Atlassian’s flagship conference, Team ’22 certainly didn’t disappoint and we’re here to give you a round up of all the action. This article will cover all the big announcements, product launches, and any other news that you need to know.
So just sit back, relax and let’s dive straight in.
Product Launch #1 – Atlas
Atlassian announced the first of two exciting product launches during the “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” keynote, Atlas.
Built as part of Atlassian’s innovation programme, Point A, Atlas is a centralised teamwork directory that connects teams wherever they are and however they work. It has been designed to help every team know what you are doing, why you are doing it, who’s working on it and how it’s going which could be a real game changer as more teams are distributed or adopting a hybrid approach to work.
Atlas provides overarching goals in an easy to understand format and helps teams stay aligned whilst giving managers or stakeholders the 10,000ft view that is often needed.
One of the real benefits we can see in Atlas is its ability to reduce the need for unnecessary meetings and keep teams aligned wherever they are located in the world. It has the potential to be the ultimate tool that bring teams together and keeps work flowing.
Atlas is currently in Beta and we recommend trying it out. We had a live demo with the Atlassian team in Vegas and it really does look awesome!
Product Launch #2 – Compass
Compass was the second product launch announced by Atlassian and this tool is more focused towards software teams.
Compass has 3 main features to it:
- Component catalogue – important information is no longer scattered. With Compass, you can find relevant documentation and information in one place
- DevOps health tool – provides scorecards that help software teams measure and evaluate component health. It enables teams to take prompt actions
- Extensibility engine – powered by Forge, Compass helps teams create a fully customized developer workflow for teams
In the modern workplace, teams are using a LOT of tools and applications to collaborate and get work done but this can sometimes cause friction and impact productivity. Compass has been introduced to bridge this gap.
Compass is a hub for teams to collaborate on the creation of software and helps simplify development work. It’s designed to streamline work and enable teams to triage problems when they occur so a resolution can be found quicker and easier.
This product is currently in Alpha but Atlassian revealed it will be coming to Beta soon so keep your eyes open and give it a try!
Keynote Session Highlights
So, now that we’ve covered the two product launches at Team ’22 it’s time to share the other exciting announcements that were made during the keynotes.
We’ll give you a keynote by keynote breakdown below.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast
Scott Farquhar (co-Founder, Atlassian) kicked off Team ’22 with the quote “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” from Peter Drucker and it certainly set the tone for the conference.
In a world that is emerging from the pandemic, many organizations are having to adapt to a modern approach to work where employees are more empowered and have seen the benefits of remote or hybrid working.
Scott explained how Atlassian have adopted the “Team Anywhere” approach enabling employees to work from anywhere in the world and it’s hard to imagine other organizations not following suit over the coming years.
The keynote focused on the importance of alignment in the modern age of teamwork and how teams need to find the right balance between alignment and autonomy to work effectively. But this should not come at a cost and its important teams are able to be innovative, improvise and bring their own individual creativity to the table.
This discussion highlighted one of the biggest challenges facing modern organizations; many of their teams are now distributed and work in different ways and use different tools. And this is a challenge the new product Atlas aims to address.
In the second half of the keynote, Anu Bharadwaj (Chief Operating Officer, Atlassian) shared a number of the improvements made to existing Atlassian products and we’re going to share the most important ones.
First up, integrated charts are coming to the Confluence Cloud editor. You will be able to transform the information contained in tables into visual charts and graphs to aid storytelling within your teams.
We’re personally very excited for this feature as it felt like something that was missing for a long time.
Next up, Atlassian announced they are launching their own Data Lake which is really exciting! Modern organizations often have access to a wealth of data but find it difficult to extract the true value of this information. With the new Atlassian Data Lake, organizations are now able to access the data stored in Jira Software and Jira Service Management and transform it into meaningful insights using popular tools such as Power BI or Tableau.
But, if you don’t have access to either of these intelligence tools, don’t worry!
The second announcement was the launch of Atlassian Analytics which gives you a built-in dashboard and reporting tool that will help you unlock the value of the data stored in your Atlassian Data Lake. This is the first reveal of the recent Chartio acquisition and it’s exciting to see whats coming down the line.
Now, we move on to some improvements in Atlassian Cloud.
First, Atlassian have announced the Early Access Programme for a 50,000 user tier in Confluence and Jira Cloud. Since becoming a cloud-first company this feels like a logical step but we know there’s a lot of work to get to this point so it’s an exciting announcement!
In addition to this, Atlassian also shared they have been working on improving the performance of their Cloud platform and have been able to improve page load speeds in Jira and Confluence by +30% and +53% respectively (compared to last year).
Finally, Data Residency was another hot topic during Team ’22 and it’s great to hear 4 new regions (Canada, Japan, UK, Germany) will be made available in the next 12 months to supplement the 4 existing regions; US, APAC, Europe and ANZ.
Work differently, together: A new vision for Work Management
This keynote was focused specifically on teams and how the modern workplace uses a wide range of apps and tools to get things done.
Joff Redfern (Head of All Teams at Atlassian) kicked off the keynote by saying “one app to rule them all” is unlikely to work in the modern workplace and teams will need to use a variety of tools that are right for them. It’s Atlassian’s goal to enable teams to work in the way that’s right for them but empower them to do it together. This is where Atlas fits in.
Since we’ve covered Atlas already we won’t go over it again.
Let’s move onto the next part of the keynote where the improvements to Confluence, Trello and Jira Work Management were shared.
First up, we have Confluence.
As we know, Confluence plays an important role in teamwork and enables people to collaborate real-time. Atlassian have released a number of improvements to the Confluence editor which include smart links and the ability to use emojis to enhance the look and feel of pages.
