Atlassian Administration terminology change from “products” to “apps”

[#1]

Hi everyone, I'm Bhavya, a Product Manager here at Atlassian.

At our Team '25 conference, we announced a lot of innovations from the big stage. I want to share more about one in particular: Atlassian's move from offering standalone products to a unified suite of interconnected apps powered by our Cloud Platform, with the ability to use AI, search, and analytics across all your data. Learn more about Team '25 announcements.

To reflect this shift, we’ve started rolling out a terminology change - from “products” to “apps” - across Atlassian Administration experiences.

What does the change look like?

Here are some key examples of the UI changes you will see:

• Products renamed to Apps in the navigation

• Products page renamed to Apps

• Product URLs renamed to App URLs

• Product updates renamed to App updates

• Product admin role renamed to App admin role (the existing role and permissions you have as a Product admin remain unchanged).

In situations where we refer to multiple types of apps, we’ll be clear about which type we mean as highlighted in the example below.

Connected apps, where you can view and manage settings for Marketplace apps and integrations for your sites, remains unchanged.

What does this mean for you?

For current customers, there will be no changes to your existing product functionality within Atlassian Administration. Apart from informing your teams and other admins in your organization, there’s no other action needed.

Over the coming months, we will roll out this change across Atlassian Administration experiences more broadly, including emails, documentation, audit logs, URLs etc. In the meanwhile, you may see both terms (“products” and “apps”) as we work through the changes.

We want to hear from you!

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below!

[Kristian Klima]

What about marketplace apps? 

Still apps? Or plugins? ;) 

[Dave Liao]

Interesting terminology change, looking forward to seeing how this unfolds.

Can't wait to manage my app's apps! 😉

Kidding of course, I see that there are differentiators mentioned. I guess I'm now managing my app's Marketplace apps? Many admins I collaborate with still refer to Marketplace apps as add-ons...

[Bhavya Nag]

@Kristian Klima @Dave Liao yes, marketplace apps are still referred to as apps. Where necessary, we'll make the distinction clear between Atlassian apps (Jira, Confluence, Loom etc.) and marketplace apps

[Stefan]

Fantastic news! I was thinking how the word 'Products' was too... clear. Can't wait to plugin an app into an app formerly known as a plugin, so I can manage assets that give insights linked to work items (née issues), on a advanced agile roadmap or whatever

At this rate, by 2030, we’ll all be using Atlassian’s App App to install Sub-Apps in MetaApps™ on our Confluence-powered MindPalaces™.

Keep renaming, Atlassian — can't wait to align it all

[Sai Nikhil Guntur]

Can we have more details on ETA and when can we expect this change getting rolled out to the world? 

[Jeffrey Shank]

I'd love to hear more about the benefits of this terminology change and what it portends.

One of the major benefits of Atlassian solutions is they give the customer ability to just implement the components they need to meet their business needs without needing to adopt every component. Sometimes a company just needs a wiki and is happy with their existing issue tracking system. Sometimes they need a CI/CD platform but not a wiki.

The fact is that the products are already interconnected (at customer discretion) without needing to be rebranded as apps—and all the downstream hassles it will cause.

Is Atlassian moving in the direction of selling their products as a single suite, disallowing customers the choice of which components they implement and pricing it out of the range of smaller businesses?

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of this change either. We got used to products, and there was a clear distinction between 'apps' (referring to Marketplace) and 'products' (Atlassian). This is similar to issues with terminology when it comes to 'projects'.

Anyway, we'll see how this will go.

[Charles Mattson]

Curious on vision: is this move to reduce development time and cost within Atlassian, and rely on the "marketplace" (other vendors) to finish development of future rollouts with inflated app pricing? How is this AI Rovo integration not a glaring security hole in the infrastructure? So many questions...Thanks for the update.

[Hector Eduardo Calzada Tenorio]

Whoa! Honestly, I feel like this change doesn’t really add any value if anything, it’s the opposite. We used to have a way to distinguish between products and apps in the marketplace, and now everything will just be labeled as apps. We'll see how it goes with this change… hopefully it turns out well.

[Tim Martin]

Yeah, cool. No trauma here. I never even liked portfolio, issues, insight, access... *twitch*

[Darryl Lee]

So yay. Now that this has launched, I can say that I got a sneak preview of this in a usability session about something else and my feedback was "Oh god, no, please no." For all of the reasons y'all have already stated.

