Best Practices: Keeping Up with Product Updates

[#1]

Hey Atlassian Community!

I'm Eshaa, a product manager on the Cloud Sandbox team.

We understand that navigating the landscape of new product updates and features can be particularly tough to manage. Our goal is to ensure that org administrators have the ability to learn about new features, test them in a controlled environment and manage the rate of product changes that get released into their sites.

Learning about new features 

As we continuously release improvements for our cloud products, staying up to date on the newest features and learning how they might impact your organisation can be offered through the Product Updates page. This real-time information allows you to stay informed by searching through release notes and tracking new changes that are being rolled out at any given time.

To access product updates 

1. Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organisation if you have more than one.
2. Select Products > Product updates
3. Select the release note card from the list or search for a specific release note, or filter the list.

If you are wanting to test changes before your production sites receive them, we recommend using sandboxes and configuring release tracks. 

Testing new features

Sandboxes provide an isolated environment that links to your production site, providing a safe space for testing and experimenting with new product updates and features. Sandboxes are available for Jira, Jira Service Management, and Confluence with Premium and Enterprise plans.

To create a sandbox:

1. Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organisation if you have more than one.
2. Select Products > Sandbox. 
3. Select Create sandbox.
4. Choose the product you want to create the sandbox for.
5. Create your sandbox on a new sandbox site or add to an existing site.
6. Select Create sandbox.

Controlling the rollout of new features

Release tracks helps control the rollout of new changes within Jira, Jira Service Management, and Confluence for our Cloud Premium and Enterprise customers.

For each site, release tracks gives you the option to receive product changes and features as soon as they become available via the Continuous release track or as a bundle once a month via the Bundled release track. Additionally, there is also the option to receive the same changes fro your Sandbox site a month before they roll out via the Preview release track.

To effectively test product changes, it is best practice to configure your production site to the bundled release track and your linked sandbox site to the preview release track. This configuration enables you to test product changes and features within your sandbox, providing sufficient time to learn and experiment prior to the release of these changes in your production site.

To configure release tracks for your sandbox

1. Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organisation if you have more than one.
2. Select Products > Release tracks 
3. Find your product in the table, select Change track.
4. Choose the Bundled track and select Next.
5. Select Confirm.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 for the linked Sandbox site, ensuring to select Preview track instead.

Learn more about product updates, sandboxes, and release tracks.

[G subramanyam]

Hi @Eshaa Sood this is truly insightful article and much needed given the addition of loads of features.

[Dave Mathijs]

Is there a way to switch from pull (manually going to this page and checking the planned product updates) to push (receiving automated email notifications about upcoming changes, on a weekly interval)?

[Tapiwa Samkange]

Hi @Eshaa Sood - thanks for this helpful reminder. I think it was also in the Org Admin certification course. Sharing the information here makes it super accessible. Thank you.