How do you keep up to date with Atlassian releases?

[Carles Mata]

Hello community,

I wonder how do you as Atlassian admins keep up to date with changes, improvements, etc. that Atlassian makes to the platform and the products. For example, what's being changed on Jira, what is rolling out to Confluence, etc.

I used to check the Product Updates section of Atlassian Administration site. Once a week, I opened this section, scrolled down to the last date I checked the section, and started reading up all summaries of new releases to see if something new can affect our instance. If any interested us, then I opened it to read the full announcement, and activated notifications if needed.

But this has changed some weeks (maybe months?) ago. Now, when I open the Product Updates section, I see a table with a lot of release notes with different statuses and rollout schedules. I cannot sort that table, and I don't know how it's sorted by default (it does not look like chronological). And every time I open this section, I have no way to see what announcements did I read last time, or what others are new. The first item, `Introducing 'work' as the new collective term for items tracked in Jira Cloud`, has a rollout of March. So I guess it will be the first item until March, no matter if I have read it or not.

Seeing that I cannot rely on this section anymore (or maybe I'm missing something out), how do you people check product announcements, changelogs, and so?

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Carles Mata 

Yes, and...to the other suggestions to try:

• Review the Atlassian status pages, and watch specific outage alerts, at least once a day.  https://status.atlassian.com/
• Same thing for the Security Advisories and Bulletins: https://confluence.atlassian.com/security/security-advisories-bulletins-1236937381.html
• Read the Jira Cloud release blog every week.  After reading the entire thing the first time, one may skip / search for things labeled as "New This Week" and "Coming Soon".  https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/blog
• Read any new suggestions / defects in the public backlog for your products of interest.  For example, this query shows the automation-related issues from the last month.  The lastViewed value is added to the JQL to help work one's way through the list without losing your place. https://jira.atlassian.com/issues/?jql=project%20IN%20(%20%22Automation%20for%20Cloud%22%2C%20%22Automation%20for%20Jira%20Server%22)%20AND%20created%20%3E%3D%20startOfMonth(-1)%20AND%20created%20%3C%3D%20endOfMonth(-1)%20AND%20lastViewed%20IS%20EMPTY%20%20ORDER%20BY%20Created%20ASC

Kind regards,
Bill

[Carles Mata]

Wow... Thanks Bill!

I was aware of the status page and the public Jira, but I didn't know about the Security Advisories and the blog! I think the blog is more or less what I was looking for, it's very similar to what I usually checked on the other version of the Product Updates site. I'll keep an eye here.

Thank you again!

[Rune Rasmussen]

I was just about to ask this question myself, but find this post instead.
Here's what we do:

Subscribe to Cloud Release Notes (Atlassian account --> email preferences center --> Cloud Release Notes) and read them every Tuesday.
Check the Atlassian Cloud Roadmap (Cloud Roadmap | Atlassian).
Check Product updates in the admin portal (Admin Portal --> Products --> Product updates).
Follow every relevant group here in the Community Forums.
Follow Atlassian on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Look for interesting Feature Requests in the public Jira board (Public Jira Board)
Hope. Hope that whatever is being changed is announced in one of the at least 6 different channels where changes seems to be announced.

And for those things that doesn't seem to be announced anywhere, we just click around in the product/org admin menus, because sometimes there is a banner with new information, or just a new option that wasn't there last time we looked, I swear to god.

[Carles Mata]

Hi Rune,

I didn't know about the Cloud Release Notes subscription! I was subscribed to other newsletters, but for any reason, that was out of my scope.

Hope. Hope that whatever is being changed is announced in one of the at least 6 different channels where changes seems to be announced.

🤣 That's kind of what everyone thinks, but no one makes it public...

Thanks for your suggestions! There are so many channels to keep up to date, that it's really complex to be on top of what's coming. I can't understand why a big company like Atlassian does not have a unique changelog. You could subscribe in several formats (RSS, email, website, ...) but one single place as the source of truth.

[Nikola Perisic]

Usually I use the mix of everything:

• Product updates
• Latest RFC - this is a forum where the releases have been posted as well - https://community.developer.atlassian.com/c/everything-else/rfc/102
• Atlassian Community - products section (Jira, Confluence, JSM)
• Atlassian Cloud roadmap

The updates are all over the place, and I was wondering when Atlassian will have a centralized source of the updates for new features.

[Carles Mata]

Thanks, Nikola!

I totally agree with you. Too many places to check out, because the RFC link you shared looks interesting too, among the other links Bill shared. Something so "simple" like product updates should have a centralized place.