Looking back, 2017 was an exciting and productive year on all sides of the Atlassian ecosystem. Thousands of new developers joined the Atlassian developer community, and hundreds of new apps have been published on the Marketplace. On the Atlassian platform side, there were a myriad of improvements to our developer experience, as we focused on improving site usability, providing regular content updates/comms, and even rolled out our new branding along the way. Here are some highlights of the significant initiatives from the past year.
1. Platform Improvements
The Developer Portal
Last spring we began working on modernizing our developer portal at developer.atlassian.com. Over the years, the web site racked up significant technical debt, mostly due to the site being spread out over various systems, managed by a number of different teams. We set out to have one system to rule them all, and migrated all of these sites under one roof. This change allows us to more easily manage our documentation and other content. It also allows you to contribute to the docs through the “Improve this page” links. A majority of the content has been migrated from legacy systems to the new infrastructure, but we still have more work to do.
Wiring in REST API Docs
The most trafficked content on the dev portal are the reference API docs. Last year, we set out to provide API docs that were more consistent (across products), thorough, and easier to navigate. On the surface, you may have noticed the changes in the IA (information architecture), design, as well as a new location (from docs.atlassian.com to being consolidated under developer.atlassian.com). Underneath the hood, we needed to make some investments to make it easier for our teams to update and publish docs. For example, the new reference API docs sections are generated from Swagger files that come directly from code.
App Management
We’ve also introduced an easier way to define and manage Cloud platform apps. Just sign in to developer.atlassian.com and click on your avatar to create an app. In the app management console you’ll find an app’s client ID (API key) and secret, and you can select which APIs (and scopes) you’d like to enable. The Stride API is the first to use this new app management platform, and we hope to have others moving over as well. Under the hood, these changes help us to improve security and scalability, in addition to making it easier for you to build and manage your apps.
2. Documentation Improvements
During the migration, some content, like our Cloud documentation, received an update. For instance, we retired the separate Atlassian Connect documentation site (connect.atlassian.com) and relocated all of its content to the developer product documentation. This puts all of the documentation in one place. Take a look at these changes:
Cloud Platform Docs:
- Atlassian Marketplace
- Bitbucket Cloud
- Confluence Cloud
- Jira Cloud platform
- Jira Service Desk Cloud
- Jira Software Cloud
Server Platform Docs:
- Bamboo
- Bitbucket Server
- Confluence Server
- Crowd
- Jira Service Desk Server
- Jira Software Server
- Jira Platform Server
- Fisheye Crucible
3. Usability and Discoverability
Improving the usability of our developer and marketplace sites was a primary goal this year. We’ve iterated improvements with our designs, navigation, and developer tools to increase productivity for both developers and customers.
API Testing with Postman
Sometimes, the best way to learn how an API works is to just make a call. A number of our REST API docs now feature the Run in Postman button. Postman is a free REST API console tool, making it incredibly easy to make API calls — even complex POST and PUT calls, with headers, bodies, and authentication. Clicking this button automagically imports the API’s complete set of resources and methods into Postman.
The Run in Postman button is available for the following reference docs:
Atlassian Marketplace Updates
Our marketplace has a brand new homepage experience as well as design improvements to search, and other features including:
- Improved support tab for apps
- Star ratings on search engine results pages
- Improved search for better conversion
4. New Launches
In 2017, we shipped notable updates that have shaped our future brand, products, and communication.
Atlassian Design Guidelines (ADG) and New Brand
The new Atlassian Design Guidelines have reshaped how Atlassian products look and feel. ADG has been rolled out to our Cloud version of Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket. Additionally, ADG has been rolled out to developers, in the form of AtlasKit, a UI library built according to the new design guidelines.
We also launched a new brand. Atlassian designed a whole new set of product logos unified under one parent brand.
Developer Community
We understood the need for a reliable community resource for developers to seek advice from their peers and Atlassian staff members. Our new developer community is the place for developers (and Atlassians) to connect, learn, and share their passion and expertise. Thousands of new developers joined the dev community last year (and a few hundred Atlassians), creating over 7,000 new posts.
Stride
At the Summit US 2017 conference, we announced our new product Stride. We also launched an early access program (EAP) to the Stride API for developers to get a head start on building Stride apps. By the way, the Stride API is now available to all developers, so check out the Stride documentation to get your early start.
Jira Cloud Ecosystem Roadmap
The Jira Cloud Ecosystem team released their public roadmap. See what the team is working on, what’s recently been released, and what’s planned for the future.
Atlassian Platform for Developers Roadmap
We also released the Atlassian platform for developers roadmap. This covers products and projects that support our Ecosystem developers, vendors, and partners to build apps, to list them in the Marketplace, and to manage their customers.
5. Events
The Ecosystem team also runs a number of events to support developers and Marketplace vendors. Here are the events from last year:
Amsterdam – Connect Week (February)
Held at our office in Amsterdam, we hosted Connect Week, a week-long hackathon where Marketplace developers and vendors connect with Atlassian product and ecosystem engineers. The goal of Connect Week is to help developers build new apps faster, and get them on their way to being published in the Marketplace.
Barcelona – Summit Europe and AtlasCamp (May)
During the Summit and AtlasCamp conferences, the Ecosystem team held sessions and workshops for developers to learn about key ecosystem releases and best practices.
Austin – Connect Week (July)
Another Connect Week, with more great app development. The Trello API made quite a splash at this event.
San Jose – Summit US (September)
The Ecosystem team led the tehnical speaker tracks, as well as held developer training sessions covering Atlassian Connect and REST APIs.
San Jose – StrideCon (October)
We invited 30 developers from the Stride API EAP to work alongside with Stride engineers on their apps.
Amsterdam – Data Center App Week (November)
At this App Week, Developers learned what having a Data Center app entails. This week was largely focused on app scalability (cluster awareness, caching, etc.) and testing strategies.
Looking forward to another great year
All of the things we were able to accomplish in the past year were only made possible because of you, our amazing developer and vendor community.
From our team to yours, thank you. We look forward to an even more amazing 2018.