Migrating form Connect to Forge

Forge Adopting Forge from Connect
1

Hello,

In the past 4 months, we migrated 2 of our Connect apps to Forge apps, and one of them is even “Runs on Atlassian”. We thought that migrating another 2 apps would go smoothly, but we encountered a huge problem. For an unknown reason, the first release that should have been a minor one changed to a Major update.

This completely breaks everything since we will need to support both Connect and Forge remotes, which, at this point, require a huge amount of work since we already prepared everything for the Forge remote. We will need to postpone the release, and we already promised it to our clients. We will also need to wait at least a year for users to migrate manually(it was a very slow process the last 2 times). The worst thing is that we have no idea why it even happened, and feel misled by Atlassian.

After contacting support, we got vague information that:

  1. read:app-user-token and read:app-system-token caused major update
  2. If we remove these 2 permisions, magically, our clients will be migrated. But I do not think that releasing a new version will do it automatically. I asked for clarification.

Can someone explain to me how adding read:app-user-token and read:app-system-token suddenly makes our update a major one, when we had these permissions in Connect? According to documentation, only escalating permissions should trigger a major update.

read:app-system-token

Enables Forge to pass a token to a remote backend, that can be used to invoke Atlassian app REST APIs with the permissions of the app “bot” user.

We have been doing it since the app was first released 6 years ago

read:app-user-token

Enables Forge to pass a token to a remote backend, that can be used to invoke Atlassian app REST APIs with the permissions of the logged-in user.

We have been doing it since the app was first released 6 years ago

The worst offender is that our other app also has this permission, and we were able to first perform a minor update and move everyone to Forge, and then bulk upgrade everyone to the newest version with the same scopes. Why can’t I do it now for this app?

To add insult to the injury, our TPM was laid off recently, and we can’t even contact anyone.

Could someone advise on how to proceed? Did you have similar issues?

Best regards,
Kamil Parzyjagla
Soldevelo Team

2

Hi @KamilParzyjaga
Sorry, we didn’t have a similar issue, but we are on the verge of migrating one of our apps from Connect to Runs on Atlassian. We need to verify this as well! Thank you for raising this.

3

Meanwhile at Atlassian they seem bemused as to why developers do not want to voluntarily migrate to Forge when it’s this fundamentally flawed and unready as a platform.

So do they push the migration date further into the future so that these issues can be adequately resolved? No, they double-down and bring forward the effective migration date by burying a reply in a CDAC thread with a plan to plaster warning messages on Connect apps ~3 months BEFORE the communicated EOS timeline.

Zombie app problem again. Because admins do not manually take action it’s very likely those customers will forever remain stuck on the Connect version of your app. And then there’s a chance you will see subscription cancellations as Atlassian begins plastering scary warning messages on those Connect apps in ~September.

Nor has there been any communicated plan for what occurs when Connect reaches EOL: do those customers stuck on the Connect version have their subscriptions cancelled? Atlassian has never addressed this problem seriously.

4

Hello everyone,

I am writing to provide an update regarding this issue.

We have confirmed that the issue is not related to permission configurations. Our manifest was correctly migrated. Following an escalation to the Atlassian engineering team, it has been identified that this behavior is linked to a bug affecting app migrations from Connect to Forge.

The Atlassian team is currently investigating the issue. At this stage, the root cause remains unknown, and there is no confirmed workaround. You can monitor the status of the investigation here: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/ECO-1552

As the transition to Forge is a key priority for the ecosystem, I would appreciate it if you voted on this ticket to help ensure it receives the necessary visibility and prioritization.

Best regards,
Kamil Parzyjagla
Soldevelo Team