Atlassian News

Transparency in Recruitment Reporting to your company

jluijke — 2009-11-20T14:01:51+10:00

The Atlassian Talent (HR) Team recently started using a web based recruitment system called Taleo. The system helps manage the increasing flow of candidate applications following our recent recruitment efforts. If you work in HR or recruitment, than you have probably heard of Taleo. Although I think it is better designed for external recruiters rather than internal HR professionals and recruiters, the system has some handy functionality that helps manage the recruitment and selection process.

Increasing Visibility & Accountability
I had a goal in mind of creating a dashboard for our recruitment data, showing information about recruitment activity like currently open roles, applicants and referrals. Not only does it help our Talent team and hiring teams to feel more accountable for the successes and effects of delays in dealing with candidates, it also helps us keep track of the effectiveness of our selection methods and sourcing strategies. As an HR manager, it allows you to quickly see how responsive your remote HR teams are in getting back to applicants.

We found that Taleo didn't have quite the flexibility to produce the reports we needed. Although you can easily generate reports via Taleo, it is not the most attractive nor the most useful system to display information openly.

Taleo API
What I did like about Taleo is its API (Application Programming Interface). It allowed us to create a program that regularly downloads information via Taleo into our own database. We use our corporate Confluence wiki to generate reports on the data, such as high-level job summaries that drill down to show candidate status. The dashboard we created includes the following information:

Open positions and where applicants sit in the selection process.
An "alarm" function that comes up when candidates haven't been contacted in time according to our internal response time KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
An overview of how far candidates get in our selection process and why.
Overview and charts of sources and countries.
Information on our time to hire, costs per hire and other information related to successful candidates.
Overview of external and internal referrers.

We found the use of a dashboard is great if you want to show your organisation how things are progressing with any recruitment efforts. Besides, transparency helps keep your HR team on their toes!

Video: VertygoSLA Plugin for JIRA

mfriberg — 2009-11-20T07:22:33+10:00

Today we held a Plugin of the Month webinar with Eudes Nouvellon of Valiantys on the VertygoSLA plugin for JIRA.

This plugin would be an excellent addition to any customer support or support desk users of JIRA. VertygoSLA gives organizations the opportunity to support their SLAs (Service Level Agreement) based on acknowledgment time or resolution time commitments. In JIRA, a UI displays color codes which allow you to manage, prioritize, and respect time commitments with your customers. See the webinar now:

For past webinars, please hop on over to Atlassian TV where you can sort videos by products and categories. For upcoming webinars, please visit our events page. If you would like to be in our webinar series, please contact us.
Also, don't forget about following us on

Webinar: VertygoSLA Plugin for JIRA by Valiantys

mfriberg — 2009-11-18T03:16:28+10:00

This Thursday, we are hosting our November Plugin of the Month webinar. We will discuss the VertygoSLA plugin for JIRA which gives organizations the opportunity to support their SLAs (Service Level Agreement) based on acknowledgment time or resolution time commitments.

The webinar will be presented by Eudes Nouvellon of Valiantys and explain how VertygoSLA, coupled with JIRA and any high valuable business process, lets your issue management go one step further. Team members can easily handle their contractual priorities and properly allocate their time.

UPDATE: VIDEO HERE

The Dundee Arms is Open for Business

jseverino — 2009-11-17T09:20:17+10:00

"The Dundee Arms is Sydney's fifth oldest pub. Built in the 1840s, it served the ships and warehouses clustered around Darling Harbour and the shopkeepers in the Corn Exchange next door.
Rich in history, the Dundee Arms has been home to many interesting residents including T.J. 'Buttie' McMahon - grandfather of Australian Prime Minister Sir William McMahon, and award-winning artists Rod Shaw, Graeme Inson, and Ivy Shore.

Today the walls are decorated with many paintings and drawings that played part in the pub's vast history. Visit us for a bar meal or a quiet beverage and make sure you ask the bartender to tell you a tale of yesteryear."

As of today, the two floors above the Dundee Arms are inhabited by Atlassians! We're expanding to make room for 32 new engineers, and what better choice of premises than the pub right next door? You don't find many offices with four different kinds of beer on tap.

The Sydney Morning Herald says "the beer looks absolutely huge" because "the frothy stuff comes in great big whopping pint pots". In a hot Sydney summer, that's just the stuff to finish off the week with.

Sound like a great place to work? In addition to making kickass software, Atlassian offers 20% time, a fun entrepreneurial environment, and a holiday before you start. We're hiring.

Photo copyright Arup Maity.

