Each new extensibility feature is an opportunity for partners to build innovative apps that solve previously unsolvable use cases for customers. In recent months, we’ve released multiple new ways for developers to add value to Atlassian products, including Forge modules to create custom Rovo agent actions. Forge already provides extensibility features developers can’t get anywhere else, including Atlassian-hosted storage, automatic data residency, and custom fields.
While Forge features are great news for new apps, there are many existing apps on Connect that customers rely on. To ensure all apps benefit from new features on Forge, we’ve developed a pathway for existing Connect apps to adopt Forge modules and capabilities, and this pathway is now generally available.
This means Connect apps can use features that are available through the Forge platform today, like custom fields, UI modifications, hosted storage, and Forge data residency. It also ensures Connect apps continue to get the best that the Atlassian developer platform has to offer as new Forge features become available.
We will follow through on existing Connect roadmap commitments, including data residency and app editions, and Connect will continue to receive security updates. However, Atlassian will deliver all new platform extensibility features only through Forge. Consolidating on one platform accelerates delivery of new features, allowing Atlassian and our partners to build once, adopt everywhere, with the latest Atlassian Cloud capabilities.
Progress leading up to GA
General availability marks several key developments in the Connect to Forge pathway, including mass eligibility, production readiness, and improvements shipped in Forge. All Connect apps, with the exception of those supporting data residency, can adopt Forge today, and over 50 Marketplace apps have converted their Connect descriptor to a Forge manifest. Of those, nearly all have already begun adding new Forge modules to adopt Forge-only features or replace Connect modules with the Forge equivalent.
Forge itself has seen substantial progress since we announced the Preview release of Connect to Forge migration in February 2024. UI kit has reached general availability, Forge remote supports multi-directional communication between Forge and remote services, and Forge license testing is now available for former Connect apps. With Rovo agent-enabled apps on the horizon and improvements to Forge storage, like SQL databases, on the roadmap, there’s lots of goodness in the works for partners building on Forge.
Leveraging Forge, step by step
Over 170 apps have taken steps to port Connect apps to the Forge platform allowing partners to gradually incorporate Forge features into their apps without a complete re-write.
Many former Connect apps are now in production as Forge apps, installed and used by Marketplace customers. One partner who has taken the leap is Tobias Binna, founder of Toolplus. Currently, the app’s architecture is split, with some functionality provided by Forge and some remaining on Connect. This gives the Toolsplus development team the flexibility to decide which parts to migrate and when.
“My goal is to go all the way,” Tobias says. “I’m a small partner, so I see certain benefits in Forge. I don’t mind giving up the infrastructure, and being more focused on the app certainly helps.” However, there are a few parts of his app Tobias isn’t ready to move completely to Forge. Taking an incremental approach means partners can start exploring Forge while maintaining the Connect parts of the app until Forge provides a better replacement.
Likewise, David Pinn, founder of ProjectBalm, is also in the process of moving a 7-year-old Connect app to Forge: Risk Register. “Our focus has been on re-implementing the modules as Forge modules,” David says.
Life post-migration
As the first cohort of former Connect apps have begun moving to Forge, partners have tested new deployment workflows, ensuring they can continue to reliably ship updates to the app’s hybrid architecture.
David Pinn of Projectbalm describes the new workflow: “We have a Bitbucket pipeline that now has a couple of extra things to do with Forge, but the deployment looks pretty much the same for the developers. Maintenance has been pretty smooth to be honest.”
This mirrors the experience Atlassian engineers have seen while dogfooding the migration process, porting Atlassian Labs apps like My Reminders to Forge. Robert Massaioli is an Atlassian engineering manager and the developer of the My Reminders app. With the goal of shifting storage to Forge (and gaining data residency in the process), Robert migrated the app to a half-Connect, half-Forge state. During this phase, Robert decided which data to retain, as well as implementing usage limits, improving the overall health of the app. Robert ran two different builds for each side to deploy the app, always Connect-first since the Connect app is considered a Forge remote. Later, when the Connect backend was decommissioned, the development loop became very simple, with far less maintenance than before. “I’m very happy that I made the switch,” Robert added.
Looking to Forge for enterprise features and lower overhead
Echoing Tobias Binna, Projectbalm’s goal is to migrate Risk Register entirely to Forge. “Our working hypothesis is to go all the way and get Forge hosted storage, in order to get automatic data residency,” David says. This is a common motivation, given the complexity and cost of implementing data residency for a Connect app, and the increasing demand from enterprise customers.
Forge’s built-in infrastructure and observability are also attractive. “We just want fewer moving parts,” David says. “We have our app server and database server and all the monitoring that goes into that. I’d rather go to the dev console.”
Conclusion: A single path forward for extensibility
As the Atlassian ecosystem continues to coalesce around Forge, partners can expect greater momentum bringing new extensibility features to market. Forge is the future, and all new extensibility features will be delivered Forge-only.
To ensure partners continue to receive the latest and best platform features, we recommend beginning to explore using Forge with existing Connect apps. Automated tooling is available, and the process of converting a Connect app to Forge and adding a new module takes less than an hour. Resources are available in the developer documentation, as well as on YouTube, and in our FAQ. Partners can ask questions in the developer community, and we’ll be standing by to help.
We’re excited to take this major step towards ensuring all cloud apps can benefit from the investments we are making in Forge. Follow the Forge changelog to stay up to date on the latest developments.