We have assembled a team here in Atlassian to make the necessary changes to enable our cloud customers to rename their site name. Currently site renames are performed via export and import of sites, which has previously caused issues for Connect apps due to duplication of records. In order to prevent those issues, we had to exclude Connect apps during the export process. As a result, a site would lose all the Connect apps during export and they have to be installed again once imported. When the site rename functionality becomes available, there will be no longer any need to perform the export and import, as a result Connect apps will not be impacted. Well, not quite, keep reading.
In order to provide this functionality in a timely manner, we have decided to leverage an existing lifecycle method, ‘installed’, to update the installation and send a new payload with the new base URL of the site. Everything else will be the same, and the payload will be signed with the existing shared secret.
Hi @nick - I’m the product manager working on rolling out this capability, working with @natashbar on this project. To answer your two questions:
We’re progressively rolling this out to Jira and Confluence Cloud customers over the next couple of months, beginning with Confluence, and will gradually enable this for customers over this period.
We’ve set a limit of 5 renames for the time being, with any subsequent renames requiring Support involvement. Once this has been rolled out to all customers we’ll monitor the volume of site rename requests, and adjust this limit if required.
Hi @Maarten - there’s some more work that needs to land internally before we open this up for admins to rename their site on a selective basis. All going to plan, I expect this to happen in the next few weeks. We’re already testing rename capabilities on internal Atlassian sites, and the results are looking good, so far.
At this point we’ll limit to Confluence only - this is reflective of when different sets of changes will be deployed, as opposed to any specific prioritisation decision. We’ll be enabling this for Jira (and Jira + Confluence) sites as soon as the necessary changes have been deployed, again hopefully in the next few weeks.
Is it possible to enable Jira renames in some instances so we can test how Jira and our addons will behave before you open the feature to everybody else? it would be nice to proactively update our addon before installations are broken due to renames.
Just to clarify, users/admins can rename the site name - is that the subdomain/prefix portion off the url, i.e. MyCoolJiraSite.atlassian.net?
Assuming this is not the ability to also use a custom domain (i.e. myjira.com)
@andy.ennamorato, this project only addresses renaming the subdomain/prefix portion, but using a custom domain is definitely a next step once we accomplish this.
Since this is already a few months old, I just wanted to ask if there is an update on this topic. I was searching for such an option to rename an instance by myself (i.e. in the admin section of my developer instance), but as far as I can see that’s not possible yet. I guess it’s not available yet. Or maybe I haven’t searched in the right place?
That’s right. We will post updates to that ticket.
Before making this feature publicly available, we will provide a way for app developer to test the feature to make sure if their app will work properly after site rename. We have already reached out to some developers, but please feel free to get in touch with us via Jira Service Management if you are interested.
This will also answer @anon28347317’s question (sorry, I forgot to respond to you earlier).
Regards,
Norman
Will the Atlassian-provided frameworks (ie. ACE and Atlassian Spring Boot) provide support for renames directly? Are there any specific minimum versions for those frameworks we should be aware of?
I checked as far as version 2.0.0 of ACE, and it seemed fine. There is no reason you may want to be on an earlier version of it (some of the older versions have security issues).
Spring Boot framework supports site rename requirements from the first publicly available version.
Since those frameworks are really barebone of a Connect app they don’t really do much. In order to support site rename, all they have to do is updating the complete database record from the payload of the ‘/installed’ callback. It becomes more complicated as you add things to this barebone. Some times you read the base URL from database and store it somewhere else or give it to an external system. This is where the app becomes incompatible, because then updating the database record at ‘/installed’ is not enough to reflect the changes made to the URL of the site. Therefore, using a supported framework is fine as long as you adhere to other requirements (mentioned in the blog post) as well.
@natashbar: Tried to follow the portal link but there isn’t a lot there on how to ask for access to this feature in terms of beta/testing.
We’ve had a few customers coming in, intending to use it. Reaching out to Atlassian, whose support is saying that for example us as a vendor do not support this lifecycle.
Given the docuementation this basically amounts to supporting the lifecycle and not storing the url’s.
Hi @bjorng1,
Sorry for late reply. @vli has been working with some Vendors to facilitate testing. Please raise a request at Jira Service Management and we will help you validate that.
Regards,
Norman
What is the rollout plan for this? Seems to make the most sense to allow vendors to enable it on their own test sites to validate whether their apps support site renaming properly?
I’ve just created this Confluence Cloud Server: artemis-dev6.atlassian.net
Please add whichever feature flag there which will allow us to test the renaming feature to that server.
Also apologies if I missed it, but what is the current rollout schedule for this feature?
Dont know where to report this (Don’t know who’s issue it is) but if you have an app using private tokens from the Atlassian Marketplace installed on a jira instance and then rename the jira instance base url - the private token is no longer valid.
You have to go and get a new private token (and expire the old one).
It’s a small thing - but I’m sure somebody else will stumble over it…
@danielwester said: if you have an app using private tokens from the Atlassian Marketplace installed on a jira instance and then rename the jira instance base url - the private token is no longer valid.
The fix for this scenario has shipped in December 2019. Please let us know if you’re still having any problems.
Announcements will be posted in the description. Succinctly, the rollout schedule is:
Currently: Rename requests will be actioned via a support request. Support will review eligibility criteria prior to triggering a rename
Next: Progressing towards a fully self-service experience for administrators
Specifically for Marketplace Vendors, we are trying validate your Cloud addon(s) work after a rename has been actioned. If your addon is not listed on this ticket, it’s assumed it’s not compatible: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CLOUD-10809