Updated Support Policy Released

arallings — 2009-11-16T09:42:08+10:00

We are pleased to announce an updated Support Policy which aims to simplify Atlassian's position and present a more consistent and accountable support service to our customers. In summary the main changes are:

We are committing 24x5 support for ALL products however non-critical issues (ie Severity L3 and L4) for products other than JIRA and Confluence have only 16hrs coverage each day.
We have separated out and updated our position on bug fixes from feature requests
We now provide a clear and accountable policy for bug fixes
We now provide a clear and accountable policy for security fixes
We now provide a clear and accountable policy for when we will provide patches
We have clarified that we ONLY provide support for Supported configurations and Supported plug-ins
We are reinforcing a strict adherence to End of Life Policy
We have defined limitations on 3rd party application support and will be tagging all the third party config docs from our product documentation
We're now promoting this document in a more centralized, public location and referencing it in documentation consistently.

In addition please look out for the following policy additions in the near future:

Published SLAs for each of our severity levels (expected by March of 2010)
Enforcement of the need for an active maintenance contract (expected by January of 2010)

Please take the time to review the updated Support Policy at

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/Support/How+to+Get+Legendary+Support+from+Atlassian

Oz News: Sydney User Group

rmunro — 2009-11-15T12:58:16+10:00

Atlassian User Group

We'll be running an Atlassian User Group this week with the help of Mark McCormak from British Telecom. We'd love you to come along and discuss your use of Atlassian products with other users.

When: 6:00pm for 6:30 start, Thursday, 19th November 2009

Where: Atlassian HQ, 173-185 Sussex St

Who: Mark McCormack and the Atlassian crew

Cost: Free. We'll be breaking out the barbie for a sausage sizzle and will have plenty of cold beer as well.

RSVP: and agenda is available here

Wiki Wednesday - looking for speakers

When: 6:00pm for 6:30 start, Wednesday, 9th December 2009

Where: Atlassian HQ, 173-185 Sussex St

Who: Anyone and everyone who loves wikis and talking about them. We're using the Pech Kucha format - each speaker shows 20 slides for 20 seconds each, resulting in a concise talk of 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

Cost: free (we're sponsoring beer and pizza on the night, as usual)

Website and RSVP: Wiki Wednesday

Sydney news update

It's hard to believe that we're hurtling towards the end of the year. October was a great month with our Open House being a huge success with over 250 people attending. We also picked up a few honourable mentions around town - we ranked on BRW's Fast 100 list for the fourth year coming in at #29. We were also Highly Commended as an Employer of Choice (less than 1000 employees) in the HR Leadership Awards.

Atlassian bi-weekly blog roundup

lkhalil — 2009-11-14T09:12:57+10:00

Since our last blog roundup, we survived Halloween, have begun Movember and spent a day at the races. We've still been keeping up the hiring campaign and are looking for 16 more rockstars to join the Atlassian family.

Here what's been going on around the Atlassian blogs:

We launched Cash for Clunkers - Confluence Edition! Bill Arconati has all the details about how to get 20% off a new Confluence license or a free 10-user license.

Confluence 3.1 is in beta. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Hey all you agile fans: Kanban support is now available for JIRA with GreenHopper! Nick Muldoon shares the details.

Crucible 2.1 is out the door and Pete Moore share the news.

Finally, if you're looking to create professional documents out of your wiki pages, you've got to check out the Scroll Exporter for Confluence. Awesome Stuff!

Crucible 2.1 and FishEye 2.1 Released!

jgibbs — 2009-11-12T11:30:11+10:00

Crucible 2.1 introduces wiki markup support, time tracking, real-time notifications, better JIRA integration, and 250 other improvements and bug fixes. Get more details in the Atlassian Dev Tools blog

FishEye 2.1 introduces wiki markup support, improved JIRA integration, faster performance, and over 50 other improvements and bug fixes. Get more details in the Atlassian Dev Tools blog.

See FishEye 2.1 and Crucible 2.1 in action!

Register for one of the two upcoming webinars where we will discuss the new features of FishEye 2.1 and Crucible 2.1 followed by a Q&A:

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 8am PST (San Francisco)
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 4pm PST (San Francisco)

Video: Agile with JIRA, FishEye, and other tools

mfriberg — 2009-11-12T10:40:54+10:00

Yesterday we ran a Voice of the Customer webinar with Chris Brown from Backstop Solutions Group.

Chris spoke about their use and integration of JIRA, FishEye, some home-grown tools, and 3rd Party tools. See the webinar now:

Webinar reminder: Agile with JIRA, FishEye, and other tools

mfriberg — 2009-11-11T09:18:40+10:00

Tomorrow we are holding a Voice of the Customer webinar with Chris Brown of Backstop Solutions Group.

JIRA and Fisheye are an affordable combination for Agile SaaS companies. Backstop Solutions Group is such an organization, with a development staff of about 25 engineers.

In this webinar Chris will discuss how Backstop successfully manages a regular and rapid release cycle using JIRA, Fisheye, and some other tools. Some of those other tools were made in-house and Chris is especially interested in sharing their experience in integrating JIRA with them, and in hearing from other, similar, dev shops.

UPDATE: WEBINAR IS POSTED HERE

Confluence 3.1 Open Beta - We want your feedback

barconati — 2009-11-10T16:06:34+10:00

We just announced the Confluence 3.1 beta on the Confluence Blog.

