Atlassian adds “Compass” and “Atlas” for developers and collaboration teams

Atlassian today rolled out two new software additions to its platform, one aimed at software developers, the other designed for team collaboration, and added new data-driven features.

Compass and Atlas are from Atlassian Accelerator Point A, a program that creates new products to address customer issues. (Jira Work Management, launched by Atlassian in April 2021, was also born out of Accelerator Point A.)

The last announcements took place during Atlassian ’22 in Las Vegas, the company’s annual event.

Compass for software development

Atlassian’s new Compass is designed to help software development teams overcome the complexities of distributed software architecture, including the need for multiple tools

“They spend a lot of time managing these multiple tools and products, just to see what’s happening in the technical landscape they’re working on,” said Anu Bharadwaj, COO of Atlassian.

Compass is comprised of three parts: Components, Scorecards, and Applications, and provides a holistic view of software development components as they evolve.

• Components give developers a unified interface to track both technical architecture and associated teams over time. Developers can access shared components, documentation, and other important information for building software in one place.
• Scorecards is a DevOps health tool that allows developers to measure their architecture against baseline, security, or compliance requirements they must meet. With Compass, Atlassian said, the auditing process can go from once or twice a year to near real-time, with health scorecards displayed on components.
• apps can bring insights across a variety of SaaS development tools to help teams better align their work and give them the flexibility to choose the best tool for the job.

Compass is fully compatible with Forge, Atlassian’s cloud application development platform; Forge’s integrated Functions-as-a-Service platform allows teams to extend Compass with minimal configuration.

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Atlas, a directory of teamwork

Atlas is a teamwork directory used to connect the dots between teams, their apps, and their work. Atlassian says this helps foster alignment by clarifying what a company does, how it happens, and who is working on what.

“When you go from, say, 10 people to 100 people or 1,000 people, those communication loops get weaker,” Bharadwaj said. “In general, growing companies tell us that it is more difficult to connect with the new person on the team, explain the mission or purpose of the company and let them know how the work what they’re doing really helps to make things happen.”

Atlas gives every project a homepage, where everyone can see what the project entails and how success will be measured. Users can also link Jira issues, Confluence pages and connected Trello boards to each project, while team members can “follow” the project for weekly updates and discover related projects from the same page.

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Each project in Atlas can also be connected to an objective, linking work to business results. Atlas reminds teams to post updates on their work weekly for projects and monthly for goals.

These weekly updates are limited to 280 characters and users can embed videos, images, gifs to create useful and engaging update. Every Monday, users receive a personalized summary of the projects they follow by email, in a Slack channel or via Microsoft Teams.

Atlassian is also bringing smart links to Atlas, first introduced in Confluence and Trello updates in 2020. When pasting a URL into Atlas, the link can be displayed only as the title of the linked item , a full link preview, or a thumbnail preview of the link content.

Smart links also work in reverse, allowing live previews of project updates and Atlas goals to be added to any Confluence page, Jira issue, or Trello board.

Each Atlas user has an individual profile, detailing what they are working on and what has been achieved; their direct reporting lines; and cross-organizational teams that a specific employee has worked with on other projects. Atlassian plans to add a “skills and interests” section to each team’s profile in the coming months.

Wayne Kurtzman, IDC Research Director for Social and Collaboration, said Atlas enables Atlassian to create a more connected fabric at the person level and scale across all of its products. “Instead of relying on features from other vendors, Atlas is bringing Atlassian one step closer to becoming the platform it envisioned,” he said.

Atlassian Analytics and Data Lake

Atlassian will also offer two new abilities to give users flexible access to all their data.

The Atlassian Data Lake contains cross-product and cross-instance data for easy analysis with pre-modeled and enriched fields to accelerate insight generation. At launch, Atlassian Data Lake will include data from Jira Software and Jira Service Management, with access to data from other Atlassian products expected in the future.

Atlassian Analytics uses technology from Chartio, a cloud-based visualization and analytics company Atlassian acquired Last year. It connects to Atlassian Data Lake and allows users to access data through interactive dashboards, SQL visualizations, no-code visualizations, and insights pulled from other business-critical data sources.

In a future update, Atlassian says users will be able to connect directly to external business intelligence tools.