Posts

Redefining Partnerships in the Atlassian Ecosystem

From Warsaw to Wrocław - 100 bridges to explore Partnerships reinvented In the dynamic world of the Atlassian ecosystem, partnerships are constantly evolving. Beyond the familiar territories of “solution partner” and “marketplace partner” lies a vast expanse of untapped potential. The journey of discovery often starts with some reflective questions: Are we focused on growth? Is solving customer problems our ultimate goal? How can we mutually benefit as two vendors?

Streamlined Financial Approvals in Jira

In the financial sector, where precision and compliance are paramount, approval processes have often been the bottleneck, stalling financial transactions. Enter Approval Path: the Jira extension transforms the cumbersome task of obtaining financial approvals into a streamlined, transparent, and swift process. The Challenge of Timely Approvals Imagine a scenario where a finance team is scrambling to get an unbudgeted software update approved. In a traditional setting, this would involve a series of emails, manual tracking of approvals, and constant follow-ups, leading to an agonizing wait - sometimes days - for a green light.

How-to: create your own financial approval with the Conditional feature

The Conditionals feature for the Approval Path creates many possibilities for more complex automation. With it, you can control processes without wasting time and energy analyzing what should happen next. You can set it up once and forget about manual management of approvals. One of the setups we know is often used is financial approval. Let’s look at a scenario: The marketing team needs a new camera and photo editing software budget.

Navigating Feature Deployment with Approval Path for Jira

OrbTech, a hypothetical mid-sized tech company, is deploying a new feature. The recent development of a new functionality takes many steps and requires cooperation from multiple departments. Let’s dive into their journey, highlighting how the Approval Path for Jira played a pivotal role. Creating the feature Maya, the dev lead, initiates the first approval request using Approval Path within their Jira system to ensure the new feature meets OrbTech’s initial standards and requirements.

Conditionals Feature in Approval Path

The new Conditions feature for improving workflow and approval management is here! The introduction of conditional approvals in Approval Path opens up a world of possibilities for project management. By integrating the power of Jira expressions and the Jira REST API, this feature offers a dynamic, adaptable approach to project management that fits perfectly with your unique operational needs. Tailored Approvals for Every Scenario The Conditions feature in Jira allows for a high level of customization in managing project workflows.

Reflecting on Our Platinum Journey: A Blend of Pride and Perspective

As we celebrate our ascent to Platinum Marketplace Partner status within the Atlassian ecosystem, the moment is ripe for both recognition and reflection. This milestone is a testament to our relentless pursuit of excellence and innovation in enhancing the Atlassian ecosystem. “Looking at the efforts our company invests in developing products that enhance Atlassian systems, we take pride in achieving the esteemed status of Platinum Marketplace Partner.” shares Kamil, one of our Founders.

Delegate your approval steps in Approval Path

Approval Path for Jira: Elevate Your Approval Game Gone are the days when Jira’s built-in approvals left you wanting for more. With the new feature for the Approval Path Jira extension, the approval process is now streamlined, intuitive, and packed with features that will redefine how you manage approvals in your projects. What’s New? The Delegation Feature! Picture this: You’re on vacation, but an important approval awaits your nod. With the Delegation feature, you can now delegate your approval responsibilities to another user.

Sharing Without Oversharing: Tailored Transparency for External Boards

Table of Contents Before We Dive In Configuring the Board to Exclude Backlog Adding Their Issues to the Active Board Scrum Board Automation Kanban Board Automation Conclusion Additional Resources Connect with Us on LinkedIn In the realm of agile collaboration, the devil is in the details. Balancing transparency with privacy is akin to a tightrope walk. Walk it with confidence. With External Share for Jira, we ensure that external collaborators see only the active tasks and their contributions, keeping the backlog discreetly tucked away in the shadows.

Introducing The New Issue Creation Update for External Share

In the world of project management, collaboration is crucial. Every day we face new challenges and issues we need to overcome. Now it’s easier for your external collaborators to communicate them to your team. We’re excited to present the latest enhancement to the External Share for Jira: the Issue Creation update. This update enables external users to create new issues on shared boards, timelines and filters, streamlining collaboration and project success.

Boost Team Collaboration with Jira's Smart Checklist + External Share Integration

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.” Henry Ford Effective teamwork and collaboration lie at the heart of any successful project. Acknowledging this truth, the tools available in the Jira ecosystem continuously evolve, providing new opportunities for seamless collaboration. Today, we are focusing on a particularly exciting development: the integration between Smart Checklist and External Share. This powerful combination is set to transform the way teams work together.

