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How to use statistics to overcome challenges when moving to microservices

April 30, 2020
#Confluence#Bitbucket#Analytics#How To
10 min

Agile software development has been dominant in software engineering for years. Its methods have helped teams manage work and perform efficiently while delivering high-quality results. Microservice architecture is one of the approaches that implements the Agile practices:

Microservice architecture is a style of structuring large complex products as a collection of individual services that can be developed and maintained independently, making the software more flexible and increasing its scalability.

While microservices may seem as a silver bullet upfront, nothing comes easy. The migration can result in deployment challenges as well as make global testing and debugging more difficult. Apart from purely technical side effects, it requires a cultural shift in organizations and strong project management.

In this article we focus on the challenges related to the management of microservices and describe the ways to overcome them using aggregated data and statistics:

We’ll teach you how to turn your Confluence instance into a full-fledged BI tool and how to:

  • identify dependencies between teams 
  • see if there is a lack of collaboration between members
  • find pilot teams to implement new processes in
  • check if you are actually moving away from the monolith.

Imagine now that you have a hostel marketplace application where people can find and book a stay. Recently you’ve decided to migrate to microservices, so now the whole application is split into independent services, each having its own repository, and you need to organize your teams and the processes the right way.

Resolve dependencies and build the teams

When done correctly, microservices work so that you can build, test and deploy them without affecting each other. To achieve that you need to recognize and then eliminate dependencies between the teams.

For that purpose you can build the following graph and see the distribution of contributors on the project level:

The graph shows the number of commits made by users, so you can identify service owners, see the interactions between the members of different teams, and spot deviations in terms of who does what, e.g. if there is somebody from the team A working on the team B’s service. The latter can result in delays in the development process and an increase of idle time caused by lags in communication between the developers.

The same graph can also indicate the anti-patterns in teams’ culture. Being a member of an independent team can help developers work more effectively. But some teams just lack the concept of collaboration. So instead of having the work distributed among the developers, it happens that only the so-called “service owner” ends up working on his microservice. In addition to a drop in the morale of the developer, this may affect the quality of the code as there is nobody to review it.

You can use this graph to find services led by one person and then make informed decisions to improve the team culture.

Experiment without risk

The variable development processes and independence are clear benefits of microservices architecture. Teams don’t have to align with the others and that allows you to test and implement new processes without paralyzing the workflow even if something goes wrong. This way you can try to introduce new practices to improve the quality of your software, such as unit testing, code review, pair programming, you name it.

To start the implementation of the new processes it’s important to find the teams that have been operating efficiently and are currently active. The number of commits and pull requests can be used as an indicator of the active state.

The two following graphs will help you to find pilot teams to hold experiments:

The graphs show the activity of the teams by month for the last quarter, indicating the number of commits and pull requests respectively. Now you can compare the results and find the teams that have a lot of commits and none or few pull requests — those will be your perfect candidates.

See the monolith breaking

Moving from the monolithic systems takes a lot of effort so it’s important to keep track of where you are in this journey. Apart from staying motivated as you see the changes (or not yet), you need to make data-driven decisions to improve the processes and lend support to your teams.

To get the full picture you may use the graph that shows the changes in the codebase:

It displays the number of lines of code deleted and added around the project. Using this information you can see the breaking of the monolith: if the number of lines of code deleted is increasing steadily for the monolithic repo while more and more lines of code are being added to the new microservices repos, then you are going the right way.

Make the data work for you

While migration to microservices may seem costlier in terms of the amount of work for managers, that is the investment that will pay you back with faster development processes, increased scalability and adaptability. And we hope to make your way easier here. 

The tips described in this article will help you gain more visibility into the current state of the processes and unleash the potential of your teams. Using the Awesome Graphs for Bitbucket app as a data provider and the Table Filter and Charts for Confluence app to aggregate and visualize the data, you will get the functionality that is on par with dedicated BI software platforms.

Want to know how to build the graphs and charts from the article? Read our step-by-step guides and try yourself!

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    Webhook Manager for Confluence Cloud Released!

    April 22, 2020
    #How To#News#Confluence
    2 min

    We are astonished to announce the release of Webhook Manager for Confluence Cloud!

