Migration documentation guidelines

As your customers decide to move their Confluence or Jira core data from Data Center/server to cloud, it's important to give them information about migrating their app data. We give them general recommendations about this in our Cloud migration guide. However, as each app is unique, it's helpful for each Marketplace Partner to provide migration documentation for their own apps, to help guide customers through the process.

Why do I need to provide documentation?

If your customers can't see the documentation, they may assume you have no way to migrate their Data Center/server data to a cloud app. Providing clear information on how to do this will remove any confusion, and show them a migration path to cloud is available.

Surface your documentation in the Atlassian Cloud Migration Assistants (CMA)

The Marketplace APIs let you surface the following migration documentation in the app assessment tool of the Jira/Confluence CMA:

• Feature differences between your Data Center/server and cloud app
• Migration documentation that includes migration instructions

What to include in your migration documentation

Consider your customers' migration path options

There may be multiple migration path options available to customers, depending on how your app's migration path works, and the decision your customer makes to handle app data migration. While you create your migration documentation, think about the following use cases:

• Your customer wants to automatically migrate app data using the CMA
• Your customer partially migrates app data using the CMA
• Your customer prefers to manually migrate their app data
• Your customer has no app data to be migrated
• Whether app data can be migrated with core data. For certain apps, the app data migrates along with the core Confluence/Jira product data, so doesn't need a separate app data migration. If this is possible with your app, surface this capability to your customer in the CMA.

Compare differences between Data Center/server and cloud features of your app

Moving to cloud is an important decision for your customers, and it involves change and uncertainty. Customers need to know if app features will remain the same or change in cloud.

You could provide a table in your documentation that gives your customers an easy comparison of features and functionalities between server and cloud. Here's an example.

Provide clear migration steps

Document detailed, step-by-step, and easy-to-understand instructions on how to plan and perform a migration to cloud.

Provide timelines and related announcements

Clearly defined timelines about your app release plan and updates will help your customers prepare for app data migration. You can do this by giving your customers:

• A migration roadmap of your app's releases
  See an example of a timeline provided to Atlassian developers about changes to server/Data Center products.

• Links to Atlassian roadmaps where available
  See an example of announcements in Atlassian migration documentation to customers about changes and updates in their migration plan.

• Compatibility
  Provide precise information about Jira/Confluence product versions and your app versions that are compatible and/or required to enable app data migration.

• General readiness
  Your customer will need to know how to prepare their product and app data for migration, and assess if they’re ready to migrate.

Provide a pre-migration assessment checklist

You could also provide a checklist so your customers can assess their readiness to begin migration to cloud.

It can include details about the following:

• Dependencies
  Recommend your customers check for dependencies between elements of their server data; like whether they’re migrating the correct projects/spaces to ensure that app data is not broken during/after migration.

• Existence in cloud
  Where applicable, document the entities that the customer must migrate as part of the core product migration for app data migration to be successful.

• Duplication
  Recommend that your customers check for duplication between server and cloud, and that they clean up their server/cloud data, or accept behaviour like overwriting data or unsuccessful migration.

• Differences
  Where applicable, if there are feature/other differences between the server and cloud version of your app, suggest ways in which your customer can alter their app data to ensure that migration is successful.

• Limitations and known issues
  Inform your customer about any factors that may limit you from offering them a complete app data migration path. This may include limits and/or known issues related to your app or the CMA.

  • If the issue is related to the CMA, link to jira.atlassian.com (JAC) tickets in your documentation that allow your customer to read more about Atlassian feature updates, watch JAC issues, or even submit a request themselves.

• Support options
  If you currently don't have customer support for your app, consider providing realistic options to support your customer if they experience problems or have enquiries related to the migration. The feedback from your customers can help you identify and prioritise any fixes and/or improvements to your app.

Next steps

For more information about your journey to cloud, see our journey to cloud hub in the Partner Portal. Request access to the Partner Portal.