Mastering the Art of Selective Sharing

Sharing made simple: exclude content with ease Hey there, fellow Confluence enthusiasts! Do you ever find yourself needing to share a Confluence page with someone outside your organization, but there’s just that one piece of sensitive information you’d rather keep under wraps? Well, fear not! Today, we’re diving into the magical world of the “exclude content macro” in the External Share for Confluence add-on. Get ready to become a selective sharing maestro!

Enhance collaboration with External Share's Roadmap Share feature

Collaboration is the key to success, and Roadmaps are the key to collaboration. Hey there, are you struggling to collaborate with your clients and partners on Jira Roadmaps? Well, fret not, my friend! Let me introduce you to Roadmap Share, the newly introduced feature to External Share, the ultimate feature that enables Jira users to share their Roadmaps with external stakeholders without breaking a sweat. Create and Customize Roadmap Share operates differently from your standard share feature.

Streamlining Your Approval Process with Automation in Jira

Simplify your workflow and save time with just a few clicks. Why automation? Do you find yourself constantly starting approvals manually for each issue in your project? Do you wish there was a way to automate this tedious process? Well, we have great news for you! In this blog post, we will guide you through the steps to automatically start an approval path for any issue that goes through a specific status transition.

Popular Confluence Macros That External Users Can See

Atlassian’s new public links feature lets you create a special URL directing to a safe, read-only version of a Confluence page, and share it with someone who doesn’t have a Confluence license. It’s similar to our Atlassian Marketplace app, External Share for Confluence, except its functionality and security options are much more limited. One big functionality limit with the native links feature is that you can’t share many of Atlassian’s own Confluence macros, and you can’t share *any *3rd party macros.

Making Sure Your E-signatures Are Legal Worldwide

Electronic signatures were in use long before the pandemic, and their legal standing has been defined in various statutes since around 2000. But they used to be a strategic asset: a flexible, fast, green, international relations booster. Then the lockdowns happened, wet ink signatures became unworkable, and e-signatures turned from an asset into a necessity. A survey of US business owners and individuals by airSlate showed that the use of e-signatures among businesses surged by 50% during 2020.

Approval Path start parametrization

It’s about convenience and more! What is parametrization? In this context, parametrization is a rather fresh feature of Approval Path, and we think it could boost user experience a lot! Well, at least for users that use Approval Path more excessively. Here is why! Functionalities Parametrization will allow you to re-use an existing path (definition) while you conveniently rename the approval just before you start it! Also it allows you to set expiry dates.

Issue filed steps - email edition

Life is dynamic, so are we! What are issue fields If you already know the answer, skip this part! As the name suggests these are fields inside each issue on Jira, to name a few, The description field The assignee field The reported field All of these are standard issue fields in Jira, you can also have “Custom” fields. Custom fields can be placed upon your need, there is are many custom fields available on Jira but you will need to know only a few to take advantage of Approval Path’s dynamic features!

Approval Path for Confluence - Now free of charge

Fast, reliable, secure, and now FREE! I am thrilled as I write this blog! Approval Path for Confluence is officially free of charge now, regardless of your company size! How come?? The decision was made by taking many factors into consideration, although what ignited the idea is promotion. We know the amount of work and effort that is put into Approval Path as well, and we know that Approval Path is a solid solution to many projects in the Atlassian ecosystem.

Jira projects templates

Jira is one of the most popular issue tracking and project management software. When released in 2002, it was designed as an issue tracking platform for software developers. It has become more popular, so Atlassian expanded the Jira platform and gave users a choice between Jira Software, Jira Work Management and Jira Service Management. Each product is targeted at a different group. Jira Work Management is aimed at non-technical teams. Jira Software is designed for software teams: developers, QA, scrum masters, project managers, etc.

Multiple approvals

You asked, we care, we listen and now we deliver! The time has come yet again for a new feature! A feature YOU asked for! If you are using the Approval Path, you have likely considered this feature at some point in your experience. Why can’t I just run multiple paths instead of only one?🤔 Well, that is no longer the case! What is Approval Path and why it matter?

Approval Path API - Now with Reset support

One small update for Approval Path, one giant leap for automation. When it comes to the Approval Path there are really two ways the approval can finalize, approved or rejected, sometimes however that may not be the final, whether someone mistakenly approved or rejected the path or had a change of heart after submission, there are times we just need to hit the reset button! Here at Warsaw Dynamics, we figured having this feature work with API could really give a ton of additional flexibility when it comes to managing your approvals; hence the new update!

