Atlassian Community Round-up: October 2023

[#1]

Hello Everyone!

It’s that time once again to take a look at everything that has happened in the past month! From major events, to product announcements, to amazing people providing great tips & best practices to help the Community, I guarantee there is something here for everyone. Let’s get started!

Announcements & Highlights:

As always, there are a TON of amazing things happening and here is just a small sample of all the great things you don’t want to miss out on!

• First, we unfortunately have a CVE that has been posted! As always, PLEASE go read this and see what you need to do to protect yourself and your company ASAP! You go do that now, we’ll still be here when you get back. Confluence Data Center and Server security advisory CVE-2023-22515

• All protected now? Good! Next, JiraCon has unfortunately come and gone. But, it was a fantastic event and I’d recommend going to the registration link in this article to see what happened so you can see if this is something you should attend (virtually) next year (I’m willing to bet the answer will be yes!). 🗓️ Event: JiraCon23!

• Next, Atlassian Presents: High Velocity is coming up! If you are lucky enough to be able to attend this one live in person in Sydney, Australia, I’m very jealous. For everyone else, while the free digital event is an option, you’ll want to check out another possibility that may work for you. Atlassian is bringing a smaller mini version of High Velocity to a number of local community events globally. If you are close to one of these, I highly recommend RSVPing to the chapter of your choice to take advantage of this additional in person experience! Exclusive ITSM Event: Meet with the Atlassian Community in a city near you!

• In February of 2024, Atlassian’s Work Life event will be taking place, which is all about teamwork. They are currently looking for feedback on what sort of topics you would like to see at this event. If you have opinions be sure to share your feedback via the link in this article. Give us your feedback for this years Work Life event

• For everyone that has been eagerly awaiting more information about FedRAMP for Atlassian Cloud, a new update has been made available. The short version, their in process designation will arrive in Q2 2024 with Moderate Authorization in Q1 2025. Additionally, the scope as expanded to include JSM as well. Be sure to read the rest of the article for all the details. It’s official- FedRAMP Moderate has a new date in cloud.

• Next up from the University team, a second associate certification has been launched! This one covers Jira Software Board configuration. If you missed the initial launch of the “associate“ line of certifications last month, these are geared towards Jira power users. If you are looking to earn a couple of extra credentials, you can’t go wrong with either of these. 🎉 It's here: keep building your cert stack with ACA - Jira Software Board Configuration

• Speaking of Jira Power Users, @G subramanyam has put together a fantastic catalog of both free and paid training that would be create for project managers, be sure to check it out!What are the best Jira courses for Project Managers?

• Next, do you know how to make an awesome workflow? @Amanda Barber has given you your recipe for success. The short version? Simple & Clean. But, be sure to read the full article! Creating Workflows in Jira

• Finally, @Svenja Lorenzen has shared an epic example (including screenshots) about everything you could want to know about building a pitch deck in Confluence. Go check it out!📖 How to create a pitch deck in Confluence Cloud

New Features & Product Updates:

Want to keep up to date on all the cool things Atlassian has announced about their products? Be sure to read through these, then go check out all the others for your favorite product!

• First up, possibly the biggest news that everyone has been watching. Atlassian Intelligence is now in Beta! Please note, this is just one of the MANY articles posted for every Atlassian product. From Jira & JSM to Confluence & even Trello, AI is something you can explore if you sign up for the beat today. Accelerate your teams' work with Atlassian Intelligence (AI) features now in beta!

• Next up, Compass is now generally available. There are both free and standard plans available for this. I highly recommend checking out this product to see if it will help you manage the growing number of dependencies and complexity of your software and make understanding who the owners and SMEs are easier. Compass is now in Generally Availability (GA)!

• Additionally, Snyk is now integrated directly into Compass so that you can see the security vulnerability status of the components of your software from a single location. Introducing the Snyk app for Compass!

• It has been a long time since I have mentioned anything about Atlassian Crowd. If you aren’t familiar with this product, it is the Server/Data Center equivalent of Atlassian Access. This will be the last release that supports the “Server“ version of the products, with future release supporting DC exclusively. Crowd 5.2.0 is here!

• Christmas came early for a number of my Confluence friends and now it is out of beta and generally available. Theming for Confluence allows you to put Confluence in “Dark Mode“! If you are like me and prefer to work in a dark theme, you are going to want to set Confluence to use this going forward! Theming for Confluence is now GA

• Continuing with Confluence, not only are announcement banners something you can set (I feel like a covered that a month of two ago) you can now schedule them. If you know something is going to need to be posted, but it needs to be coordinated with a different communication first, now you can get things ready ahead of time! Announcement banners: now able to be scheduled!

