Team ’23: So Many Announcements!

Well, Jira Guys and Gals, the second day of Team 23 is done. And boy, do I have some announcements to share with you. I started the day with the opening keynote – which I somehow found my way to the front row, center stage, surrounded by Atlassian executives and personnel. What do you expect? They said reserved seats were open, and fortune favors the bold!

The keynote had some epic announcements, some of which were expected, some were generally new surprises, and some that will be familiar to blog readers. So, let’s dig into this!

Atlassian Passes 250K Customers

Atlassian started the keynote with a milestone of sorts. They now have 250K customers. And well, this is a big deal. Each customer needs a Atlassian Admin, meaning there are now 250K places where you can potentially work. So I was ecstatic to see this milestone!

Team Anywhere Playbooks

The next thing of note is Atlassian is making available a playbook to help distributed teams work better together. I haven’t checked this out yet, but one of my stops on day three will be the Team Playbook booth to check it out!

Jira Product Discovery General Availability

Atlassian also announced that Jira Product Discovery, their “Jira, but for PMs”, is now generally available. If you want more info on what JPD is, you can of course read my article, “What is Jira Product Discovery?”

This announcement means that JPD is no longer considered “in beta” and takes it’s place among the other Jira Versions!

Atlassian Together

Atlassian then announced “Atlassian Together,” an one price solution that includes many of their most popular cloud apps. It should be noted that when I looked it up on Atlassian’s website, the Atlassian Together I found did not include access, and was $15.20 per user per month, so I’m not sure if I’m at the wrong place or this is “coming soon.”

Confluence Whiteboards

Now we get into one of the bigger announcements of the day.

Seems Atlassian looked at addons like Whiteboards for Jira (now by Appfire), and said “Hmm…”

That being said, this took seems pretty powerful. Of it does all the things you expect, including (and I quote), “Stickies, shapes, lines, stamps, timers, and more.” However, one of the more powerful integrations they showed off for their whiteboard solutions was being able to turn a sticky note into a task in Jira.

Because Confluence (and therefore it’s whiteboard) is so deeply integrated into Jira, you can also directly import your Jira tasks into the board to have them reflect the status of the underlying Jira issue in real time.

And as if it needed anything else, You can also link Jira issues on your Whiteboard, and those issues will be linked in Jira. This is going to be a fantastic way to show product dependencies.

The last feature that I think has a lot of potential is integration with Automation, which will allow up to change or update Jira issues just based on where you put them on the board. They to examples they gave in the keynote were updating labels and transitioning the issue, but I’m sure there is more that can be done.

FedRAMP Compliance coming soon

Another thing announced is that Atlassian is working with a third-party agency to help them become fully FedRAMP compliant, which means certain U.S. Government agencies and Contractors will then be able to use Atlassian Cloud tools. I know this has been a massive sticking point with some customers, and with the impending Server EOL (Serverpocalypse?), this is especially timely. Currently the target is November, but we all know how target dates work in Software companies, so I’m just going to say “2023Q4”

AI: Atlassian Intelligence

The next announcement is especially timely. You see, a few weeks ago I released the article “Can you use AI in your job?”

Well, the next day I had office hours with the Atlassian Social Media team, who is the sponsor of the #AtlassianCreators program, and our chief topic was Team ’23. And I was told by Atlassian at that time, “Look, we can’t tell you what’s on the keynote ahead of time – especially You Rodney – but your post this week seems almost precognitiant.” Well, not going to lie, I do feel like I called it.

Atlassian is adding Large Language Models to their products, and in a big way. They are calling it “Atlassian Intelligence”, and it is billed to be an extra teammate for your team.

This is set to be a AI agent for Halp, Summarize the progress on a Jira Issue, help you come up with ideas and writing, define the unique language of your organization, and help you write complex queries in Atlassian Analytics.

One point especially hit home – where they asked their AI Agent to help change the tone of a response to something more empathetic. This was especially on mind because just a few nights ago, a fellow Community Leader told me they were using ChatGPT to do just this after getting the idea from my blog. And here it is, native in Jira.

Anyways, I don’t want to go too deep into AI here, as it more than deserves it’s own article, so subscribe to get the latest updates when they release!

Beacon Beta

The last thing I want to cover today is Beacon. This product was announced as part of Atlassian’s “Point A” program, and is now out in Beta.

This tool monitors your Atlassian Cloud instance for unusual activity like logins that looks out of place or strange search patterns, and alerts your team to a potential breach of access, either with a JSM Ticket, Slack notification, or both.

So, what do you think?

So, to be clear, I didn’t see anything DC in the keynotes. I can’t say I’m surprised, though. But what did you think of the major announcements of Team ’23? Anything have you excited? Anything you’re playing around with. I should note there are a dozens of pictures of more minor features that I’m saving, so just today has given me PLENTY to write about.

You can also follow Morning Coffee from Jexo to get live updates and interviews from the Expo floor. They might have had to a surprise Substitution for today’s episode. I’m just happy I could help out Biro and Nikki, we are already planning our next big collab event!

Don’t forget you can find my social media channels on Linktree – be sure to follow to see my antics at Team ’23 as they happen!

But until next time, my name is Rodney, asking, “Have you updated your Jira issues today?”