Atlassian Offers Developers Next Gen Platform to Easily Build Add-ons for Cloud-based JIRA and Confluence

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 4, 2014

Atlassian, a leading provider of collaboration software for teams, today announced Atlassian Connect - an extensible new framework for developers to build add-ons that deeply integrate with AtlassianJIRA OnDemand and Atlassian Confluence OnDemand, the company's cloud-based issue tracking and collaboration offerings. Developers can offer these add-ons to Atlassian's 33,000 customers via the Atlassian Marketplace, a proven ecosystem of more than 1,500 commercial and free add-ons. Since the Atlassian Marketplace launched in 2012, third party add-on developers who have sold products via the platform have earned more than $20 million.

"Customer demand for customized add-ons to our cloud-based JIRA and Confluence offerings has been incredible," said Nick Wade, director of Atlassian Marketplace. "With our next generation development framework – Atlassian Connect – third-party developers can now easily create secure and scalable add-ons for millions of Atlassian cloud-based customers and sell their products via our marketplace. We’re thrilled to help fellow developers build their own businesses."

Click to tweet:  "Announcing @Atlassian Connect, the next generation of add-ons for #JIRA and #Confluence OnDemand http://ow.ly/ucD4I"

The new Atlassian Connect framework, built on common web standards like REST APIs and JWT authentication, offers additional modules for developers to integrate add-ons directly into Atlassian applications using the technology stack of their choice. Third-party partners like Zendesk, Lucidchart, Gliffy, Zephyr, and Comalatech are among the early adopters of Atlassian Connect. Today 15 publicly available add-ons for Atlassian JIRA and Confluence OnDemand are already in use by more than 600 companies.

"The streamlined discovery and procurement experience offered by marketplaces accelerates the consumption of applications - making it a win/win for both customer and developer, as the mobile market has more than adequately demonstrated," said Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst with RedMonk. "Atlassian has invested heavily in this area, and with Atlassian Connect is attempting to dramatically expand the reach of its marketplace to the cloud."

"We see Atlassian Connect as an opportunity to re-architect our successful diagramming and mockup tool for JIRA," said Chris Kohlhardt, CEO of Gliffy. "Based on Atlassian Connect, the next version of Gliffy for JIRA OnDemand will maintain the same intuitive interface and we'll be able to deploy product improvements instantly."

Rich platform for developers

Atlassian Connect provides rich user interface integration and continuous two-way communication to create smoother end-to-end experiences for customers. Specifically, Atlassian Connect offers:

• Simple descriptors: Any web application – written in any language – can become an Atlassian Connect add-on by providing a simple JSON file to describe itself to Atlassian applications. Atlassian has already built client libraries for node.js and the Play framework to make getting started even easier.
• User interface modules: Atlassian Connect provides almost two dozen different UI integration points, such as issue panels, page macros, and fullscreen pages for add-ons to insert content directly into the Atlassian application.
• Two-way communication: Atlassian Connect add-ons can pull data and push data back using JIRA or Confluence's REST APIs, listen for events with webhooks, and recognize different users via JWT authentication.

Training/Availability

Atlassian will provide extensive training and discussion of Atlassian Connect at its upcoming eighth annual developer conference,AtlasCamp, to be held June 3-5 in Berlin, Germany. For more information, go to www.atlassian.com/AtlasCamp. Developers interested in building Atlassian Connect add-ons for public distribution or private use can access developer tutorials and documentation atconnect.atlassian.com.

Newly available add-ons for JIRA and Confluence OnDemand built using Atlassian Connect include:

• Zendesk for JIRA: Seamlessly escalate Zendesk tickets to JIRA to keep customer support, developers, and product managers all in sync
• EazyBI for JIRA: A powerful business intelligence tool with drag-and-drop creation of pivot tables and charts based on JIRA data
• Canvas for Confluence and JIRA: Interactive boards help teams collaborate visually: create issues or pages, drag to organize by field attribute or label, and filter
• Harvest Time Tracking for JIRA: Integration between JIRA and the Harvest time tracking platform so users can track time on JIRA issues from within JIRA
• Ink File Picker for Confluence: Allows Confluence users to attach files to pages from over a dozen cloud storage services, including Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive
• Aha! Product Roadmaps for JIRA: Create product strategy and visual roadmaps in Aha! and move epics and stories into JIRA to be developed

Developer tutorials and documentation are available at connect.atlassian.com.

About Atlassian

Atlassian products help innovators everywhere plan, build and launch great software. More than 33,000 large and small organizations – including Citigroup, eBay, Coca-Cola, Netflix and United Airlines – use Atlassian’s issue tracking, collaboration and software-development products to work smarter and deliver quality results on time. Learn more at http://atlassian.com.