Why doesn't Atlassian have an "Ideas" section for users to submit and vote?

[Glen Lipka]

At Marketo, we pay close attention to the highest rated ideas and review them on a weekly basis.  There are lots of tools out there to do voting.

I can't find one for Atlassian, specifically confluence.  Either I am blind or it doesn't exist.

Why is this?

Update for clarity:

Im asking about having a traditionally, modern, ideas site. Examples:

• https://success.salesforce.com/ideaSearch

• https://support.zendesk.com/forums/1848-Product-Feedback

• https://hubspot.uservoice.com/forums/76407-general-hubspot-ideas

• http://community.optimizely.com/t5/Product-Ideas/idb-p/product-ideas

They all have the same structure. I am asking why Atlassian doesn't have this.

These kinds of sites are MUCH more friendly to users. They encourage WAY more participation. They have been studied and proven to work. Atlassian doesn't care. They want to keep it simple for engineering. I am OK with accepting that answer, even though I wish it weren't so.

[Glen Lipka · Accepted solution]

They don't have a traditional ideas section because they optimize for engineering at Atlassian.  They would prefer that all ideas come in the form of tickets so they have no work to do to transform the idea into a ticket.  It's not good UX for customers, but it's convenient for engineering.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Seems fine for most customers to me - I've worked in several places that take ideas from customers and most of them are perfectly fine with putting stuff into the issue tracker. Julia has a good point about Confluence too - I've seen that used to expand on ideas when they're long or detailed.

[Aaron Lawrence]

And as Glen states - this probably discourages customers from actually getting involved. You won't see that because discouraged customers don't write in to say "I'm discouraged because of X", they just stop communicating. Only the bloody-minded jump through the hoops to come and tell the company "you're blocking lots of us by doing X". And then they look like a small minority and can be easily ignored!

[Steven F Behnke]

You guys have a much worse idea of Atlassian than I do, certainly! I just thought they were, you know, using the very tool they sold. Maybe you could put in a feature suggestion to improve their feature suggestions. ;)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I'm not sure I understand why "create an idea in JIRA where we *will* look at it" discourages a customer from getting involved. If they really can't be bothered to enter a simple issue, then it's quite likely that they already don't care in general. All the requests I've raised, or been interested in, have been implemented in some form, closed as duplicates, got an explanation of why they won't get done, or are open with some comment about "we want to do this, but not yet". This system works - I know where my requests stand, and I can see Atlassian doing something. Might not be in the order I want them to, but it's public.

[Mehmet Kazgan]

Hi Glen, All I am saying is: 1. There is a place Atlassian provides where you can raise an issue and make a suggestion 2. You can even make a suggestion for a better UI as you are an expert 3. I like JIRA UI myself and agree with Nic as where it needs to end up from that perspective It is all about collaboration to make things better. That is what I meant about I have seen worse, but there is always a way to make things better, too.

[Mehmet Kazgan]

You can submit new feature or suggestion as an idea for any Atlassian product at https://jira.atlassian.com for the product you want.

image2014-9-19 10:38:51.png

[Glen Lipka]

As a UX expert I have to say, this is really not a good UI for this. There are scores of "idea" UIs. This one is the worst. :(

[Mehmet Kazgan]

I have seen worse :)

[Glen Lipka]

That's like saying, "Hitler isn't so bad. Have you seen Mao?? He really sucks!"

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That issue tracker is where it needs to end up, because that's where the developers work. Having yet another system is a pain in the neck.

[Glen Lipka]

Its a pain in the neck for engineers. Unfortunately, it would be better UX for the customers. Atlassian is optimizing for staff and not customers. It's a choice. I wouldn't advise it, but they get to make their own rules. The reality is that they do not have a traditional ideas site.

[Steven F Behnke]

Traditional meaning what? Would you rather it be in service desk?

[Aaron Lawrence]

Steven, read Glen's suggestions in this very topic. He points out examples of ideas sites that are very successful. Admittedly, it's probably too early to call it "traditional", perhaps better to say "ideas site in the format that is becoming proven by other companies"

[Steven F Behnke]

I implore you to re-read Nic's comments. Having a disconnected tracker for suggestions is a waste of effort and time. I think the ease-of-searching from a "Brand New JIRA User" could be improved with JIRA, because it seems like a lot when initially encountered. However, ALL of the suggestions are collected, TONS of feedback is participated with, votes are counted, development occurs a few times until the product is shippable, and then they update all related tickets. I can only imagine how less communication we would get from Atlassian if they decided to join the party so to speak. I enjoy the response time I see from my suggestions. Resolution time isn't always great but they are large, enterprise products. It seems standard to me.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I've also seen the dreadful disconnect you can get from "customer requests in one place, tasks in another". The main example I remember delivered a system, on time, with little in the way of bugs. Which the customer didn't use because all their requests had been logged in a system that the engineers had no need to look at. No, JIRA isn't ideal for customers entering features, but it is more than good enough, and better than a lot of disparate systems. I'd like to see something a bit more Service-Desk like for the customers who don't need the full power of JIRA, but I suspect most of them would still want to see the conversations, voting and history of change anyway.

[Ramiro Pointis]

Hi, as Mehmet described you can create feature request or suggestions in Atlassian's Jira. The votes and the comments makes a request important I guess.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

There's a long but really interesting post by Bryan Rollins (now the head of the Jira group of systems at Atlassian) on how Atlassian use the activity and votes in Jira to help them prioritise the queues. https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/110373/how-does-the-jira-team-use-jira-atlassian-com Some details have moved on, but it's basically the same principle now. I spoke to a couple of the Jira developers last week, and from their point of view, the more they can do in one place, the better. That principle is driving a lot of the direction Atlassian is taking with several products at the moment. If you go stick your new features in another system, it's going to fail unless it's tightly integrated and avoids duplication somehow. Feature requests are best kept in the issue tracker...

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

And, of course, UI improvements are welcomed. But check the prototype look and feel for Jira first...

[Aaron Lawrence]

Exactly, from their point of view. Pity the customers have a *different* point of view! How inconvenient!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

But that's the point - if you look at Atlassian's JIRA, the customers *are* using it.

[Glen Lipka]

I'm a customer of Confluence. We use it for documentation. (https://docs.marketo.com) It's a great wiki product. I want to submit ideas and vote for other ideas that I like. The current UI to do that isn't friendly for me. They have the pieces of the puzzle. The Q&A UI is quite good, even if it rips off StackExchange a little. It could even be another payable product line. The point is: not every atlassian customer is a JIRA user.

[Julia Wester [Wittified]]

I saw an "ideation" blueprint on the marketplace yesterday that seems to provide a template and macros for this.

[Deleted user]

Ok, how can we bump up these two?

Automatically remove and ignore unwanted text content or attachment files in tickets created from emails

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWSERVER-16262

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWSERVER-16263

I created two tickets because this is affecting both options available in selection: JIRA Software (Code) and JIRA Service Desk but now see they're under same 'JSWSERVER' project... was a bit confusing but now know both options end up in the same place.