The Ultimate Manual to Atlassian Products

When an organization needs to improve its efficiency, cloud products from Atlassian are ready to help. In this post, we’ll introduce all of the Atlassian products, sorting through the catalog to help you find the perfect option to match your organization’s needs.

What Are Atlassian Products Anyway?

Atlassian, founded in 2002, provides collaboration tools for organizations and businesses. Some Atlassian products will work for the entire organization, while others work better for smaller teams inside the larger organization.

Atlassian has multiple products that aid in the creation and distribution of code, collaboration among team members, security, and identity protection.

Atlassian currently offers both cloud-based software products and on-premises software. However, the company announced that it will end support for its on-prem services by 2024, supporting only cloud software going forward.

Here are the various products and categories in which Atlassian offers products and services. (We’ll discuss some of the more popular choices in greater detail next.)

Collaboration Software and Services

Confluence: Document collaboration software
Trello: Project collaboration software with visual tracking

Coding Software and Services

Bamboo: Integration and release management software
Bitbucket: Git code management software
Crucible: Bug tracking and quality control for software through peer review
Fisheye: Software to search and track code changes
Sourcetree: Git and Mercurial desktop client software

Identity and Security Software and Services

Atlassian Access: Security and control software for the cloud
Crowd: User management software

Planning and Tracking Software and Services

Halp: Track and resolve employee requests within Slack
Jira Align: Planning software for enterprises
Jira Service Management: Collaboration software for dev and IT ops
Jira Software: Project and issue tracking software
Jira Work Management: Collaboration software for businesses
Opsgenie: Incident response tracking software
Statuspage: Communication software for tracking incidents

Specialty Software and Services Options

In addition to its product lineup, Atlassian offers a few other product areas that may be of use to certain organizations and businesses.

Point A is Atlassian’s project management and collaboration division where it tests new products. Organizations that have an interest in new software and in helping with beta testing can join Atlassian’s Point A division and become beta testers of new Atlassian products.

Atlassian Marketplace provides multiple add-ons and apps that help organizations and teams receive more features in Atlassian products. Here, teams can find add-on software tools to tweak their current Atlassian products to their specific needs.

Atlassian Enterprise provides expanded service and support options for businesses and organizations that have high-end requirements.

How Atlassian Products Work

Atlassian has a wide range of products available for all sizes of enterprises and organizations. Some of these Atlassian products carry wide-ranging features that will appeal to general audiences. Others have a deep feature set that focuses on a narrow area of the market, making them more specialized.

Here are the features available in some of the most popular Atlassian products, as well as some tips for the best situations in which to use them.

Example #1: Using Trello for Collaboration

Trello is a highly popular software package, providing project management and collaboration tools for members of a team. It uses a Kanban-style board, giving each project its own card or box. As the team members complete various tasks on the project, they can drag and drop the card from one column to the next, providing a visual representation of the progress toward the final goal.

If desired, the various columns can designate the priority level of a project, ensuring team members tackle the most important items first.

Within each card, team members can create to-do checklists and assign tasks to individual members of the team. Add due dates to keep the project moving along. Leave notes for all members of the team or aim a message at a certain team member on each card with the @ symbol. Add photos, videos, URLs, or document files to the card.

Users can be as detailed or as basic as they want with the instructions, checklists, and descriptions on the individual cards.

With all of the information related to the project displayed on its card, everyone can stay on the same page regarding the project’s progress. No information disappears in the depths of an email chain.

Trello works for smaller teams within a large organization or for bigger groups. Trello cards can have color-coded labels that simplify the process of sorting them for larger teams. Additionally, larger teams can create multiple boards within Trello, using the different boards to sort various categories. Members can find the cards that relate to them through the labels or through the specific topic boards.

Trello’s popularity stems from its ability to match the needs of almost any type of team and project. It’s a highly versatile software option. Trello has a completely free version for small organizations, as well as pay tiers for larger groups (starting at $10 per user per month).

Example #2: Using Jira Software for Software Development

Jira Software is a package made for software development teams, helping them move projects along. Jira Software (also called Jira Cloud) works for bug tracking, task management, and product management.

Software development tools in Jira Software include those that help developers manage and track the feature requirements and budgets for each individual project.

Bug tracking can involve listing and understanding any problems occurring in software development. The use of Jira Software ensures the team knows about and fixes all of the listed bugs before releasing the software. Messages about bugs remain in one place, rather than disappearing in the depths of an email chain.

Those using Jira Software can select from three different interface templates, matching the template to the type of work the team does.

Bug Tracking: This interface does not use boards and cards to give a visual representation of the progress of a project. Instead, it simply lists all of the open tasks.
Kanban: The Kanban style of board shows projects on cards. As team members complete tasks, they’ll move these cards along columns, creating an easy-to-follow look at the progress of each card. It works best for taking detailed steps toward the completion of a project or bug fix.
Scrum: The scrum template places an emphasis on sprint planning, where the card describes the work that needs finishing. It’s valuable for fleshing out new ideas.

Atlassian offers Jira Software both as a free version (for up to 10 users) and as a pay version, starting at $7 per user per month. It’s available in either a cloud version or an on-prem version currently.