Confluence 3.1 is a major new release with many new features and improvements like support for embedding OpenSocial gadgets, Office 2007 support, and a number of significant improvements to the editing experience. You can find out more details on all Confluence 3.1 improvements in the blog post or from the 3.1 beta release notes.

Try it out and let us know what you think!

Video: Scroll Wiki Exporter Plugin for Confluence

mfriberg — 2009-11-06T07:26:26+10:00

Today we held an excellent Plugin of the Month webinar with Tobias Anstett of K15t Software. Tobias covered Scroll, the wiki exporter plugin for Confluence. Watch the video now:

Upcoming webinars you should not miss

mfriberg — 2009-11-05T04:09:51+10:00

For the last year, I have been hosting an average of two webinars per month. There are two flavors of webinar: 1) 'Plugin of the Month' where a developer shows off their latest and greatest plugin(s) that work well with Atlassian products, and 2) 'Voice of the Customer' whereby a customer presents how they're using our products to improve their day-to-day professional lives.

We have a few upcoming webinars that fit into the above categories. Whether you are a new customer, thinking of purchasing, or a seasoned Atlassian veteran, there's something here for you:

5 Nov 2009 - Plugin of the Month: Scroll for Confluence
The Scroll Wiki Exporter turns your Confluence wiki into THE source for single source publishing. Please join us, when we speak with Tobias Anstett about Scroll's single source publishing features and "Documentation 2.0." Update: VIDEO HERE

11 Nov 2009 - Voice of the Customer: Agile with JIRA, FishEye, and other tools
JIRA and Fisheye are an affordable combination for Agile SaaS companies. We will discuss how Backstop Solutions Group successfully manages a regular and rapid release cycle using JIRA, Fisheye, and some other homegrown tools that they integrated with JIRA. Update: VIDEO HERE

19 Nov 2009 - Plugin of the Month: VertygoSLA for JIRA
VertygoSLA gives organizations the opportunity to support their SLAs (Service Level Agreement) based on acknowledgment time or resolution time commitments. Update: VIDEO HERE

For past webinars, please hop on over to Atlassian TV where you can sort videos by products and categories. For upcoming webinars, visit our events page. Got an interesting story to tell in a future webinar? Contact us.
Also, don't forget about following us on

Cash For Clunkers: SofTrek Leads The Way

ben@atlassian.com — 2009-11-04T16:27:12+10:00

We were really blown away when we learned that SofTrek, the winner of the best trade-in story for JIRA's Cash For Clunkers program, wanted to donate the $4,000 in prize money that we had on offer to charity.

It was, after all, a noble act. Andre and the rest of his SofTrek team (pictured below) could have had quite the night on the town with some coin like that, but instead they donated it to a deserving charity. It's the kind of thing we try to achieve with the Atlassian Foundation.

I wanted to pay some respect to their gesture by introducing you to the team. Given they supply the non-profit industry, it is also interesting to learn more about who they backed.

About SofTrek

Since 1987, SofTrek Corporation been providing donor management software, fundraising capabilities, managed hosting services, and technology solutions to nonprofit organisations. Organisations such as Catholic Relief Services, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Trust for Public Land count on SofTrek for their donor management and fundraising technology needs. Their PledgeMaker donor management software allows nonprofit organizations to better understand their donors and manage all of their fundraising activities. SofTrek currently use JIRA, FishEye, Crucible, Bamboo, and Crowd.

Pictured from left to right are John Huizinga, Jeff Keller, Faisal Karim, Mark Swarts (he's camera shy, so we let him hide behind the sign), Andre Bickford, Tracy Pericozzi, and Glenn Ruettimann.

About Roswell Park Cancer Institute

SofTrek donated their winnings to the Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), America's first cancer center, located in downtown Buffalo, New York. Since its founding in 1898 RPCI has successfully maintained an exemplary leadership role in setting the national standards for cancer care, research, prevention and education. Their revolutionary model of a "multidisciplinary approach" to cancer - with scientists, clinicians, nurses and supportive care staff working in concert and in consult - has become the standard by which all modern-day cancer centers are measured.

Well, thanks to SofTrek's noble wishes, we're happy to say that the $4,000 in prize money has now been issued to the Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI).

You can teach old dogs new tricks

As you may have heard, we're running another Cash For Clunkers program. This time, we're following SofTrek's lead and each of our four category winners will receive a $1,000 donation to a charity of their choice. Thanks for the inspiration SofTrek!

Cash for Clunkers - Confluence Edition!

lkhalil — 2009-11-04T02:32:52+10:00

Today we're announcing Cash for Clunkers - Confluence Edition. From now until December 11, you can trade in your wiki, team site or any other collaboration clunker in exchange for either a free 10-user Confluence license or 20% off a new Confluence license.

Bill has all the details of this offer in his blog post on the Confluence blog. Check it out!