External Share for Confluence versus Atlassian's Guest Users Feature

Atlassian recently announced their Confluence guest users feature and people have since been asking us: what’s the difference between the built-in feature and our app, External Share for Confluence? Before we go into detail, here’s a handy comparison table, showing the differences in a nutshell. Now, let’s dive into the details… What is Atlassian’s Confluence guest users feature? With this new feature, you can have 5 free guest users per licensed user added to a specific space in your Confluence instance.

Permission flexibility!?

We have a new and rather EXITING update!!! (on both Jira and Confluence) We’ve been working around the concept of approval path for quite some time, if you are a user of Approval Path, you probably work in an environment where permission hierarchies play a role, hence the need of approvals! So, what’s the update and how can it improve your experience!?! Permission schemes That’s right!!! You can now limit or extend the access of users to approval path capabilities, you can create more flexibility around the approval path by allowing more users to interact with the path or you may wish to limit access restrictions further to have a more focused group of users handle the approvals.

Add Signatures to Jira Issues with the New E-Signature App

Jira issues just got a LOT more exciting. These already awesome little tools for assigning and tracking work can now be transformed into quick legal contracts in a few clicks. Old Street’s newest app, Contract Signatures for Jira, makes it possible for internal and external users to add their signature to a Jira issue and formalize their agreement to the work described in it. And yes, you heard right. It’s possible for internal AND external users to sign Jira issues.

Approval path with external user participation

Usually, an approval process takes place within the organisation. However, in some cases, a decision from someone outside your Jira or Confluence is needed. There is no point in adding this user to your instance when there is an easier and faster solution provided by the Approval Path apps, which is the email step. All you need is a decisive person’s email address, on which will be sent a call for action message.

Big update pack

We are constantly developing our apps to make them more useful. Lately, we added some improvements to the Approval Path for Jira and the Approval Path for Confluence. Let’s walk through some of them. Parallel group In response to customer requests, we added the parallel group to both the Approval Path for Jira and the Approval Path for Confluence. It allows all users added to the group to approve or reject parallelly.

How to Share Your Jira Agile Board with External Users

There’ll be times when you want to share a bunch of Jira issues externally without buying extra licenses. Maybe you’re working on a project with an external partner or contractor that has multiple issues requiring the external user’s attention. External Share for Jiraallows you to give external users secure, temporary access to those issues in three ways: Create External Share links to each issue individually Create an External Share link to a list of issues using Jira Query Language (JQL) Create an External Share link to an entire Scrum or Kanban board If you have a lot of issues to share, you probably don’t want to go down route one.

Custom Domains for Confluence and Jira: The Ultimate Workaround to End Your CLOUD-6999 Woes

The Atlassian Community has been hankering after custom domains for Confluence and Jira for absolute yonks. It’s difficult to offer continuity of service – not to mention disorienting for the customer – when you’re directing them to a website that’s not your company’s in order to view your resources and documentation. You’ve probably heard of the famous CLOUD-6999 Jira ticket. Behind it lies a tale of woe and despair. This simple request for custom domains for Atlassian Cloud products has been languishing in Atlassian’s backlog for so long it’s become a meme and sparked a range of merchandise.

Example uses of the approval process

With the growth of the company, comes a moment when standardization of the approval process becomes necessary. It could be a moment, when different people are responsible for the decision and realisation, or when reaching each approver becomes too time-consuming. The approval process can be carried out in an outdated way - with emails, PDFs, Word documents, or at worst, on paper… But luckily we can use approval management apps like Approval Path for Jira and Approval Path for Confluence to improve the process.

Achieving a Single Source of Truth in your Organization

Single source of truth (SSOT) is a concept used to ensure that everyone in an organization makes decisions based on the same data. In document management terms, it’s about centralizing all relevant and up-to-date documents about your company and projects so that they’re accessible from one place. Why is it important? Because if your teams are storing important documents in personal inboxes or saving them to desktops and folders that no one else can access, they’re effectively hiding information from the rest of the team.

Approval Path vs Build-in Jira Approval solution

Jira’s only built-in functionality to set up an approval process is in the Jira Service Management. Approvals in Jira Service Management are associated with the workflow. While this is useful, it also creates some limitations. In this article, we will look into the differences between the approval processes in the Approval Path and in the Jira Service Management Approval Path Jira Project types Any kind of project Jira Service Management Number of steps As many as needed One approval - one step Step types User, Group, Issue Field- User, Issue Field- Group, Email, Webhook User, Group Approval definitions ✔ ✘ Path visualisation Clear, legible Illegible Project types The Approval Path app allows you to run the approval in any type of issue in any type of project, unlike Jira’s native approval process which can be used only in Jira Service Management, only in issues that have approval added to a workflow.