    Integration of Confluence Cloud with multiple applications and services can become a real problem. This may require both financial expenses and development resources. The best solution is to use webhooks for connecting Confluence Cloud to any application or service you need.

    With the Webhook Manager app, you can quickly and easily register webhooks for the key events in Confluence.

    Each webhook can make an HTTP request to the required URL resource with the event metadata. This request may further trigger additional logic for the event occurred in Confluence Cloud. Depending on your needs, you can choose among dozens of Confluence events and trigger execution of the event-specific actions in your external application or service.

    This way you can integrate your Confluence Cloud with different systems, for example, Slack, Trello, Airtable, Google Sheets, Gmail, and many more. Now you are not limited and your integration capabilities are infinite.

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      Atlassian Remote Summit 2020: New experience for all of us

      April 10, 2020
      #News
      6 min

      At times like these, when our well-being is essential and should come above everything else, companies all over the world had no chance but to cancel or postpone their conferences. Atlassian decided to organize the first Atlassian Remote Summit to help users from different countries meet Atlassian experts online and learn about important Atlassian news and achievements.

      Just imagine that almost 29k people registered to stay connected with Atlassian!

      All sessions were on-demand, so if you had no chance to be online, you can still watch them using this link: https://atlassian.swoogo.com/summit20_live_stream/on_demand

      In this blog post, you will find information about the most exciting announcements made during April 1-2.

      Day 1 – Atlassian keynote: Unleashing the potential of all teams

      Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Scott Farquhar, Kelly Drozd, Agile Delivery Manager at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and other Atlassian leaders showed us new ways to bring remote working on a new level.

      We will describe the main news from this keynote briefly.

      General updates:

      • Every Atlassian product is now available for free for all teams with up to 10 users because so many organizations worldwide deal with remote working for the first time and need support in this challenging task.
      • Atlassian will support educators with a free subscription to Trello Business Class for a year.

      Bitbucket:

      • To avoid switching between Jira and Bitbucket, Atlassian introduced Your work dashboard in Bitbucket, where you can get the essential information about your projects.

      Jira Service Desk and Jira:

      • Jira Service Desk integration with CI/CD tools. Now Bitbucket pipelines, Jenkins, CircleCI, Octopus Deploy can automatically create a change request within JSD.
      • New incident bulk linking for OpsGenie and JSD.
      • New capabilities for roadmaps in Jira: hierarchy, progress bars, drag-and-drop dependency mapping, Confluence macros for sharing roadmaps.
      • Introduction of Jira Service Desk Templates (for such teams as HR, Legal and Facilities).
      • Trello’s Butler automation tool comes to Jira and Slack.

      Confluence Cloud

      • A new fresh look of the home page.
      • Page analytics is now available at the standard tier.
      • Confluence Template Gallery that allows you to access so many useful templates. Check Risk assessment matrix template powered by StiltSoft (smile)
      • A new macro browser.
      • Inline comments are now available in the edit mode.

      Day 2 – Atlassian keynote: Business transformation

      Atlassian co-Founder and co-CEO Mike-Cannon Brookes, Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi, told the viewers all over the world about the role of Cloud in an organization’s transformation journey.

      General updates:

      • Mike announced the dates of Atlassian Summit 2021 in Vegas: April 20-22.
      • Users can get smart notifications for Jira with email digest instead of multiple emails.
      • You can join the waitlist for Atlassian Forge that offers the new standard in app development for Cloud.
      • Atlassian introduced the Premium tier for Jira Service Desk.
      • Integration of Jira Align and Trello.
      • Atlassian Cloud Enterprise is coming soon. This enterprise plan supports unlimited users, sandbox, centralized user billing, release tracks, and more.
      • New Jira Cloud Migration Assistant will help users to move data from Jira Server to Jira Cloud.
      • Improved branch configurations for Bamboo: users can set build configurations per branch.

      Improvements for Confluence and Jira Data Center:

      StiltSoft Virtual Booth

      Atlassian Summit was always an excellent opportunity for all Atlassian vendors to meet our customers and tell Atlassian users more about our products. This year, we did our best to stay connected. So we opened a virtual booth where everyone could book a demo to learn more about our apps.

      We knew that Atlassian users were missing swag from us. For that reason, all attendees of the booth got a chance to win the $200 Amazon gift card.

