When organisations deliberate how best to engage and unite their globally spread-out workforce, Atlassian’s breakout project management software suite (comprising flagship products such as Jira and Confluence) comes to mind.
This is unsurprising—considering that Jira is the most highly recommended Agile tool in the world (according to this 2021 State of Agile Report)!
Since Atlassian’s industry-agnostic products can be deployed either on their server or their data centre, and can be seamlessly migrated to the Atlassian cloud, it is quite often the most flexible choice for organisations comparing key players in the market (such as Microsoft, IBM, or Salesforce).
Moreover, with the integration of Atlassian Intelligence (Atlassian’s suite of AI-powered features) into their product portfolio, project management teams can now achieve the impossible!
Atlassian is also known for its culture of continuous improvement. The software giant continuously releases changes to Atlassian cloud products so that customers can get product improvements and new features as soon as they’re available.
In this blog, we will dive into the key highlights of Atlassian’s 2024 Winter Updates that were introduced between May 6 and May 13, 2024.
Unveiling What’s New in Atlassian Confluence Jira Winter Updates 2024
The main focus of Atlassian’s exciting new rollout this winter is the enhancement of their cloud services and the integration of advanced AI functionalities in Jira and Confluence. These changes have recently been rolled out to Atlassian Cloud sites.
Here’s a detailed look at the key changes:
1. Atlassian Guard and Data Security Policies
Atlassian has rebranded its security solutions, with Atlassian Access now known as Atlassian Guard. This change reflects the expansion of their security solutions beyond identity and access management.
With Atlassian Guard, you’ll have one place to manage your users and enforce security policies across all Atlassian accounts and products at your company. Additionally, new data security policies allow administrators to manage third-party app access to sensitive information in Confluence pages and Jira issues.
It needs to be noted that post the Winter Update, the capabilities you may currently have with Atlassian Access remain unchanged.
2. Enhanced User Management
The user list in the Atlassian Administration Directory has been updated to include new roles that have been split into multiple dropdown menus instead of one. These new roles include:
- Compass basic
- Jira Service Management stakeholder and customer
- Jira Product Discovery contributor
This update makes it easier to filter and manage users. This improvement is part of Atlassian’s ongoing efforts to streamline user management and enhance administrative control.
Please note that this change only applies to user list filters for centralised user management.
3. Single Sign-On for Jira Service Management
Atlassian has introduced SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) Single Sign-On (SSO) for Jira Service Management, allowing customers to log in securely using their identity provider. Customers only need to log in once to access multiple portals for one help centre during an active session. This feature is available to organisations subscribed to Atlassian Guard, providing a seamless and secure login experience.
Atlassian has also introduced new smart values for AI-generated summaries and action items in Jira and Confluence, significantly enhancing automation capabilities.
4. AI Summary and Action Items in Confluence
Confluence now supports two new smart values that allow users to automatically generate and send AI summaries and action items for pages. For instance, Confluence users can set up a rule to email an AI-generated summary and action items when a meeting notes page is published. Another possible use case is that Confluence users can create an issue (in Jira) with an AI-generated summary and action items when a requirements page is published.
These two new smart values are:
- AI Summary: {{page.AISummary}}
- AI Action Items: {{page.AIActionItems}}
These smart values and templates are supported in the AI Rule Builder. This means it’s now easier to simply ask the AI to create a rule that sends out a summary or action items from pages and it would do that for you!
5. AI Summary and Action Items in Jira
Jira has also seen the introduction of smart values for AI-generated content. These include placeholders that dynamically pull in data, such as:
- {{reporter.displayName}} – Inserts the name of the issue’s reporter
- {{issue.summary}} – Inserts the issue’s summary
- {{assignee.displayName}} – Inserts the name of the issue’s assignee
These smart values enhance the automation of tasks and streamline workflows by leveraging AI to generate relevant content automatically. This means you can now use them to access and manipulate almost any issue data from Jira.
Since May 6, 2024, Atlassian has started the process of automatically activating Atlassian Intelligence for all products in Premium and Enterprise plans. If you are looking to leverage Atlassian AI for your organisation, or are concerned about this change affecting your current active Atlassian products, please reach out to us for assistance.
6. Additional Confluence Enhancements
Confluence has now been enhanced with Confluence Whiteboards that can help your teams brainstorm, turn ideas into Jira issues, and more. This enhancement helps in bringing the flexibility of a digital whiteboard into your team workspace at no extra cost. You will be able to:
- Collaborate, brainstorm, draw, and visualise in a freeform way
- Illustrate with stickies, lines, or sections
- Engage teammates with real-time editing
- Collaborate using stamps, timers, and more
7. Jira Work Management Upgrades
Jira Work Management now offers background customisation, a new Jira Software importer, improved task nesting, and more, making it easier than ever to organise work on your boards.
With 40 background colours and 5 gradients to choose from, you can customise your tasks’ home and give every one of your projects its own look.
The Jira Software Importer simplifies the process of importing tasks from Jira by enabling you to spin up a new project in just a few clicks. If you’re unsure whether a software or business project type would work for you, Atlassian’s newest importer helps you analyse how your tasks would fit.
With issue creation enhancements, Jira users can now create issues anywhere between cards and rows in the board and list views. Plus, as long as the transition rules are respected, you can also create issues directly in any status column or grouping on the board and list views.
And with enhanced task nesting, all tasks under epics are now seamlessly nested. This means, no more hunting through endless lists or timelines to find related tasks, or creating tasks out of context.
Are You Ready to Achieve More with Atlassian?
Atlassian’s 2024 Winter Updates for Confluence and Jira bring significant enhancements to their cloud services and AI capabilities. The introduction of Atlassian Guard, improved user management, and advanced AI functionalities in Jira and Confluence are all set to provide users with more secure, efficient, and intelligent solutions for their projects.
As Atlassian continues to innovate and improve its offerings, you need the right Atlassian partner to help you navigate these updates and ensure that they empower your team to achieve more.
As a certified Atlassian Gold Solution and Implementation Partner since 2018, we at Corptec Technology Partners have been offering our customers a wide range of consulting services, training support, and customised solutions to help them extend the power of their Atlassian products. Our solution consultants come with extensive knowledge and experience dealing with Atlassian product suites and can help you overcome any Atlassian cloud challenge and adopt the benefits of AI, regardless of the project size.
To help ensure that Atlassian’s latest updates offer significant benefits for you, Corptec Technology Partners offers Atlassian cloud and server customers a free discovery session to help unlock powerful cloud and AI features for your Atlassian tools. With this session, you will gain:
- Free license audit and hygiene check of your instances, projects, and workflows
- A detailed review of your Atlassian instance usage
- Expert guidance on whether you should run multiple sites or consolidate your Atlassian server instances
Our discovery session is entirely free, with no commitment required. It’s an opportunity for you to explore the potential of Atlassian’s latest updates for your teams at no cost.
Eager to discover how you can leverage Atlassian’s latest updates to boost your team’s productivity? Book a meeting with our expert today!
If you are interested in learning how Corptec can help you empower your business with Atlassian solutions, request a consultation today!
