A better navigation for Jira Cloud is coming soon [available now]

[#1]

[Status of the rollout, June 30, 2020]

The new navigation has been fully rolled out for all Jira Cloud customers. The old navigation has been permanently replaced and will no longer be available for users to switch back to.

While we feel the changes will be intuitive and easy to pick up, you are welcomed to refer to our official help documentation here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/new-jira-cloud-navigation-983502691.html

Thank you to everyone who's shared their feedback and thoughts. You may continue to do so on this issue or use the navigation feedback link in the product itself. 

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Hi Atlassian Community,

We are excited to share that we are working on an improved navigation experience for Jira Cloud products (Jira Software, Jira Service Desk, and Jira Core). Learn more about the changes coming to Confluence Cloud.

We heard your feedback on the current navigation in Jira Cloud. You told us that the current navigation adds challenges to finding and quickly accessing your work. To solve this, we are building a new navigation experience that puts the navigation at the top of your screen for a more familiar look and feel. We are also adding many highly requested improvements like adding a dropdown for your favorite dashboards and filters.

You may remember back in July, we recruited users to give us feedback on a new navigation UI. Thank you to the ~350 of you who participated! Overwhelmingly, feedback was positive, over 95% of early users preferred the new navigation to the old one.

New navigation

We are making it faster to navigate:

• Quick access to everything you need in Jira: Get instant access to Projects, Filters, Dashboards and Marketplace Apps, no need to dig through submenus.

• Fewer clicks to move between screens: Everything you need can be accessed through the menu dropdowns with starred items at the top and recently visited items below.

We are making it easier to find work:

• A clear indication of which product you’re in: We’ve added our product wordmark to our logos so that you’ll always know whether you’re working in Jira Software or Confluence and how to switch between them.

• A more discoverable search & create experience: We’ve made the create button and search bar more intuitive and easier to access to that you can create issues, and search for boards, queues, issues and filters in Jira from anywhere.

New homepage - Your work

A new home page that surfaces the most recent & relevant information to you, including things you’ve worked on recently, assigned tasks and starred items like projects, boards, queues and issues.

What to expect next

The new navigation will gradually roll out starting in the first quarter of 2020. 

It is important to us that you feel informed and in control of this change. We will send Jira admins an email as well as in-app notifications a month before the rollout will start next year. This email will include detailed information about what your users will experience once the new navigation is live. For more frequent updates you can follow our public Jira ticket.

We are also putting you in control of this change. Once your instance receives the new navigation, each of your users will be able to switch over to the new navigation on their own timeframe. This option will be provided to your users in the product (see FAQ #5 for more details). If you do not want your instance to automatically receive the new navigation when it's ready, please contact our support team to opt-out.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

1. How can I stay updated on the progress of the rollout?

   We’ve set up a public Jira issue that you can watch to monitor all the progress we’re making.

2. When will my instance receive the new navigation?

   We will start rolling out the new navigation in the first quarter of 2020. The rollout will take several months and we will send site admins emails, and end-users in-app notifications reminding you before your instance is selected for rollout.

3. I’m an admin of an instance and I will need to communicate this change to my teams. Where can I go to get more information?

   We will send emails to all Jira Cloud admins at least one month before the start of the rollout, which will detail all the information you will need to communicate to your teams using Jira. If you did not receive this email, you can refer to our official documentation.

4. I’m an admin of an instance and I need more time to communicate this change to my teams. Can I be excluded from the initial rollout?

   Yes. If you would like to be temporarily exempt from the rollout, please contact our Support team. 

5. How will my users toggle on/off the new navigation?
   Once we’ve started rolling out the experience, you and your instance’s users will be able to individually toggle on/off the experience by going to the user profile and clicking “Turn off the new navigation.”

6. I've signed up for the Early Access Program. Will all my users get the new navigation by default? 
   The new navigation will be OFF by default. Once it is made available for your instance, every individual user will need to opt-in and toggle it on (See FAQ #5).
7. Will the new navigation be available on all Atlassian products?
   Jira Cloud and Confluence Cloud are the only products confirmed to have the new navigation in 2020. There are no commitments at this point for any of our other Cloud products (Bitbucket, Opsgenie, Statuspage, Trello, etc) to be adopting this experience. Server and Datacenter products will remain as-is.
8. Will the new (horizontal) navigation completely replace the old (vertical) navigation at some point?
   Yes, but not straight away. And while we’re in the process of rolling out the new navigation, you’re free to switch back and forth between the two. Once we’ve fully rolled out the new navigation, we’ll begin the process of removing the old navigation, but we’ll let you know before we remove it. We strongly believe our improved navigation will make it easier to use Jira Cloud. The clear labels; quick access to projects, filters, and dashboards; and fewer clicks to move between screens are just a few of the reasons why we think it’ll make navigation easier.
   
   

[Ollie Guan]

It seems that Jira and Confluence user interface styles are more and more similar, it is a better experience for users!

