Our First Atlassian Forge App

Our First Atlassian Forge App - picture of man forging steel

Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash

Forged
ˈfȯrjd

“Formed by pressing or hammering with or without heat especially: made into a desired shape by heating and hammering.” - source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forged, accessed 3 Oct. 2022.

Forging is a craft. A craft that combines both the physical and intellectual. It is a process that builds, refines, and adjusts an artist’s creation over time. It is then no wonder Atlassian chose this name for its own app development platform.

Your App, Forged in the Atlassian Fire!

Don’t even say it, I know - way overboard, too dramatic. Apologies, but the imagery fits.

Forge gives a developer the ability to build custom, fully-functional apps, integrations and Atlassian Marketplace distributed apps in a matter of days or even hours. The kicker - it’s hosted for you, available for multiple development environments (Confluence, Jira, Jira Service Management), includes integrated API authentication, and more.

The entire cycle - from development and staging to production - is housed within the Atlassian ecosystem. In addition to pure convenience and peace of mind, this lowers costs and complexity getting your app out there into the world a whole lot easier.

Key Features

Our First Atlassian Forge App - statistics for atlassian forge

Let’s take a quick look at some of Forge’s most prominent features;

  • Completely hosted solution utilizing Function As A Service (FaaS)
  • Integrated security authentication, identity, scaling, tenancy
    • additional security layer enforces tenancy isolation and data egress
  • Powerful, flexible UI kit
  • Storage API included
  • Built-in translation options
  • Integrated feedback capture and tracking within Jira

FaaS is a serverless methodology to execute code in chunks or modular pieces. In a “serverless” environment, servers are still used, however charges for services are based on usage, not a static bandwidth measurement nor are they based on the number of servers used. An FaaS methodology enables developers to code, update, and then execute portions of code based on responses to an event, often referred to as “triggers”.

Designed With Security At Heart

Apps created with Forge are always running within an additional layer of security over and above the base, integrated security for authentication, identity, scaling functionality, and tenancy. Tenancy can be most simply explained as the process by which a FaaS customer pays to rent access to software while sharing that access amongst other customers. Just know there are a handful of different strategies on how this is accomplished that are outside the scope of this article.

The second layer implements the tenancy isolation, as well as restricting data egress. Data egress refers to when data leaves a network en route to an external location. This can include anything from uploads of files to the cloud, files moved to external storage, and even outbound email. Data egress is certainly a normal part of any network, however, it opens digital doors when sensitive data has the potential to be exposed.

Follow Our Lead - Our Very First Forge App

Not convinced yet that Atlassian's Forge might be the route for you and your development teams? Well, we like to practice what we preach here at Seibert Media; our very own Easy Issue & Subtask Templates for Jira (Epics & Checklists) was built from the ground up in Forge.

It was conceived to help teams quickly and easily create Jira cloud templates allowing users to easily initiate recurring tasks, gather structured information, add their own variables to issue templates all while using an intuitive, drag and drop UI. All that and more without any complex configuration.

The app allows both for the creation of Jira issue templates, as well as automates the creation of multiple subtasks for your established checklists and workflows. Users can create templates with a full hierarchy of epics, issues & subtasks as well. On top of that, it provides an overview of all complete issue hierarchy templates.

The Ball’s In Your Court

And so we’ve reached that portion of our discussion known as the “Call to Action”. Easy Issue & Subtask Templates for Jira (Epics & Checklists) is available now in the Atlassian Marketplace and you can learn even more about the app here. If you’d like, you can schedule a free demo with one of our staff members.

We’re excited to see how you put it to good use within your organization!


Further Reading

Forget Less and Ensure Quality with didit Checklists for Atlassian Cloud Forget Less and Ensure Quality with didit Checklists for Atlassian Cloud Forget Less and Ensure Quality with didit Checklists for Atlassian Cloud

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