What are our options for fully blocking the new navigation to our site?

[Mathew Lederman]

I would like to understand the options for blocking the new navigation from being deployed to all of the sites in my organization permanently. The new navigation takes up a significant portion of an already busy screen, which will cause many issues for nearly all of our users, and especially those on small monitors/laptops. I receive almost daily complaints about our banner which takes up 1/4 the space that this new menu will require.

And for what? To centralize the search bar and make it bigger? Was finding the search bar ever really a problem? 

Personally, I don't understand the desire for moving everything to the left, utilizing precious screen real-estate when the top-nav works great in every Atlassian tool I've ever used. I was told the new navigation was aimed to standardize the UI across tools, except Jira Cloud, Jira DC, Confluence Cloud, Confluence DC, Trello, Atlassian Admin, Atlassian Community, and I'm sure the list goes on, all use the top-nav. To what tool are we standardizing? 

I ask on the behalf of my 6,000 users who don't have the time to learn a new navigation system so Atlassian can push their AI toolset, how can I block the new navigation from coming to my organization permanently?

[Shraddha]

From what i understand this change is permanent. Though eager to know if this is something completely avoidable on instance level.

[Bill Goetz]

While I get the need to have a permanent block of the new navigation, it probably isn't realistic. That said, I think Premium and Enterprise customers should have options to delay rollout. Even if I had to delay future features until I enabled the new navigation.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Mathew Lederman 

There are not details included with your post to tell us about your subscription.

If you are on a Premium or Enterprise subscription you may have a little more control over when the change hits your system by using Release Tracks.

https://support.atlassian.com/organization-administration/docs/manage-product-release-tracks/

If you are not on a Premium or Enterprise you have no such control.

If you are on any paid subscription, including Standard, I would encourage you to have your admins reach out directly to Atlassian through a support ticket. This user forum is not the best was to initiate a dialog directly with Atlassian.

Ultimately I have not seen any information about permanently blocking this change.

As with many changes in a software-as-a-service environment, the vendor may choose to deprecate functionality so that they can focus their time and resources on evolving the product along one major path without having to develop for multiple "versions" of the product. I suspect that you will not find Atlassian offering you an option to permanently block the update.

You can get more details about the schedule of the roll out here:

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Navigation-Refresh-articles/What-s-changing-in-Jira-and-JSM-apps-with-Atlassian-s-GA-launch/ba-p/2974873

[Mathew Lederman]

@Trudy Claspill I am the primary org admin of an Enterprise subscription. I have started the conversation with our CSM, but I am looking to get any type of feedback from the product team putting forward this update.

[Martin Vali]

I have to agree that the noise level has risen. The eye wants to see where one topic ends and another start's without concentration. Currently the filters, dasboards are all one blur. Make concrete disdinquish between them (e.g. lines, colors, icons etc). If all is gray, it is not easy to see the difference

[James Rickards (Spark-Nel)]

My current org does not have enough weight (user numbers) for our complaints to be heard, but happy to add my personal 2c.

The new UI fixes some issues such as making it easier to find the operations menu (OpsGenie) without having to go to teams.  These deficiencies needed to be addressed; however, I assume that all the UX designers were testing with 4K 28" or larger monitors, rather than 1K 17" laptop monitors at 150% scaling as is the default in our organisation.

I have found the new UI to be horrid to use when not plugged into larger external monitors. In particular I hate the shift of some items from the left nav menu to a horizontal navigation menu above the project.  This does not fit with the natural flow of the eye following the E pattern, so I assume they haven't used eye tracking software to validate their hypothesis that this is more usable (i.e. reduced cognitive load) in real world situations when compared to the current UI.

In addition, the new UI is reminding me of how much I hated using ServiceNow's nav menu when I was forced to do so (never again!). My assumption is that ServiceNow developers have infiltrated Atlassian and in an act of stupidity or deliberate corporate sabotage are trying to replicate the ServiceNow user experience within Jira and JSM to reduce the differentiation between the two offerings.

Atlassian, please try looking at what is causing business teams to reject Atlassian in preference of monday.com where I agree with our business users that the UX seems to be much more intuitive.

[Aditi Dalal]

HI @Mathew Lederman apologies for the delayed response. Sorry to hear that you're not a fan of the new navigation change - we appreciate your feedback and that major changes like this can take time to adjust to.

The thinking behind the new navigation design was to make strides on the following things:

• Cross-product switching: Providing a consistent experience across Atlassian products reduces friction and boosts efficiency so users can effortlessly switch between them. To that end, we'll be looking at moving more Cloud products in this direction in the future

• Uplift the experience with a new look and feel: Atlassian’s updated visuals—featuring new color scales, iconography, and typography—offer a fresh, modern experience while enhancing readability, accessibility, and scalability.

• Empower users to customize their workspace: Users now have the ability to personalize Atlassian products to fit their unique way of working and individual preferences.

A lot of these things are subjective, and I understand that not everyone will feel the same way about these changes. 

As the others have mentioned, there is no way to block this change permanently. However we do have an extended rollout period, including an opt-in starting from April 14th, and almost 3 months of user-level opt outs prior to permanent enforcement, which should hopefully allow your users to ease into the change at their own pace.

We'll also be launching a support hub so that users & admins have everything the need to quickly adjust to the new navigation - watch this space! Please let me know if there's any materials we can provide that will help make this transition easier for your users.

I appreciate that this is not the answer you're hoping for, but please continue to share your feedback with your CSM - I'm sure they will pass this onto to product team. I'd love to emphasise that the product team will be working to continually improve the navigation, and so your thoughts will be super helpful in this space.

Cheers,
Aditi

[Mathew Lederman]

Aditi,

Appreciate the detailed response, though I do have some questions:

• Cross-product switching: Providing a consistent experience across Atlassian products reduces friction and boosts efficiency so users can effortlessly switch between them. To that end, we'll be looking at moving more Cloud products in this direction in the future
  • What product has the side nav-bar today that you're looking to align on a consistent approach? Every product I use has the top-nav in both the Datacenter and the Cloud versions.

• Empower users to customize their workspace: Users now have the ability to personalize Atlassian products to fit their unique way of working and individual preferences.

  • Will users have the ability to move the navigation bar back to the top so they can access their full screen? 

The most helpful and impactful documentation to provide would be the detailed research utilized to make this significant change to how our users work day-to-day. I will need this document to share with the executives who are frustrated that their users are losing hours/day working with a smaller screen. 

From those with whom I've discussed the change, not a single person has thought it would be beneficial to their processes.