[Russell Zera]

At first glance, I love the new look and the changes you are making! Only thing that jumps out at me is that the two screenshots you share in this post have "Your Work, Dashboards, Projects, Apps, etc" on the left-hand nav (like it currently is) and then on the top-hand nav. I understand that it is at different levels of browsing (initial instance-wide view when logging in vs in a project-specific view), but I am hesitant when I see a user having to switch back and forth from left-hand nav to top-nav and back again. I might be reading too much into what I'm seeing, but wanted to give my feel :-)

[Philipp Suchan]

@Russell Zera - Hi Russel, thanks for the positive feedback on the new navigation. The second screenshot shows the current (`old navigation`). I understand that this is confusing at first glance and I am going to update it to show the new navigation for both screenshots. Thx again!

[Matt Tse]

Hi everyone, thanks for sharing the feedback!

@Ollie Guan - 100% agree! We know how useful it is to have both Confluence & Jira, so this is a no brainer ;) 

@Russell Zera - Thanks for the input. I can see how the screenshots might be misleading. I'll see that the 'Your work' screenshot is updated. We wanted to make it clear that the 'Your work' experience is available today in Jira Cloud (hence the screenshot with the sidebar UI). I'd encourage you and your users to give it a try and let us know what you think. It is an evolving experience and we're keen to make it even better.

Rest assured that we will not be introducing two different navigation interfaces ;) 

Cheers,

Matt

[Davin Studer]

Love that the top nav has come home!

[Nic Steenhout]

What, if any, improvement to the interface's accessibility for people with disabilities have you incorporated in these changes?

[Cooper]

Will the left nav remain consistent? I care about accessing Release views from anywhere, and preferably a consistent Release view or at least the last one seen.

[Antônio Duarte]

Finally, starting to get rid of those annoying left-vertical menus!

Thumbs up!

[Oliver Christmann]

Impressive. Can't wait to see it live!

Thank you.

[Travis Neal]

Looks like we have come full circle. This is more like the 2014-2015 era Jira UI. Good. Keep it this way. 

[Reginald Mullin]

This is a welcome change.  I really HATE the current UI!

[Greg D]

This is really funny.  As Travis said, this is just old Jira back again branded as new.  But at least now the infrastructure is far better with faster search and more stability.  Will we still be able to collapse all expanded sidebars and replace that Jira logo with what we want?

Also, when you click the logo, will it navigate to your last viewed dashboard or to "Your work" based on what you have chosen currently?  We would prefer that to always be the last dashboard since you now have another button for "Your work" and that is more useful.

[Charlie Reitzel]

I haven't evaluated the changes.  My only comment is that the shortest path is the one you know.  If you keep changing the UI every 3 months, it gets tiresome.   At this point, Jira is a fairly standard platform.  I think Atlassian needs to start taking that responsibility to heart and reduce the UI churn.

[Antônio Duarte]

Agree with Travis Neal. But this is a positive evaluation!

As a Consultant, for me, it is weird to change navigation behaviors every time I exit from a client that uses Jira Server and go to a client that uses Jira Cloud!

Much better if Atlassian makes its navigations uniform, no matter the Jira flavour used...

[Emma Rush _T_D_]

Much better! The top bar navigation is much missed in Cloud in both Jira and Confluence.

From an end-user perspective, I think the side-panel nav works ok, but it's tiresome for administrators.

Will Charlie also be resurrected? I hope so, I miss that guy.

[David Ford]

You mentioned that individual users will have the ability to toggle the new navigation following mass rollout.  If my instance joins the early access program, will we have the same capability?

[Jerry Huiskamp]

May I assume this change applies to Jira Cloud but not to Jira Core Cloud?

[Kevin Labrum]

If I signed up for the Early Access Program, will that be just for me the individual user or will the whole instance will be moved over to the new navigation?

[Florin Moldoveanu]

A "better" navigation for Jira Cloud is coming soon - I'll be the judge of that. The last UI change was a big flop and I have no confidence you'll get it right this time. In fact I bet it will be even worse than the current UI. By the way, any plans to put a decent usable burndown chart or I am still stuck using Excel to create my own burndown?

[Fredrik Svensson]

Would be great if you also could show the new UI for Service Desk from both user and customer perspective.

[laralg]

Long live to the top bar!! Love it! My users are going to be so happy, they might even start using Dashboards!!

[Rene Hermenau]

THANK YOU! The inconsistency of the Jira user interface drove me crazy. If not my colleague "forced" me to use Jira I wouldn't be a user any longer. 

Good to see that you are listening to your users:-)

[Fadoua]

I like the toolbar at the top that makes it consistent for Jira cloud or server .

Usually I don't mind a change on the UI when it brings new features unavailable before. 

Having the toolbar on the side was a bit challenging to me sometimes especially I am a heavy Jira/Confluence server user.

To save my sanity, I downloaded the Atlassian extension in Google Chrome, try to access my personal cloud account by using Chrome. It works and I am happy 😉

Glad to learn soon I can use any browser it won't matter.

Thanks Atlassian Team for listening to our suggestions!

Best,

Fadoua

[Antônio Duarte]

Hi, @Fadoua ,

  What Atlassian extension for Chrome are you talking about?

  That sounds good to me, but I found nothing named 'Atlassian' in the extensions library.

Thanks in advance.

Antonio.

[Fadoua]

@Antônio Duarte it is called Atlassian Navigation Extension. My pleasure, anytime!