How to Make, Manage, and Sign Contracts in Confluence

Lots of the organizations we encounter are using Microsoft Word, Google, Adobe, SharePoint, and various other tools to create, collaborate on, and store their agreements. Many of these tools don’t integrate with each other, putting teams and their data into silos. Silos that breed delays and replication in the contract management process. With so many more people now working remotely, silos are becoming harder to maintain. Increasing numbers of organizations are looking to centralize their data and achieve a single source of truth in order to alleviate the confusion and poor data quality that comes from having distributed teams spread across time zones, all working off different information.

With Automation, Dark Mode, Custom Domains & More, External Share is Basically A New App

Our team have added so many new features and improvements toExternal Share for Jira and Confluenceover the past few months that what customers are getting now is effectively a brand new app. Let’s walk through some of the additions. Automated Share Management We would all rather be doing things that are valuable. Things that make us money. Admin tasks don’t make us money. They make usbored. This is why we’ve added a new Automated Share Management feature toExternal Share for Jira.

Digitally Sign Contracts in Confluence with Old Street’s Brand New App

Confluence is already an ideal place to be creating, managing, and storing your contracts. Of course, the most important feature of any contract is the signatures of the parties. It’s not an agreement till someone agrees to it. And yet, there’s no way of digitally signing contracts inside Confluence. You’d need to export it and use another digital signature tool like DocuSign, taking the process and the audit trail outside of the platform you’re working in.

Controlling Who Sees Your External Share for Confluence and Jira Links

Companies have been asking us for a way of restricting which users can see theirExternal Share for Jira and Confluencelinks. Previously, you could create a secure link to your Confluence page or Jira issue and share it with a chosen person outside your instance. That link was always safe from a randomer on the internet finding it, thanks to its unguessable 16-character URL. It could be protected further by adding a password, making the page or issue inaccessible to anyone without it.

How to Customize your External Share Email Templates

After creating an External Share link to a Confluence page or Jira issue, there are two ways to share the link with a user outside of your instance: Copy the URL of the External Share version of the page or issue and paste it into an email or instant message. Click “Send via email”, which will send your External Share link to the email address you enter using an email template.

How to Share Jira with External Users (Securely)

As Jira grows ever more ubiquitous, it’s increasingly necessary for larger and more diverse groups to communicate and collaborate on projects in real-time. The ancients’ rituals of emailing screenshots are embarrassingly outdated for software-enabled teams that bought Jira to avoid email-chain siloes and the disheartening disaster of discovering efforts have been duplicated due to a lack of real-time project management. Fear not! There are three options for collaborating securely with external users in Jira:

4 Ways of Sharing Confluence Content

If your organization is using Confluence, it’s likely that you’ve been asked how to share the content you’ve created. There are a lot of reasons you may want to share Confluence pages, e.g. you may need to collaborate with someone on the content, or deliver it to someone inside or outside of your organization. Understanding the different options for sharing from Confluence is essential and you’ll probably end up using a combination of them, depending what you’re doing.

How to manage approvals in Jira – a step-by-step guide

Approvals in Jira have become as necessary as workflows and boards. This is thanks to increasing adoption among business teams like HR, operations, legal, and procurement, for whom approvals are an everyday function. And yet, there is no native functionality for approval management in Jira itself (apart from in Jira Service Management, and it’s not very good). This is why we have built Approval Path for Jira, an app that lets you create as many project-specific templates for approving a piece of work as you like.

Approval management is the missing piece of the Jira toolset

Approval management is the missing piece of the Jira toolset Approval Path for Jira Native Jira’s only approval management functionality is in Jira Service Management (JSM), and we’re being kind when we say it’s, urm, not the best. In Jira Software and Jira Work Management (JWM), a workaround is your only option for getting a process, proposal, or purchase approved within Jira. And yet, it’s something users are frequently asking for help with on the Atlassian community, specifically, how to add an approval step to a Jira Software or JWM project.

Wanna See Some More? Now Your External Users Can Become Watchers on Jira Issues

A new feature has just launched in the cloud version of our External Share for Jira app. We call it ‘External Watch’. External Watch lets your external users subscribe to the issues you’ve given them access to. That’s good for them because it saves them time. It’s good for you because it makes collaboration more immediate so that work can progress faster. For the uninitiated, External Share for Jira gives external users secure, temporary access to a live Jira issue by generating unique links with optional passwords and time limits, and easy-to-specify permissions.