Atlassian Community online guidelines for Marketplace and Solution Partners

[#1]

[Last updated: September 2020]

Atlassian's partners are a vital part of our community and we want you to be active in it! The Atlassian Community team is dedicated to providing an equal platform to all partners. Here are some guidelines for how to do so effectively.

Note: We send warnings to partners who abuse these guidelines. Repeated violations may result in consequences including your article-writing permissions being removed, your account being suspended, or being reported to the Atlassian Marketplace team. 

Identify yourself as a partner: Make sure the user is aware you are affiliated with a partner company; for example, by placing the name of your company in your user name in {curly brackets} or -dashes- (note that regular brackets no longer work and have been automatically converted to dashes). If you are mentioning your own products or services, make sure you include wording to make it clear that you are affiliated with the company providing those products or services.

By requesting partner access, you will also receive a badge on your profile that will identify you as a partner.

No promotional language: Your posts and comments should not be for the sole purpose of promoting your products or brand.  The community is not an appropriate place to promote special pricing or discounts. We will remove posts that are promotional in nature and will flag users who do so. Repeat offenders may be removed from the community.  

No linking to your product site or blog: The community is a place of learning and connecting, not to promote or point people back to your products or your website. The exceptions are: 

• A user explicitly asks for information about your products or services
• You are mentioning your app as one possible solution to users
• You've written an article about a particular app and want to link the app in your article
• Your support documentation answers a user's question in depth and you want to refer them to it (note, please include a summary of the answer on the community as well. rather than just linking out without any context)
• You are promoting a webinar that adds community value (see more below)

No "read more" promo links: Posting a partial article with a "read more here" link in an effort to drive community traffic back to your own website or blog is against the rules. 

No spamming: Although you are welcome to offer your product as a solution when appropriate, this doesn't mean posting links everywhere that you can find.

No necroposting: Aka, no "raising threads from the dead." In general, avoid posting on old threads (six months or more old) simply to promote your products.

No soliciting: It is not okay to email our users directly in an attempt to promote products, surveys, discounts, or apps. This activity will be reported to our marketplace team. 

No gaming the system: Do not engage in mass upvoting, sock puppeting, impersonating users, or any other unethical behavior. If you see any suspect behavior on a post, please alert the admin team. Note that this type of unethical behavior may result in a partner being removed from the program. 

Don't bash other partners: Per our community guidelines, the community should be a helpful and friendly place. Partners should help users and not bash other partners and products. The Atlassian Community is an open place where anyone can answer questions and participate in discussions. 

App discussions: Discussions about apps are acceptable in the App Marketplace collection, and where relevant elsewhere. When recommending an app, always be aware that there may be other solutions to the problem that do not involve an app, and we want to give the community a chance to provide these solutions.  Ideally, the app would be presented as one of a number of possible solutions. That said, if your app could solve the customer's problem, you can step in and recommend the app.  

We recommend adding a link to the marketplace with the relevant search term that lists the top apps for that category, which directs to your app and other relevant apps. This will allow you to promote your app, but still point towards a more complete answer about the topic.

Make sure the user is aware you are affiliated with the app by mentioning that in the body of your post (they may not notice it in your username). For example, if you are recommending your Flurb app, you might say: "Please note that I’m one of the folks behind Flurb, there may be other solutions out there."

If you adhere to these guidelines and believe your post has been removed or flagged in error, reach out to us at community-managers@atlassian.com and let us know. 

Articles: Marketplace and Solution Partners now have the ability to request article-writing permission -- see how to request permissions below.

Content guidelines

When thinking about whether your content is right for the Atlassian Community, consider the 99/1 rule. Your content should be 99% practical information, and 1% promoting your product or service. We recommend that if Partners are reusing content from their own blog, they change it up a little bit to make it fresh for the Atlassian Community. (In short, think "How-to", not "Press release.")

Partners can choose to write two types of articles:

App- or solution-focused

Partners can write FAQs about their apps, tips and tricks on how to use them, or other documentation. These articles should stay in the App Marketplace collection only and not use additional product tags so as not to "spam" product collections.  You can, however, create additional tags to organize this content – if you have an app called Flurb, for instance, you can use tags like flurb-app, flurb-jira, and flurb-confluence, and ask users to create content using your tags so all of your flurb-jira content (for example) can live in the same place. 

You can even generate links prepopulated with your tags and include them in your support experience. For example, this URL will create a question in the apps space automatically tagged with “flurb." You can change the URL parameters to pre-tag with any tag you like! 

General-interest

Partners can write general-interest articles about Atlassian products, Atlassian events, agile methodologies, etc. These should not mention apps, and so do not have to stay in the App Marketplace collection. If partners are interested in becoming more broadly involved in community, perhaps even joining the Community Leaders program in the future, providing general help to our users and participating in community is a great way to get started. Learn more about the Community Leaders program here.

Webinars

Posts promoting webinars are acceptable under the following conditions:

1. The webinar is free and adds value to the community (is not strictly promotional)
2. The post about the webinar adds value to the community
3. You're either an approved partner or part of at Atlassian Product team and working in partnership with a partner
4. The post is only posted in the Marketplace Apps collection and not cross-posted to product collections

When in doubt, please reach out to bsauer@atlassian.com. 

Case studies: If anyone is interested in working with Atlassian to write up a case study about yourself or your customers, our content manager @Bridget Sauer would love to hear from you. You can pitch your ideas directly to bsauer@atlassian.com.

Note: We send warnings to partners who abuse these guidelines. Repeated violations may result in consequences including your article-writing permissions being removed, your account being suspended, or being reported to the Atlassian Marketplace team. 

