Great question; I’m so glad you asked.
Early last year, we launched a survey visible when you are submitting a new app to Marketplace. We’d like to reflect on why we created this survey, what feedback we’ve captured, and how the team uses this information. The Ecosystem team are committed to improving the experiences of developing apps across our platforms. However, the team lacked structured and specific feedback to help guide their prioritisation.
Why are we doing this?
The purpose of this survey was (and continues to be) to better understand your developer experience at an app and framework/platform level - which aspects are working and which need improvement for the specific app you have listed for review.
A reflection from Adarsh Sridhara:
When developing a new platform, we require continuous feedback from key users to keep our priorities and capabilities in order, and the more contextual it is, the better. It’s like having clear roadsigns on a long trip, reassuring you that you’re on the right track and sometimes assisting you to course correct or take a detour to get to your destination.
The survey format, in particular, helps the research team to aggregate and size your feedback with the other feedback shared in the community, through interviews, or with your partner managers. The survey also helps us to reach a wider audience of developers and emerging partners that may not have access to other feedback mechanisms, helping us to represent the community of voices here most accurately.
What have we learned?
From Feb to Dec 2022, we heard from 133 Forge , 147 Connect & 98 Server/DC
partner organisations. Thank you!
Main reasons for building an app on Connect:
- A general preference for Connect
- Missing APIs in Forge
- Missing capabilities in Forge
- Missing extension points in Forge
Main reasons for building an app on Forge:
- Atlassian hosting/running my app
- Preference for the latest platform
- UI features
- Easy to get started
Main reasons for building an app on DC:
- Partner’s perceived customer demand for DC
- Familiarity with DC tech stack
What have we done as a result?
The feedback we get from the Marketplace submission survey is extremely valuable and has had a huge impact on the roadmap this year.
More extension points
Some of the most consistent feedback we get is about the lack of extension points and modules on Forge. We’ve made huge progress in this space this year, with over 20 new modules added to Forge (e.g., JSM modules). That said, it’s still something that features prominently in feedback so you’ll continue to see us investing more in new modules throughout 2023.
More functionality
As well as new modules, we often get the feedback Forge has a compatible module, but it is missing features. We hear you, and we’re continuing work on the most popular modules like macro (Inline Macros , Rich Body Macros etc.), custom fields and Jira workflows (e.g., Jira workflows extensibility).
Javascript APIs
A lack of ACJS/iframe features was another point that came through strongly in the feedback. That’s why we focused on the Custom UI Bridge around the middle of the year and shipped a number of improvements. We now have improved modal functionality, the ability to create flags, more navigator functionality a richer Context API and much more.
Operational improvements
Another great thing about the survey is the feedback we get about operational improvements we should make to the platform. This year we’ve heard your concerns about missing observability capabilities in Forge and are continuously adding new features like site-level filtering and grouping by app version to metrics as well as the ability to set up alerts.
Pain points like lack of multi-user app ownership and concerns about individual users being prompted for consent before using my app continue to feature strongly and we look forward to making big improvements here early in 2023 (Multi-User App Ownership via the Forge ).
Thank you!
So a huge thank you for taking the time to complete the choice rate surveys when you submit apps to the Marketplace. It’s extremely useful feedback that we assess every month to make sure we continue focussing on the most important things.
Looking forward to speaking to many of you this year.
Thanks for your feedback - teamwork makes the dream work.
Caitlin, the Ecosystem research team, and the Ecosystem product team