Example #3: Using Jira Work Management for Workplace Collaboration

Jira Work Management differs from Jira Software by focusing its features on business teams, rather than development teams. HR departments, marketing teams, and finance departments will gain the greatest level of benefit from Jira Work Management.

A finance department may use Jira Work Management to track the steps required for an internal audit or for completing the calculation of taxes. A marketing team may use the software to take a marketing campaign from a discussion of the idea to the final design.

It handles the needs of these various teams through the different visual display views it offers.

Calendar: The calendar view works well for teams that need to be able to see projects sorted by upcoming deadlines, ensuring they know what’s due and when.
Timeline: With the timeline view, a team can lay out all of the steps required to complete a project. Team members then can plan out how to complete each step in the project at a certain deadline, ensuring all of them wrap up before the final project deadline.
List: The software can display each task for the team in a list view, which works well for those who simply need to see the most basic information for the remaining outstanding steps.
Boards: For teams that need the visual cues of seeing a project move from concept to completion, the boards view works well. Each project appears on a card, and team members move the card from column to column as they complete each step.

For small organizations, Jira Work Management has a completely free version for up to 10 users. Atlassian offers a pay tier version of this software starting at $5 per user per month.

Example #4: Using Confluence to Encourage More Collaboration

A common problem for organizations and businesses is encouraging communication and collaboration among employees from different departments. Confluence works to break down the silos at an organization, providing a means of sharing information efficiently.

Additionally, Confluence helps organizations where the team members may be working at remote locations, rather than all in the same building.

It works well for creating a knowledge base, giving employees answers to basic questions they may have. Or, if the organization has a long-term roadmap that shows the group’s direction well into the future, Confluence is a great way to inform all employees about these long-term goals.

Team members may create their own pages, using them to introduce new team members or to spell out the parameters for a large project. Team members can seek comments from members of the organization who are not part of the team, helping to spark new ideas.

Once the project is moving forward, a package like Trello or Jira Work Management works better for the precise management of the steps needed to complete the project.

Atlassian offers a free version of Confluence for up to 10 users. The paid tier starts at $5 per user per month. It’s available as cloud software or as an on-premises option currently.

Example #5: Using Bitbucket for Code Management

Bitbucket is software that helps teams work on software coding collaboration more efficiently. It gives the team tools to organize projects, build code, test code, and review code. This is a Git-based hosting tool.

Through the Bitbucket software, teams can collaborate on coding projects, even merging code successfully, while reducing potential errors.

Additionally, Bitbucket has multiple manual and automated code testing options built into it. These provide confidence in the quality and accuracy of the code at the time of deployment.

Atlassian provides the ability to integrate Bitbucket with Jira Software or Trello to provide additional features. These integrations are vital for a software development team that struggles to keep ideas and projects on track and focused.

Jira Software Integration: When the team needs a tool for tracking bugs as part of the software development and testing process, using Jira Software and Bitbucket together works well.
Trello Integration: Use the Trello and Bitbucket integration to create project boards and cards in Trello that lay out the exact steps needed to complete a software coding project in Bitbucket.

With the security measures that Atlassian has included with Bitbucket, team members can feel confident about the safety of the code. Bitbucket’s security settings include the use of SSH keys and two-step verification.

Atlassian offers Bitbucket as a completely free version for up to five users. Teams with more users can select a paid tier of Bitbucket starting at $3 per user per month. This software is available as either a cloud product or as an on-premises product currently.

How to Get Started With Atlassian Products

Many Atlassian products offer a free trial period, allowing organizations to try them without providing a credit card or committing to a subscription. After trying the products, the organization can sign up for a pay subscription tier or simply end the trial.

We’ll walk through the steps required to sign up for an Atlassian trial period for Trello. The other Atlassian products use similar steps for signing up for the free trial.

Many Atlassian products, including Trello, also have a free tier version. This means the organization can continue to use the free trial indefinitely. Understand that the free trial will have limited features and a limited number of users versus the pay tier versions. (Medium-sized and larger organizations probably will have too many users to continue using the free version, for example.)

Finding Trello’s Free Trial Offer

Visit the Atlassian free trial page to see all of the software products with trial periods available. Scroll down to the Collaborate section of the page. Click on the Try Cloud button underneath Trello.

When operating the free trial period for Atlassian products, most products will run through the cloud, while others will offer a version for downloading to a local hard drive. For cloud software, a high-speed, reliable internet connection will make the process run smoother.

Signing Up for Trello

At the Trello sign-up page, just enter an email address to start the process. Users also can sign up for the free trial period using their existing Google, Microsoft, or Apple accounts too. Click on the button for the desired sign-up method and follow the prompts.

You may have to enter a verification code that Atlassian will send to you over email. Agree to the Atlassian terms of service and privacy policies to start using the free trial period.

Try the Trello Software

The free trial version of Trello will have many of the same basic features available in the paid versions of Trello.

The free Trello version limits users to up to 10 boards. They will not have a dashboard view, a timeline view, or a calendar view either. But the free version will provide the organization with a good feel for how Trello works and whether a pay subscription is worth the money.