Hej Atlassian,
I just woke up to a barrage of emails you apparently sent me while I was sleeping. Past experiences have taught me that these are usually bad news. Another hoop that needs to be jumped through. I’m happy to say I was not disappointed.
Each of these tickets work items come with their own cute little form:
As you can imagine, I was a bit amazed by the fact that A) Atlassian spent time creating these forms, identifying Connect-only apps, and creating work items, B) that it expects me to spent time filling these and C) that Atlassian is going to spent time analysing the responses just for sh*t and giggles.
I mean, there is no real life benefit to this, right? Not unlike the Forge core:connectToForgeMigration module, which directly influences the customer-facing end-user fear mongering messaging as per @rmassaioli:
Putting in your migration intent will not remove the legacy badge. It will simply improve the experience for customers by giving them confidence that you will or will not be off Atlassian Connect before the platform becomes unsupported.
As you may understand, I have no intention of filling in all these forms. The basic question “what’s in it for me” remains completely unanswered. However, there is one way Atlassian could compel me to provide this information: by allowing me to make Connect descriptor changes and provide detailed migration details that directly influence customer messaging, just like core:connectToForgeMigration does.
However, for some reason, Atlassian has convinced herself that we can no longer make changes to the Connect descriptors, as verbalised by @EshaaSood:
How do Connect apps declare their intent to migrate?
The new connectToForgeMigration module is only available to apps with a Forge manifest, meaning your app needs to be running as Connect on Forge to utilise it. You can adopt a manifest and this module while still running essentially all of your Connect components; you don’t need to have fully migrated to benefit from it. Additionally, as prefaced by our end of support milestones, you can no longer update Connect apps, so technical constraints also apply to this app category.
Now, obviously, these “technical constraints” are completely fabricated, as Atlassian can resolve this issue if she cared enough about it. For instance, Atlassian could have decided to add migration data to the Marketplace API instead of using a Forge module. It could also allow us to update Connect descriptors and pull in the latest descriptor from the Marketplace to provide accurate messaging without the need to update the Connect app in the customer instance.
There are many ways Atlassian could have supported migration details for Connect apps.
But it chose a very narrow, politically motivated mechanism:
- Force adoption of Connect-on-Forge
- Require Forge module with migration details
And now that it finds that Marketplace Partners do not care much for Connect-on-Forge and Atlassian is missing out on migration details, instead of accepting that it should not have tried to force partners a certain route (which never works), it has resolved to spamming inboxes and begging partners through administrative chores.
The next step is to make these ECOHELP tickets mandatory by threatening to remove the marketplace app listing if the form isn’t submitted.
It must feel bliss to never question your own actions, and instead double-down on it knowing that you can always just coerce a cohort of people to abide by your demands because their livelihood depends on you.
I guess for Atlassian, the famous quote should be
“With great power, comes the ability to do as one pleases.”