Top three reasons to share your usage data with Atlassian
At Atlassian, we consider ourselves a "data informed" company. Whenever there is a decision to be made, we first try to see what the data is telling us we should do. This is true across every department, from Customer Success & Support to Product. As Head of Product Management for our Server and Data Center products, I can tell you that access to data is one of the single most important things that helps me do my job well.
Right now, around half of our Server and Data Center customers are choosing to share their data with Atlassian. But with more data, we can make our products and services better than ever before. Not sharing your usage data? You are missing out on your primary opportunity to have your use case represented to Atlassian.
In the spirit of transparency, here's what we actually do with your usage data:
1. Shared data is used to solve problems
Expanded access to data will allow Atlassian to get ahead of issues experienced by instances of all sizes. This can have implications on things from how we staff our support org to influencing the product roadmaps themselves. A prime example of this can be seen in the launch of collaborative editing in Confluence. During the development process, our product team made some basic assumptions about how admins would interpret our instructions for connecting with Synchrony servers (the service that allows for collaborative editing). We launched the feature in Confluence 6.0, eager to see the response. What we were surprised to see was a critical mass of instances hitting error messages, and turning off the feature. We quickly realized we might have made a few miscalculations, and doubled down on improving the Confluence Synchrony experience. Had we not seen people struggling, we might not have realized there was a problem we needed to fix.
2. Shared data is used to inform product roadmaps
More information around how features are being used (or not being used) allow us to determine what functionality to focus on and where to continue to develop and invest. It is hugely important for shaping product roadmaps in the near-term and long-term. By seeing what features are most heavily utilized (particularly with Data Center, our newest deployment option) and how, our product teams will be able to be more data-driven when building out the product roadmap and allocating development resources. The Portfolio for Jira team in particular has really been leaning into data to drive their product roadmap. They had noticed a troubling drop in active users week over week post-purchase. Rather than blindly pushing forward, they decided to go back to basics and invest in making the core product functionality easier to digest and interpret. Their next feature release will include rebuilt planning functionality that is dramatically more intuitive and user friendly. It will also include a revamped in-product onboarding guide to better support admins through the set-up process, paving the way for longer term success and understanding.
3. Any data shared will remain anonymous
An important Atlassian company value is "Don't F*&% the Customer" – we take this incredibly seriously. In the spirit of this, we handle customer data as carefully as we handle our own. Any data shared with us is anonymized and would never be used to target your users specifically. Any data collected is looked at in aggregate to paint a broader picture of usage trends. As described in our Privacy Policy, with any Atlassian downloadable product, (before any information is sent to our servers) analytics information is filtered to remove elements that we believe may contain sensitive or personal information. While any of your data is shared with Atlassian, you can rest assured knowing that the utmost precautions are taken to keep it safe. In addition to our Privacy Shield certification, Atlassian products are designed in accordance with ISO27001, ISO27002 and ISO27018 standards. Your privacy is always our number one priority.
Convinced? You can enable (or disable) product analytics anytime by navigating to the Administration section (and going to System for Jira), finding Analytics near the bottom of the 'Advanced' section , and selecting 'Enabled' for Atlassian Analytics. You can even see samples of exactly what is shared.
Don't want to opt in? We'd love your feedback on why not.
Thank you for getting this far in the post!
Cheers,
Keshav Puttaswamy
Head of Product, Server and Data Center
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About this author
Head of Product, Server and Data Center
Atlassian
Sydney
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