If you are an Atlassian partner and you have reviewed and agreed to these guidelines, leave a comment below to request the Marketplace Partner or Solutions Partner role, badge, and permissions on community. 

Thanks for your participation in our community, and let me know below if you have any questions or feedback.

You may also be interested in our in-person guidelines and our events etiquette guidelines for partners. 

[Teagan]

Hi Monique, 

May I please request 'article-writing' permissions for Easy Agile?

Thanks!
Teagan 

[Monique vdB]

Hi @Teagan  -- sure thing, you should have the permissions now. I look forward to reading your articles!

[Teagan]

Thanks @Monique vdB! 

[Piotrek Romanczyk [SoftwarePlant]]

This is amazing news @Monique vdB! The guideline itself is also an amazing source of knowledge.

If it is possible, myself and @Dastin_Kuwałek__SoftwarePlant_ would also love to request for these permissions in order to throw a couple of articles on SoftwarePlant plugins. :)

Cheerio,

Piotr

[Monique vdB]

Your access has been granted, @Piotrek Romanczyk [SoftwarePlant] -- let me know if you encounter any issues or need any help!

@Dastin_Kuwałek__SoftwarePlant_ will just need to leave a comment here to indicate he has read the guidelines.  Then I will be happy to give him access as well :) 

[Piotrek Romanczyk [SoftwarePlant]]

Many thanks Monique! Alrighty! I will let Dastin know. He is currently on a sick leave, so will make sure to let him know once he's back! Once again thanks a million. This is FAN-TAS-TIC! :D

[Huw Evans]

Hey Monique,

Cheers for keeping these guidelines updated—you're a big part of what keeps this community ticking.

I reckon your job would be made a lot easier if there was a better way for vendors to identify themselves—maybe like how Atlassian team members can signal their impartiality with their badges, we could signal our partiality in the same way. I've seen some pretty obvious violations recently which could be solved by making this clear by default (instead of asking team members to add brackets to their names, which shadier vendors just aren't going to do).

Anyway, I just really wanted to emphasise my thanks for what you and your team do—these forums are so good, other users often beat my team to the answers we were going to give!

Huw

[Kristina Meelind [Avisi]]

Hi Monique, 

May I request  the 'article-writing' permissions too?
Thank you!

Cheers,

Kristina

[Monique vdB]

@Huw Evans thanks so much for the kind words! I agree that some kind of lozenge or flag would be helpful and am looking at different options here. Stay tuned and let me know if you see any issues in the meantime.

@Kristina Meelind [Avisi] I will add your access, thanks! Looking forward to reading your articles.  

[Dave Rosenlund _ALM Works_]

Hi, Monique. "Article-Writing" permission for me, too, please.

[Monique vdB]

@Dave Rosenlund _ALM Works_ you are taken care of. :)

Everyone, until we have an automated way to identify you, make sure to add your company in brackets after your name per our guidelines.  Example:@Nic Brough _Adaptavist_

Thanks and happy article writing!

[Dave Rosenlund _ALM Works_]

Thanks, @Monique vdB    I missed that part of the instructions.

[Aidy Love]

Hey @Monique vdB, 

This is excellent news! 😀
It's reassuring that the feedback from community discussions at San Jose has come to fruition so quickly. 
Major kudos to y'all in the community team. ⭐️

I'd like to have 'article-writing' permission set for myself, please!

My Spartez colleague @Jacek Wizmur-Szymczak will revert a comment here in due course too. 

Cheers!

[Davin Pukulis (K15t Software)]

Howdy @Monique vdB, thank you so much for kicking this off. I would also appreciate contribution permissions when you have the chance.

Cheers!

-Davin

[Shannon Meehan _K15t_]

Hey there @Monique vdB,

This is exciting news! I'd like to request permissions as well when you have a moment. 

Thanks!

Shannon

[Monique vdB]

@Shannon Meehan _K15t_, @Davin Pukulis (K15t Software), and @Aidy Love you should all have been granted article permissions -- let me know if you encounter any issues. 

And thank you for the kind words and enthusiasm -- I'm so happy to hear that it is appreciated and look forward to reading everyone's articles!

[Charlie Harrisson]

Hey @Monique vdB

This is great news. Can I send you a case study to gauge whether it's the right type of content for the community.

Thanks,

Charlie

[Jacek Wizmur-Szymczak]

Hey @Monique vdB, please give me permission as well :)

[Levente Szabo _Midori_]

@Monique vdB, could you please grant Midori 'article-writing' permissions as well? Thanks!

[José Domingues [Xpand IT]]

Great news!

@Monique vdB I'd like to request 'article-writing' permissions for Xpand Add-ons

Thanks!

[Monique vdB]

@Charlie Harrisson yes! Please send to bsauer@atlassian.com and communitymanagers@atlassian.com and we'll take a look. :)

[Monique vdB]

@José Domingues [Xpand IT], @Jacek Wizmur-Szymczak, and @Levente Szabo _Midori_, I have updated all your permissions. Don't forget your company name in [Brackets] if it's not already there. ;) . 

[Piotrek Romanczyk [SoftwarePlant]]

Hello there Monique! 

Well, now here's the thing. I have put the company name into brackets [SoftwarePlant] some time ago. It got updated on the Confluence right away, though it never did on the Community. I know that @Dastin_Kuwałek__SoftwarePlant_ had the same issue and at some point (after a year or so) apparently it triggered. Is there a chance that the feature is not working as intended? 

Cheers,

Piotrek

[Monique vdB]

@Piotrek Romanczyk [SoftwarePlant] that is interesting. It could be related to another issue that @Shannon Spaniol is investigating.  Let me start a Feedback thread and I'll tag you there to include your details, thank you!

[Monique vdB]

Feedback thread is here.