• Bitbucket pull requests now allow you to mark files as viewed. This is a small quality of life change, but an extremely important one when you get interrupted while in the middle of a code review. Keep track of viewed files on Bitbucket Cloud pull requests

• In case you missed it, Jira Work Management isn’t going anywhere. Previously it was communicated that it would be licensed separately as of March 2024. That is now no longer the case! As long as you have either Jira Software or Service Management licenses, you will have access to Jira Work Management templates. Better together: Jira Work Management is staying included with Jira

• Next, if you (like me) have been waiting for project priority schemes to come to Jira Cloud, it’s currently in early access. GO sign up today if you want to check them out and provide your feedback on how well they work. Atlassian’s Early Access Program for Priorities per Project in Jira Cloud

• Finally, another early access announcement, this one for Cloud premium sandboxes. They are now working on a selective data copy to the sandbox environment. If this is something you are interested in, be sure to sign up for this one as well to provide your feedback. Early Access Program for Selective Data Copy in Sandbox for Jira and Confluence

Trending discussions you should join:

Want to join in on some trending discussions? Be sure to check these out!

• Jobs & Careers Month: What is the most important thing you have learned during your career?

• Server to Data Center migration

• What is the scariest movie you have ever watched?

• Is Jira One Product Or Several?

• My Team Playbook Facilitator Training Journey

Questions left out in the cold:

Why not lend a hand to another fellow Community Member and try answering some of these questions!

• What is the best way to lay out Portfolio Management in Jira?

• How do I create an Organization that benefits both my Agents and internal company customers?

• Creating a promotional calendar that has links

• Are there any templates for managing inventory of decorations?

• Rest API call to get the list of users from specific group

Dev & Automation Corner:

This month we are expanding this section to include not only automation rules, but code snippets and developer focused topics as well! If you are looking for inspiration to optimize your processes? Check out some of the cool things people are doing!

• Mention a user in a PR comment using the Bitbucket REST API

• The Developer’s Edge | Insight into Release Quality with Test Coverage Reports in Jira

• Working with UUIDs and their curly brackets, workspace names or repository slugs in Bitbucket

• How to create an alert to receive news from a specific subject from an Atlassian Community Group

• The Developer’s Edge | Efficient Manual Test Creation in Jira

• 📣 A new look for the Rule Builder for Automation is coming soon ⚡️

• Forge-ing Simple Solutions: Combining Automation for Jira with Forge

It’s hard to believe another month has already come and gone. Please be sure to stay healthy, stay safe and I’ll see you back here next month.

Take care!

[Andy Gladstone]

I have renamed this monthly article the 'needles in the haystack' series. I cannot believe how many you find and present to us each month @Jimmy Seddon - you must have an industrial sized metal detector. Found at least (3) important updates I missed and now have action items for. Thank you!

[Tuncay Senturk]

Thank you @Jimmy Seddon , How on earth do you manage to put together such an excellent round-up?

@Andy Gladstone  You took the words right out of my mouth :) 

[Gabriela Koleva]

Thank you so much for compiling all of this useful information! As a new Atlassian member who is still learning the ropes, this was incredibly insightful and interesting for me.

[Jimmy Seddon]

Thank you all so much!  @Tuncay Senturk funny enough I gave the Confluence team the behind the scenes look a couple of months ago ;)

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/confluence-by-atlassian_confluence-bts-ft-jimmy-seddon-activity-7112127372925009920-nuCv

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks again, @Jimmy Seddon for the updates!

With the addition of the automation corner to this round-up...

Next month please consider including the change to the automation packaging model (i.e., execution limits and scope) which took effect today, 1 November.  It is quite an impactful change for customers.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Automation-articles/Introducing-our-new-packaging-model-for-Jira-Cloud-Automation/ba-p/2446099

Kind regards,
Bill

[Jimmy Seddon]

Thank you @Bill Sheboy, and I appreciate the feedback!  You are correct that I probably should have included it again.  However, as it was important and was announced in September, it was the first bullet point in the Automation Corner for the September Round-up.

[Bill Sheboy]

Oops, I missed that one @Jimmy Seddon Thanks!

[Vickey Palzor Lepcha]

Multiple Security Advisory this year with Severe Criticality was annoying though. 

[Svenja Lorenzen]

Thank you @Jimmy Seddon for highlighting my article! The fact that you mention it in the round-up is a wonderful acknowledgement. I had so much fun writing it! 📝 😊

I would also like to invite everyone to discuss and add to the Project Delivery Team Review in the Teamwork Lab Group. The more the merrier! 🎉

[Summer Hogan]

Thanks for the great round up @Jimmy Seddon! It's a wealth of knowledge as usual!