Updates on our go-to-market timeline for app migrations features in the Cloud Migration Assistants

jwong · December 18, 2020, 8:08am

Hi Developer Community -

Earlier this year we announced our plans to bring app migrations features to the Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant and the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant. These assistants are Server and Data Center apps that provide a clear, easy-to-use UI and set of capabilities for migrating core Confluence space and Jira project data to cloud, including users, groups, issues, pages, attachments and more. Due to ongoing feature work, we continually see an increased adoption of the Cloud Migration Assistants over other migration methods.

In September 2020, we released an alpha version of the App migration platform that enables Marketplace Partners to build migration paths for their app data that is automatically coordinated with the Cloud Migration Assistants when customers send projects and spaces to cloud. Customers don’t want to miss a beat when moving to cloud and so we are very excited to be working with Marketplace Partners and app developers to make automated migrations as seamless as possible for apps too.
In November 2020, we showcased the App migration platform at Developer Day.
In January 2021, the App migration platform will hit its beta milestone with security, performance and scalability improvements. Some Marketplace Partners who have their automated migration paths ready to go have asked if it will be possible to start running migrations once the beta milestone is achieved. The answer is yes. However, it is likely that a UI will not be available for the customer to interact with in the app at this point in time (the UI will come with the EAP milestones detailed below). This means that app-specific preflight checks and app data migration statuses will not be available in the UI and so if you want to run migrations earlier than the EAP dates, you would be running a “headless” migration using API calls. To get a preview of what the EAP UI will look like, read on below to find the video link. We encourage all Marketplace partners to use the App migration platform as long as they’re aware that the platform is still only available as a beta version. To track when the App migration platform enters beta, please watch this ticket:
MIG-415 - App Migration Platform production readiness IN PROGRESS

Save the date - The Early Access Program (EAP) for customers is coming soon!

Thanks to all of the Marketplace Partners who have already started developing compatible migration paths with the Cloud Migrations Assistants. Your participation has helped us refine the App migration platform as we progress towards our next major milestone, which is to launch an early access program for customers migrating from server to cloud. (During the early access program for app migrations, Atlassian Support and/or Solution Partner involvement will be required).

Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant - App migration platform EAP - March 2021

In this first release the functionality will only be made available to customers who sign-up for the EAP. We will be requiring app migrations during EAP to be run by Atlassian Support Engineers, Marketplace or Solution Partners on behalf of the customers. This is what we call “assisted migrations”.

Customers will be able to find the list of participating apps in our public knowledge base article and in app assessment within the Cloud Migration Assistant, and from the supplied information decide whether to take up the EAP. It is also possible to see the apps that are under development and get in contact with the app developers by voting and commenting on tickets requesting app migration path improvements in the MIG project over at jira.atlassian.com (component = “Apps - Marketplace Partner”)

While the App migration platform is new, it will be compensated by extra support from Atlassian during EAP.

We presently target the Confluence app migrations EAP release for March 2021, so there’s still time to participate!

The date when it will be made generally available to all customers by default (which is the customer facing Beta release, not the Beta Platform release) has yet to be scheduled (TBD) and is pending the results from our early access programs. We do intend to announce the features at TEAM 21 and promote participating apps there.

Jira Cloud Migration Assistant EAP - App migration platform EAP - April 2021

We are now targeting April 2021 for the EAP release for the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant.

Additional migration APIs needed for Jira app data migration

In our last announcement for the App migration platform, we highlighted additional APIs we intend to support the development of your migration path, and improve scalability and performance.

The planned updates to the App migration platform include the following:

Please watch the tickets in our JAC project for updates on our development progress. Additionally, you can find updates on those releases in our change log when they ship. We expect to have all of the above additional migration available for you to develop by March 2021, ahead of the Jira EAP. Some updates may ship early, so we highly recommend voting / watching / commenting on the tickets in order to get updates.

EAP release process

We will be putting out a call for customer EAP signups in January 2021.
We expect a majority of customers to be identified through Atlassian Support as well as through the app assessment in the Cloud Migration Assistants. If you know of customers who are in need of app migrations, please encourage them to sign-up for the EAP.

Customers will be asked to accept that they understand that they will be using Beta software. Once they do so, we will send them a MOVE ticket (Atlassian migration support ticket on getsupport.atlassian.com), which we will then use to communicate further updates and instructions on how to activate the app migration capabilities (via a feature flag). This process will enable us to manage how many customers participate in the EAP as well as provide a support ticket for communications.

Our recommendation is to build your automated migration path into your regular app as a standard feature and make it available on Marketplace as part of your regular release process.

Only customers who have signed up for the EAP will be trying to run app migrations.
We think this will reduce the overhead on your side to manage EAP participation as you do not have to maintain special EAP builds.
We also think that it will reduce friction on customer participation, as they will not have to deal with separate new app install approval / installation processes.
The app migration flows in the Cloud Migration Assistants will direct the customer to upgrade your app, only if needed.

To preview what the customer will see in the UI for EAP, we have prepared a demo video that you can watch here - App migrations EAP UI demo - Sept 2020.

Don’t miss out! If you already have a migration path - any kind whatsoever, manual or automated - we have a new Marketplace API to help get the word out.

If you already have a way for customers to manually migrate app data (or app data migration is not required), add your documentation to the Marketplace using the Marketplace Migrations API. This API provides information to the Cloud Migrations Assistants so that we can display the correct migration information in the App Assessment tool to customers. Eventually, we will display the same information in your app listings on Atlassian Marketplace.

Get involved!

If you are an Atlassian Marketplace Partner interested in developing an automated migration path from your server to cloud apps that are compatible with the Cloud Migration Assistants, please check out our Getting Started guide. If you need help, you can raise an App migration support ticket here.

If you are a Jira or Confluence Server or Data Centre customer interested in participating in the Early Access Program for app migrations, sign-up here.

Regards,

Jason Wong

Principal Product Manager, Atlassian Cloud Migrations