Esther Strom's favorite Premium features and how they empower her org's Atlassian processes

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To continue Premium Week, we are excited to highlight @Esther Strom, one of our beloved Community Leaders, a Senior Process Integration Engineer, and an Atlassian Certified Professional!

Read on to hear her favorite Premium and integration features and how they support her organization's processes using their ecosystem of Atlassian products.

Tell us about your company and role!

I’m the Senior Process Integration Engineer at Pizza Hut Connect. We’re the digital arm of Pizza Hut US, responsible for the website, mobile app, back of house software, point of sale systems, and all APIs, infrastructure, etc. that support those systems.

I’m the owner of our Atlassian ecosystem, including Jira Software, Jira Service Management (JSM), Confluence, Bitbucket, and OpsGenie. My team is fully engaged with our users, including helping teams define working processes and how Atlassian products can support those processes.

What did you want to be when you grew up, and what was your path to your role today?

I wanted to star in Broadway musicals! I double-majored in vocal music performance and drama, with a minor in scene and lighting design. I did office temp work between jobs, and ended up going back to school for web development.

I started at Pizza Hut as a senior web developer in 2012, the same week our new dev manager brought Jira into the company. I ended up becoming the Jira admin by default, and it progressed from there.

What do you do for fun outside of work?

Pre-pandemic, I volunteered with local high school community theater groups. I’m also an avid knitter and reader.

I love to travel, although that’s a bit more difficult now. One of my favorite travel photo collages below is a medieval towns tour I took while in Barcelona for 2018 Summit!

How do Atlassian Premium products make your job easier? What’s the coolest workflow you’ve built across multiple Atlassian Premium products?

We use automation very heavily, so the unlimited executions in Jira Premium is an essential feature for us. Having the ability to archive Jira projects is also really important, as we have legal requirements for data retention.

We’ve integrated all of our products; many of our workflows use the DevOps triggers like transitioning Jira tickets when pull requests are merged.

We also have a Jira Service Management project that collects data via the customer portal, automatically clones and links tickets in development projects, and integrates with OpsGenie to turn around and create tickets in ServiceNow.

Which Confluence Premium feature can you not live without?

The Team Calendars are a huge part of our processes; we upgraded to Premium specifically so we didn’t lose this feature when they were removed as a standalone plugin for Standard.

Which Jira Software Premium feature has been the most beneficial to your and/or your team?

Absolutely the unlimited automation rule executions.

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Thanks, Esther! Drop your questions on Premium for Esther below in the comments. 👇🏼

Learn more about Atlassian Cloud Premium, read through Mikael's Premium showcase if you missed it, and keep an eye on the rest of our Premium week activities!

[Ash]

I've not used calendars yet! Will have to take a look.

[Laura Holton _ACE Rotterdam_]

This is definitely a great feature! Thanks @Sharon Tan and @Esther Strom for a fantastic read 🤗

[MiMi Lane]

I need to get with our leadership about Team Calendars - that seems to be a super useful tool especially when it comes to keeping up with the schedules of remote team members.

[Jeanie Hioki]

Love your hair color.  Thanks for sharing!

[G subramanyam]

That's a long and super professional journey from a developer to a leader of Atlassian tools @Esther Strom.

I would like to explore the Confluence "Team calendar" premium feature and interested to know the steps.

[John Funk]

Such great information - thanks for sharing some of your life with us!

[Hakeem Olasupo]

Thanks so much for sharing this. This is so detailed and mind blowing

[Dave Liao]

@Esther Strom - I appreciate that you're a PIE engineer (I know, I know, it's like ATM machine) at Pizza Hut Connect. 🍕 And now I want pizza!

Agreed on unlimited automations - if the math works (the money math), Premium is worth it. ⚡

[Esther Strom]

@Dave Liao The PIE title was unintentional, but we enjoy the synergy!

[Esther Strom]

Team calendars are such a great feature. You can set up calendar events that pull in Jira ticket dates by using JQL, and it automatically updates the calendar. So if, for example, you use a Jira project (JSW or JSM) for things like change management, you can have a calendar that automatically shows the schedule of all approved changes, and you never have to manually update it once you've created the initial event JQL. You can also pull in sprint and release dates to create automatic calendars for those cycles. And of course you can use them like a normal calendar, by manually adding events like birthdays, company holidays, etc.

You can have your calendars essentially standalone (in the app view, or by using the Calendars link in a given space), or can embed them in pages.

[Marjorie]

Thanks for the information on calendars

[Jack Brickey]

Thanks for sharing @Esther Strom . Certainly agree on the automation!

[Kishan Sharma]

Great post, thank you for sharing @Sharon Tan and @Esther Strom 

[Taranjeet Singh]

Thanks for sharing this informative article, @Sharon Tan !

Thanks for sharing your experiences with Atlassian Premium products & features, @Esther Strom !

[FaresBenAbbes]

Awesome read! Thanks for the write up!!!