Whilst Confluence is beneficial for bringing teams together, Atlassian have also added personal spaces and given every user a place to ideate and draft content before sharing things with the wider team. Also, Atlassian will soon be introducing presenter mode which gives you a way to present information without having to share links and create separate slides in PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides.
Next up, we have Automation for Confluence.
If you are already using Automation for Jira, you’ll be familiar with the concept and value of automation. Atlassian will soon be releasing an automation engine for Confluence which contains a number of triggers and rules that can be used by teams to enhance their productivity.
Finally, it was announced that Microsoft Teams will be the first non-Atlassian product to embed Confluence pages into an instant messenger chat and enable teams to view, edit and create pages without having to leave Microsoft Teams. We can see this feature being a game changer for teams that use Confluence and Microsoft Teams to collaborate and get work done.
Right, now that we’ve covered Confluence let’s move onto Trello.
For the first time in several years, Atlassian shared an updated user number for Trello which currently stands at 95 million registered users. A significant increase from the last reported figures several eyars ago!
Due its intuitive design and low learning curve, Trello is used (and loved) by many people and helps them manage their personal and professional lives. But, as explained in the keynote, it’s not just a tool limited to small teams. Trello is used extensively by teams in large organizations such as John Deere, Costco, eBay and Coinbase to keep working moving forward. During this presentation, Atlassian shared a really cool use case for the US Space Force so we’d recommend watching it back to find out more 
One of the main improvements to Trello is the ability to now translate Slack messages and emails into Trello cards at the click of a button. This is likely to have a big impact on the productivity of Trello users and we’re personally delighted to see this being introduced!
It was great to see Trello featured so heavily on the main stage and breakout sessions at Team ’22 and it feels like there is more exciting news to come so definitely watch this space!
And finally, let’s move onto Jira Work Management.
Jira Work Management was the flagship product launch at the Team ’21 (last year) and its a fantastic addition to Atlassian’s product portfolio.
This time around, there were two key announcements relating to Jira Work Management (JWM).
First up, we have multiplayer mode which enables you to see when people are making updates in Jira, real-time.
Second, Atlassian have announced that teams with an existing Jira Software license will get free usage of Jira Work Management. To us, this seems like a logical step in adoption of JWM and there are plenty of non-technical teams who can benefit from the powerful features that Jira Work Management has to offer.
Atlassian ITSM: Come together right now
ITSM has been a huge buzzword for several years now and it was great to hear what advancements Atlassian are making in this space.
The keynote kicked off with Scott talking about the Beatles and whilst they were incredibly gifted musicians in their own right, they were even more incredible working as a team and a lot can be learnt from them in the modern workplace.
Atlassian’s flagship ITSM product, Jira Service Management, now has over 40,000 customers which is a phenomenal achievement. It’s such a powerful tool that brings greater alignment between all types of teams from development, to operations, customer support to marketing. As a result of recent achievements in the ITSM space, Atlassian become the first vendor in 7 years to be named a Visionary in the 2021 Magic Quadrant for ITSM. Bravo 
Atlassian shared some of the most common challenges facing IT operations in today’s workplace and these include:
- Complex infrastructure
- Aggressive timelines
- Keeping teams aligned
- Information silos
With the recent advancements in Jira Service Management (JSM), Atlassian are focused on solving this challenges by providing Autonomy with Alignment and enabling teams to use a variety of automation rules to help deliver value faster and in line with existing processes and ways of working.
But we’re not done there. Sherif Mansour (Distinguished Product Manager, Atlassian) took centre stage to share some of the really exciting improvements coming to Jira Service Management and some of these are ground breaking!
First up, Jira Service Management (now comes with a low-code/no-code form builder as part of the native product. This will enable your teams to create simple service request forms and streamline the support process inside and outside of your organization.
Next up, Jira Service Management now has a native knowledge base built in which gives Service Desk agents the ability to create rich, tailored, high value content without leaving JSM. This is huge!
Now it’s time to turn it up a notch. Sherif announced that after the launch of Halp, this is now being integrated into Jira Service Management to bring conversation ticketing to life. Your teams can now ask for help within Slack and Microsoft Teams and this information will be accessible to the right teams, thus reducing the silos and information barriers that exist today
And finally, but possibly the most impressive announcement, Atlassian are integrating artificial intelligence into their virtual agent technology.
After acquiring Percept.ai, Atlassian are now integrating virtual agent technology into Jira Service Management which will help automate general support requests and help provide greater value to customers in much shorter timeframes.
The virtual agent will use artificial intelligence to analyse and understand the true intent behind a service request and then use this information to route it to the right place.
It looks really promising and if the integration and roll out is a success, this could be a game changer for organizations and the value they offer their customers.
Should you be in an open (software) relationship?
The last keynote of Team’22 was focused more towards Agile and DevOps.
Software teams have evolved and the modern development team is no longer just small groups of people writing code. They are far more complex and distributed with each team member having a variety of roles and using several tools to get work done.
In this keynote, Atlassian focused on how they are helping software teams leverage all the tools and applications they need to use to get their job done with Compass.
As mentioned above, Compass is a central hub that helps streamline how software teams work together but we won’t cover the same detail again.
It was a really interesting session and we would recommend you watch it back for more detail.
And there we have it…
Phew… there was a lot to cover!
I hope you found this Team ’22 roundup of product launches, announcements and general Atlassian news helpful. It was an incredible event and many of the presentations are available to watch on-demand so definitely take the time to watch the sessions you are interested in.
Thanks for taking the time to read through and we hope to see many of you again next year for Team ’23