Funny story from the Team 25 expo floor:

A/C in Anaheim Convention Center was ON BLAST. I saw a big thick blue Atlassian beanie at one of the Atlassian booth and didn't care what they were selling.

"Hi, please pitch me whatever you're selling so that I can have that hat. I'm freezing."

Person at "Platform Apps" booth (or was it "Apps Platform"?) proceeds to explain that they're renaming apps, that they're like apps on your iPhone, and I then remember the usability study. I tell her that I remember this now, and that I said I hated it.

Anywho. I think my colleague or I asked: "So what do you call uh, third-party apps?" 

And she was like "They're apps."

"Like, third-party apps?"

"Yes, sure."

"And Atlassian apps are first-party apps?"

"Yes."

My colleague then asks: "So what are second party apps?"

I say: "Oh oh, I know. They're Forge apps - the ones you create yourself."

Being a wannabe English major, I'm thinking, first person perspective (I), second person (you), and third person (narrator).

She says, "Uh... sure, ok."

Sometime later in the conference, we stop at the Confluence booth.  I can't even remember how the topic came up, but we're again talking about Platform Apps. Or Apps Platform. Or whatever.

So I say, "Yeah yeah, we know, Atlassian is first party, then there's the former add-ons that are third-party, and then second-party is Forge"

And one of the two folks is like, "Ah... no... I'm preeeeety sure that's not right. Second-party are apps like Miro and such", and I'm like, "Right - not Atlassian, that's a THIRD PARTY"

And there was some discussion about whether it's built-into/integrated with the Atlassian app, or whether it stands alone, or whatever, but he DEFINITELY didn't think that Forge was in the picture at all.

And I said, well, the "Platform Apps" (or "Apps Platform") folks agreed with my terminology. And he was like, well, WE'RE Confluence, so we know better.

And welp, that was that.

My point being... folks in Atlassian are about as clear on this as we are. Good times, good times.

Hope to see some of you at Bash. Let's not talk about Apps, ok?

[Martin Böhme]

Oh no.

Are you trying to confuse everyone?

• Atlassian Product = App
• Marketplace Product = App
• Mobile Phone app = App

Everything is an App now?

I don't like this at all.

[Ben Robbins]

Not very Appy about this.

[Marius Fischer]

When you name something, you have 2 options:

You either choose it to name "as it is": Admin, Customer, Custom Field, Workflow, etc.

If in conversation with colleagues, documentation text etc. the content that you describe is clear in what is meant... and there is nothing else that could be confused with it.

But you can also give it a somewhat unique name: issue/work item, Assets, Projects, ...

This way it is clear to others that what you're talking about is the Atlassian structure/framework of things, not the real life one.
The issue here being that 'our project' can mean the "whole real project" or the Jira (Service Management) Project- 2 distinct things, no matter how good Jira is at Project Management.

I'm no Senior Product Manager, but it seems like this was not taken into Account.

As an Admin/PM i don't really care what things are named - the only thing i as a Customer value is that i can give my Customers a clear word framework of how Atlassian works.

When i introduce subsidiaries to the world of Atlassian its already a lot of confusion and i have to give them the vocabulary for support groups, Organizations, Sites, Instances, Products,...

[Kristian Klima]

Reading the comments induces a mild case of app...oplexy :) 

But I wanna touch upon the phone app analogy.

When I explain Confluence, one of the first things I say is that I view Confluence as a platform. Just like iOS or Android.

You buy a phone and it does a couple things. Then you install your (marketplace) apps and suddently it's pretty much anything this side of a hammer drill. Yeah, there is an for that. Broken down it's like 

Atlassian - ecosystem

Confluence - platform that you expand with apps

Perhaps this stratification works for me because, as a Mac user since Mac OS 8.6 (year 2000), I went thru every single iteration of Apple building the ecosystem, with multiple facets that work together but are expandable on their own.

Confluence as an app works but only if you're looking at the whole concept from the inside of the Atlassian world from which the Marketplace is your Kuiper belt/Ort cloud. It's there but those objects are no planets. 

Once you leave the ecliptic plane, and view the Solar system as a WHOLE, you'll see the need for different approach to segmentation :) And that's before we consider that those object do fly in, occassionally hitting a planet or, at least, getting captured (ask Confluence Databases :) ).

(Also... Pluto is not a planet :) 

[P_D_ Foerster]

Aww man! No another terminology change :(

It's just my opinion but I highly recommend waiting for your first terminology change to complete.
I'm sure there are things to learn from that change bevor starting another one...

[Jakub Gladykowski]

I came here to say something, but your comments' guys said it all and made me smile. 

