Poor support for community

[Ryszard Łach]

Hi all. 

I'm wondering, if it is only my opinion, that Atlassian does not work with community well. This is the main reason stoping us with stronger Jira integration. Great design, in most cases great flexibility, with no doubt leader in development tools. But how can we increase our Atlassian products usage ratio, if there are many issues showing Atlassian's way for working with customers ("there are many sources of user feedback, we have our roadmap, we do not tell you how the roadmap looks like").  I'll give you a few examples:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-1369 Reduce JIRA email chatiness, definitely the best one example

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-8505 Add a new "Issue Linked" event for listeners to respond to 

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-4665 Need to persist Mail Queue Items (mails get lost on Jira restart!)

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/HCPUB-403 read-only room

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/HCPUB-1661 HipChat Video for iOS and Android

Only in JRASERVER-8505 Atlassian tried to give some info about the roadmap (this year, meant '2016', nothing happened so far). 

Do you agree with me? Maybe I'm just unlucky and mostly Atlassian answers quickly, has somewhere a roadmap, points his users to the roadmap, resolves easy to resolve or important for users features?

Any opinions would be appreciated.

Ryszard.

[Ryszard Łach]

Tja, I've just received a notice about 10% pricing change, saying they want to invest in server products. I wonder how it will touch issues from community.

[jens]

Hi Ryszard, 

The purpose of the community is to create a place where customers can ask questions and exchange ideas amongst each other. Who better to give you advise on how to use Atlassian products than other customers with a similar experience? 

In regards to feature suggestions on jira.atlassian.com, it is impossible for the product management team to continuously provide updates on thousands of issues. We are doing our best to communicate progress on the top voted issues, but you are right that we could do a better job. Appologies for the lack of communication. 

Unfortunately we are unable to communicate roadmaps and commit to specific feature release dates. If you happen to work on a development team, you will know that things can take longer than expected and sometimes priorities change. We do not want to disappoint our customers by promising a date and not being able to deliver. 

That being said, be assured that we receive and read all the feedback that comes in. It's extremely valuable and helps to inform our product roadmaps. That is the main reason why we continue to keep jira.atlassian.com open as a communication channel, even if it appears that we aren't responsive. 

Thank you for your feedback. 

Cheers,
Jens

[Ryszard Łach]

Thank you for your reply.

I do know, that maintaining a big piece of software staying connected to community isn't easy. But you are not the only one company that is trying to do so. Take a look at development of XWiki. Or, if you need a "more enterprise" example - Power BI of Microsoft. Shorter response times, issues from the community do go to the backlog, rather clear roadmap (XWiki) or at least preview / beta features (Power BI). I think you should seriously think about some communication improvement.

Or, maybe there is separate, better supported communication channel for gathering feedback from corporate users and the paing ones should not use community? All in all a company like mine pays sometimes support for Jira for 500 users (+ probably twice as much for additional modules), so we are not asking for features for free.

Cheers,

Ryszard.

[Michael Kornatzki]

Hi Ryszard,

i like jira and confluence but the bugfixing is a nightmare.

Functions that worked in former version get over-worked and didn't work properly after that.

A bugmaster told me that only 10% use this function.
So what. We need this function and can not use it furthermore :(
That's a pain in the ... and i have to told my colleagues that i am sorry but the new feature here or there is nice, isn't it ;)

On the whole i like the community and the user groups.
And the support is also well.

Cheers,
michael

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

What function?  Probably worth asking about it properly as a new question.

[Michael Kornatzki]

Hi Nic,

here is the issue https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-45752

A Commenrzbank as also the same problem but this issue didn't get fixed. And won't get fixed.
Please let the developer away from working fetures if atlassian is not willing to repair the bugs.

Cheers,
michael

[Michael Kornatzki]

For us this is a major feature because we hove multiple filters and communicate the result with our customers!

[Michael Kornatzki]

Ah and Nick  this one prevent me from buying a plogin from your company (https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-38112).

Ok, not jira but support for bugs.

[KP]

Hello Ryszard,

Thank you for your feedback. Just to extend what Jens talks about earlier, I have just posted an article on A renewed approach to highly voted Server suggestions for Jira and Confluence that I hope will answer some of your questions. In short, we know we can do better here and we will.

Cheers,

Keshav

[Ryszard Łach]

Hi, Atlassian Team,

It's been several weeks since you promised a new approach to support and the community. Sadly, I do not see any change. People still comment basic features missing in your old, but also new products (see https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/STRIDE-2 or https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/STRIDE-3). Meanwhile your direct competitor shows how should care about customers look like.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16487812

I think you should draw some conclusions.

Best regards,

Ryszard.