Marketplace Partner Spotlight: Appsvio
For this month's partner spotlight, we're featuring Appsvio, a Silver Marketplace Partner! We caught up with Appsvio co-founders Kate Pawlak, Chris Skoropada, and Peter Patrzek about getting started on Marketplace, and the road ahead.
Atlassian: How was your company started?
At the very beginning, Appsvio was our side-project. We always dreamed about running our own company, and finally, we decided to take a shot. We didn’t know if Appsvio would succeed enough, so we kept our jobs. It turned out that there was no room for half-commitment. We had to be all in to develop the company as we wished. Appsvio became our dream, and now we have our own wellspring company. We built the Team with people like us who share the same values and who are ready to conquer the Marketplace world with us. In the middle of this year, we joined the Atlassian Ventures family. Thanks to that, we can fully commit to what we love most: creating apps with passion.
Atlassian: What's your role at your company?
Chris: I'm a CEO, so I take care of the entire company, but I think about myself more like a regular team member. I keep an eye on all company life.
Kate: As a Chief Product Officer, I deal with products from the beginning, which means ideas through research and cooperation with our developers to the release. I mainly focus on the products' growth to meet users' needs the most.
Peter: I like to say that I'm a software craftsman. As Chief Technology Officer, I ensure that our solutions are of the best possible quality when developing. In addition, I deal with a high-tech implementation that our team uses in building apps and during the development process.
Atlassian: What's your favorite thing about working at Appsvio? What's your favorite team ritual?
Chris: It can sound a little cliche, but people have it all. We're a team who has 100% focus on creating apps. We like each other, we can rely on each other. I love the moment we come up with an idea, and then I blink, and a few hours later, it's done. When we get into something, we're really on fire.
We have only one tradition but a golden one. Each year we organize our hackathon. We're spending a few days together in a different place – this year we went to the Baltic Sea. We code, eat, and run together – we just have fun and create a new app. Usually, it's the one for Codegeist. The moments we spend together are a blast. It's inspiring to be surrounded by ambitious, kind, and talented people. It feels like you can move mountains and fight bears.
Atlassian: How does your team come up with ideas for new apps?
Kate: Users are our ultimate inspiration. Although they don't always communicate their needs directly, they are a mine of ideas for us. Thanks to our frequent conversations with users, we learn in which direction to develop our products. We strive to be close to our customers. That's how we know that our apps realistically help teams worldwide. In addition, being active in the Atlassian Community allows us to stay abreast of what people are hurting, what they lack, and what they expect. You have to listen to others and be open to feedback; ideas will come by themselves.
Atlassian: Think back to when you were developing your flagship app - did you see yourself here now? What do you think has been the secret to your success so far?
Kate: When I think about the "flagship app," I think of Customer Details immediately. This app was made during one of our fireside hackathons in a mountain cabin. I'm surprised at how successful it turned out to be. It was our hackathon baby. I didn't think this app, in which we did mockups on paper in a very "not huge company" style, would achieve such success. Initially, it was a typical MVP: providing basic functionality to collect additional customer data in a text field.
This app is a teenager today. We've added support for field types other than text fields, and we let you collect information about organizations. We have a dedicated Create Issue functionality, which allows you to create an issue with customer data already filled in. There is also a Post function in the app that copies values from app fields to Jira fields, so that customer properties can be used to set SLAs, Automation rules, or filters on the dashboard.
Soon this app will be "grown-up." We are working on its scalability, fine-tuning large companies' functionality, and providing more inconsistent features. From an inconspicuous app, it is turning into a one-of-a-kind and unique on the Marketplace solution for Customer & Organization Management. We are bursting with pride because of this.
And what is behind the success of this app? People again. On the one hand, a team that listens to feedback and creates the needed functionalities. On the other hand, customers and their use cases. As I mentioned, they are the driving force behind change and development. And for that, we are extremely grateful to them.
Atlassian: Tell us about your most popular app. Why do customers love it?
Kate: We specialize in Jira Service Management, so it shouldn't be surprising that our most common app is Feature Bundle for JSM. Thanks to the ability to edit requests on the Portal, it has stolen our users' hearts. Admin is no longer involved in every single change with the tickets – customers can do it independently. The administrator has a wide range of settings, when, by whom, and under what conditions such editing can be available. We're super proud that it's the only cloud solution of its kind so far.
Feature Bundle for Jira Service Management: Editing request
But the functionality itself is not just editing existing fields on the form. It is also the ability to collect additional information that is needed when handling a ticket. Thanks to our clients' ideas, the simple initial functionality of editing a ticket turned into the possibility of displaying transition screens on the customer portal with many customization possibilities. And the fact that this feature is much needed is evidenced by our customers' reviews:
"Feature Bundle for JSM Cloud allows us to easily modify fields from the user portal and by the user himself. This functionality facilitates and streamlines the collection and updating of information without the need to contact an agent and saving processing time for these cases. For situations with large volumes of in-flight tickets, it is very convenient." ~Rafael Tejero Palma
Our users also gave us feedback that they've started to fall in love with another feature – Customizable Announcement Banners. That many ideas and inspiration, how many users. Their use cases are getting more exciting, and they surprise us with their ideas! Banners are not just plain text but colorful panels with gifs, videos, and Google forms. Our customers appreciate the ability to impose conditions on when a given banner or banners – our app allows several of them to be displayed at the same time! – will be visible in terms of time constraints and the characteristics of the client himself, e.g., what organization he belongs to and what language he uses on the Portal. Of course, banners can be displayed anywhere on the Portal – not just on the Help Center and Customer portal as the native JSM offers.
Atlassian: Do you have any new apps or projects you want us to know about?
Peter: Recently, we released Issue Templates Agent for Jira. It’s also our hackathon baby and it was born this September. It’s built on Forge and available for free now. It's perfect for teams who deal with repetitive tasks and want to have standardized tickets and everything under control.
We’re going to migrate our Connect app to Forge very soon. We have some blockers we’re working on with Atlassian. Sticking to the Forge, we took part in Codegeist for the 3rd time in row. We manage to submit up to 3 apps which is a huge success to us. We love Codegeist for popularizing Forge. We hope there will be more initiatives like this!
But we don’t rest on our laurels! We constantly upgrade and improve our apps our clients need the most. Customer Details and HubSpot CRM Integration are the most popular now. Our Jira product discovery backlog is full of ideas on making it even more user-friendly.
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Tori Chang
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