phone and contact center play we have seen a lot of adoption. 

[Jensen Fleming]

Hey @Jack Ingram -- We do not currently have plans to integrate with Zoom Chat. If you want to create a feature request, we can track demand and potentially add it to the roadmap in the future!

[Garth Bond]

Hi Folks - Is it possible to integrate embed Assist (Halp) into Confluence somehow? It appears we cannot do this at this stage. Please advise.