Hello everyone,
We’re excited to share that Forge has moved out of beta and into General Availability: this means you can rely on Forge’s hosted infrastructure, storage, and FaaS functions to support your Forge apps in production –all backed by Atlassian’s operational readiness.
In this post, we’ll cover what’s happening today, recap our recent releases, summarize our upcoming roadmap, and wrap up with a reminder on why we’re so heavily invested in Forge for the future of Atlassian’s ecosystem.
Forge is ready for production
We’re cutting the beta ribbon 
: Forge is ready for production usage. This is the the next chapter for Forge, and we have many ahead to look forward to as we continue to build out the platform functionality. You’ll see us continue to bring features out of beta (see below), but the platform today is ready to support your apps in production, at scale.
We know many of you are eagerly anticipating Marketplace integration for Forge, so I’ll say it now: a Marketplace Early Access Program is starting in the next few weeks, with General Availability targeted for end of April. You can read more in the roadmap section below. But first, a few details about what production ready means for Forge.
We’re progressing on operational readiness
In preparation for this milestone, we’ve taken a few critical steps to ensure you can rely on Forge as you build your next cloud apps. That includes:
- Forge now meets the high reliability and security standards kept by Atlassian products and services.
- Our customer and developer support teams are ready to handle Forge-related queries.
- We’ve completed a comprehensive third-party security penetration test.
- We’ve defined escalation paths for our teams, including incident management.
If you run into an issue, follow your usual escalation procedures and Forge will be covered: for general issues, post here in community.developer.atlassian.com/c/forge/ under the appropriate Forge category; and for critical bugs or security concerns, file a DEVHELP ticket at Jira Service Management .
Forge is free
We know the value that our developers and partners bring to our customers, so we’re committing to zero costs to use Forge until at least the end of 2023. The platform is protected against abuse and accidental overuse with generous usage quotas to cover even the most popular Marketplace apps. And yes, we have a plan in the rare case that an app might need quota increases to meet their business needs.
You can read more about all of this in our separate CDAC announcement post and documentation.
Some functionality remains beta
While we’re excited to make most of the platform Generally Available, we’re taking a balanced approach by keeping some things in beta. Most notably, we still see room to improve UI kit, scheduled triggers, and web triggers. You may still use these features, but be aware that there may be major changes to their functionality without the usual deprecation procedures. We expect those to move out of beta into general availability over the next few months.
Most new features will also debut in beta for early adoption and feedback before being launched to GA, so you can expect to see plenty of movement. As always, the source of truth for Forge features is our documentation, but here’s a recap of what we’ve recently launched and what’s coming next.
We’re continuing to invest: what’s new and next
What’s new
We’ve been working to make it easier for developers to build secure apps for every customer with Forge. We first announced Forge a bit over a year ago, and since then we’ve built out the foundations of the platform. Some recently launched features include:
- Custom UI for more flexibility with developer-defined JavaScript, CSS, and HTML in a secured iframe hosted by Atlassian.
- Developer console to view and manage all your Forge and OAuth 2.0 (3LO) apps in one place. This is where we’ll add more analytics and observability features over time.
- App distribution to easily share your apps with admins and other users.
- Jira admin panel so admins can configure Forge apps.
See the Forge Changelog for full details of features launched in the sixty-five Forge platform releases we’ve had since the initial beta launch. A huge thank you to all those who participated in the beta and please keep that feedback coming in!
What’s next?
All timelines are subject to change , but here are our current estimates for some of our top-requested functionality:
| ETA | Functionality |
|---|---|
| March 3 | Production log transfers so developers can identify and fix issues in production–with admin consent. |
| March 9 | Marketplace publication EAP. Anyone will be able to submit a Forge app for publication in a similar manner to Connect, but we will only offer limited, stringent approvals. At the very start, only apps that do not store personal data will be approved as we build out privacy readiness. |
| Mid March | CSP exemptions to make Custom UI more flexible. |
| Datetime custom fields for proper handling of time data in Jira issues. | |
| Late March | Jira project pages to support project-level user experiences. |
| Mid April | Data egress controls to enhance data privacy and security, and make it easier to disclose app behaviour to customer admins. |
| Privacy readiness with data subject functionality to unlock Marketplace publication for apps storing personal data, and support GDPR compliance efforts. | |
| Late April | Marketplace generally available for everyone, no restrictions. |
| Better app analytics and observability in developer console. | |
| Scheduled triggers in production , supporting >100 site installs. | |
| Web triggers for Marketplace apps . |
In addition, we’d like to share some updates on where Forge fits into Atlassian as a whole.
More products will support Forge
Forge is currently available for Jira and Confluence, but we are planning on rolling out support for more Atlassian products over time. This will bring a number of exciting new business opportunities to Marketplace Partners looking to grow their app portfolios or extend their existing offerings into other products.
Connect is still coming to Forge–later
Unfortunately, we needed to make a prioritization tradeoff in preparing Forge for GA. That means our roadmap for unifying Connect and Forge is now later than we had hoped–i.e. no longer by July. We’re working on revised timelines, and will share them as soon as we are able.
Build on Forge, or Connect if you need it
With the announcement of General Availability, we strongly recommend building new Marketplace apps on Forge where possible. Atlassian Connect, our developer platform for self-hosted cloud apps, remains available to support any of your apps that can’t yet leverage the benefits of Forge.
Forging onwards, together
Today marks a big step on our journey, with more platform power, security, and app distribution options to bring your Forge apps to production. We want to support app developers, enabling you to stand on our shoulders to reach new heights so we can work together to serve every customer, and unleash every team’s potential. Our next steps are just around the corner with Marketplace, and ever increasing functionality beyond.
Every new cloud app should be built on Forge if it can be (and if not, tell us what you need!), because you’ll benefit from all the work we’re doing at the platform level. Whether you have an existing set of server and Data Center apps you haven’t invested in bringing to cloud, or you have a new app idea to expand your portfolio, there’s never been a faster and easier way to start building and launch an app to the growing base of Atlassian cloud customers.
Forge on,
The Forge team
This is awesome!!