[Tere Pile]

There is only 1 screenshot that peeked my interest in this article.  The 'App URLs' (perhaps this is an 'enterprise' view) I just see 'Standard'.  What I'd prefer to see is something that clearly tells me what has to how Atlassian 'bundles/defines/packages' whatever term you use related to pricing. 

Reason: Recent interaction with Migration support and Billing teams as it relates to JSM. It was painful back and forth, ultimately, we eliminated JSM.  'I was told it HAD' to be priced because it was part of the Jira Family (what?!).  So if you're looking for things to change, have it provide value.  

Clearly, I'm not alone in Product becoming Apps - it is an un-necessary terminology change!

[Yaniv Hakohen]

A self-centered move of yours, not helpful to clients. Products is what you sell, for a price, and we buy. Apps is what we build, using your products. You've obfuscating IMHO. 

[Sami Shaik]

Interesting. Great. 

[Mac McCardle]

I'm genuinely trying not be old man "get off my lawn" resistant to change - but I just can't see the benefit of this. The quote from the article speaks to its own confusion really

 In situations where we refer to multiple types of apps, we’ll be clear about which type we mean

What benefit to we get from having to explain what we're talking about every time?

Some of the other changes you've made make sense - moving from 'issue' to 'work' is a change I can get behind, despite the shift departing from a very established standard. I saw many of our non-development teams struggle with the concept of 'issue' being a negative thing, so moving to a more generic 'work' is an overall positive. 

So far no one's really be able to tell me why this change is good. I am happy to embrace the change if I can see the benefits, but I am really struggling 😓

[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks @Bhavya Nag - i am with many of the previous commentators ... I do see the benefit of the consolidation of apps in a suite.

However, there is much more progressive items, I'd say, that Atlassian could focus on than renaming things! Yes, it is amazing to share updates like this and keep the community aware but time, effort and energy can go into helping improve the system with feature requests and bug squashing from the relevant JSWCLOUD, CLOUD, ... projects.

This is especialy highlighted for many people like me, in South Africa, that could not attend Team25 events and dont see the full, clear context of these changes.

Yes, Change is the only constant but if things are constantly changing at this pace, that introduces instability and creates a lot confusion.

Thanks though.

Yatish

[__ Jimi Wikman]

I was wondering why I kept hearing about Apps in the presentations and while I understand the reasoning behind, I think this is a hasty decision. From a technical architecture perspective Atlassian either have made some substantial technical changes or we still have foundation structures such as Jira, Confluence and even Align that all have their own codebases and platforms?

While I personally find it weird to refer to SaaS items as products, since they are Services, I do not think it makes sense to change from product to app. These are not mobile software, they are SaaS services. In a restructured architecture where you have an underlying infrastructure that these services are plug and play type of entities, that is what we use the term Module for.

This would provide a more logical holistic nomenclature where you have the foundation infrastructure, Platforms on top of that with Modules that provides the services and then plugins that extend the functionality of the modules.

- Infrastructure (Atlassian Cloud)

- Platform (Jira)

- Module (Jira, Jira Service Management)

- Plugin (marketplace "apps")

Naming two different types of items the same is not a good practice. I can already hear the confusion: "This is an app for the Jira app and no, it is not a mobile app, you have to install it on your SaaS... App."

Consider this change carefully because like Issues this will probably stick with you for the next 20 years or so, and it will be a pain in the... to change it again. Until you do, this will confuse people that actually think words matter.

--

Now, please change the term "project" for Jira while you are at it since that is misguiding, and it adds a lot of confusion to a community of users that don't even know the difference between a project and an initiative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8NqP8RBYOM

[Tomas A]

Why are you continuing to use the foul word "apps" when "program" is the correct word to use?

"Product" is so much more better for your services. I think you should re-think this decision since it not only sounds bad and is totally incorrect. People have been overusing the "apps" word too much and it's wrong in its definition also it is cringe.

The world does not need to continue to embrace the "apps" word instead the should continue to use the word "program" and in your case "product" since that is more of what it is. And changing this you're not helping the world in retaining the correct word for it anyway, so it's a really bad decision in my opinion.

Please also refrain from whining on my comment, the rest of the community, this is my opinion and nothing to discuss. I just hope Atlassian can change their minds.

[Piotr Mazij]

I get it, that you want to remove completely Marketplace apps (either buy it or, if too expensive, rewrite on your own), but until you do that, could you please stop making things unnecessarily difficult?