      Check out our page on the Atlassian Marketplace to see the apps we develop to boost Atlassian products!

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        How to Track Progress Over Training Courses in Confluence

        April 7, 2020
        #How To#Confluence#Learning Management
        6 min

        Here, in izi LMS team, we’re doing our best to create features our customers need the most when it comes to training courses in Confluence. Today we are pleased to present a new report in izi – LMS for Confluence that will be extremely valuable in the analysis of your organization’s learning process.

        With Course Results Report, you’re able to generate reports based on courses you have in Confluence. It’s a macro that you can insert into any page and get a report for all or several courses, participants, and their progress. Course Results Report saves you time you could spend collecting data from each course individually.

        View all courses’ results in one place

        Earlier, an administrator could get a report for each separate course only. Now you can keep reports about all the courses on one page. To get a global report about all courses, all you have to do is to insert the Course Result Report macro to the page. As a result, you have a table that includes information about all courses and employees that were enrolled in them.

        This report can save you time in several cases. For instance, when your Learning & Development team wants to track all courses and their participants in one place. Or when your management needs a global report on all courses taken by employees this year.

        report on training courses in Confluence

        Enjoy a flexible report configuration

        With the help of the macro, you can include only those courses and participants you need for your report. A report can be based on a user group and their courses. Also, you can create a report for one single participant and include all or several courses passed by this person. It is convenient, especially if your supervisor wants to know how learning goes for each of the employees in their team.

        LMS in Confluence

        Share course results with your colleagues

        A ready-made report can be shared just like any other Confluence content. Imagine how handy it can be when you need to share particular course results with a supervisor or team lead.

        share report on employee training

        Refine your training courses in Confluence

        Moreover, you can power up your reports with the help of the Table Filter and Charts for Confluence app. In a bundle with izi – LMS for Confluence this app takes your course analytics to a new level.

        You can easily filter report results when you need to find all the participants who only started the course. It comes in handy when you have a lot of course participants. You can also use reports to build insightful graphs to rapidly get an overview of your colleagues’ progress.

        track course progress in Confluence

        Track effectivity of learning with Top LMS app for Confluence

        Try the new version of izi LMS to have a better understanding of the learning process in your organization. Course reports can help you enhance your education program and check course results on the fly.

        Nelson Mandela once said, ‘Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.’ We can do nothing then agree because well-educated employees are a key to a prosperous and successful company. Create more educational material for your employees – izi – LMS for Confluence is there to help you.

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          5 New Apps to Power Up Confluence – Fourth Quarter 2019

          February 13, 2020
          #Confluence
          10 min

          We are ready with our list of fresh Confluence apps released in the fourth quarter of 2019. In this blog post, you will find apps that will help you improve your work with Confluence content and some useful solutions for Confluence administrators:

          Let’s take a look at our list of favorites.

          Edit Permission Inheritance

          When it comes to inherited permissions, Confluence users need to check everything carefully. The thing is that child pages don’t inherit edit restrictions, they only inherit view restrictions. You can restrict access to each page individually but what if you have hundreds of pages you want your users to view but not to edit? The Edit Permission Inheritance app comes in handy.

          Now you can easily enable the edit permission inheritance for your Confluence pages with no need to do it manually for each page in the tree. The app will cascade edit restrictions down to child pages making your life easier.

          If you need to change the set of permissions on a lower level of the page tree, just define the permission inheritance on the right page. You still can set permissions on any level the way you need it.

          This solution doesn’t conflict with Confluence permissions, it copies an existing set of permissions to all child pages helping users to work with page restrictions without difficulties.

          Pricing: The pricing for Edit Permission Inheritance for Confluence Server starts from $20 for 25 users and ends at $500 for the unlimited number of users. The pricing for this app for Data Center starts from $4,000/year for 500 users.

          Update This+ for Confluence

          Update This+ for Confluence keeps track of your content. This app swiftly updates your outdated or archived Confluence pages keeping them live.

          If you use Confluence as a knowledge base where your store tons of documentation, this app can be a lifesaver for you because you can refresh even the oldest pages every day. All you need to do is to set the cycle of this add-on to feature the most outdated content every 24 hours starting at 9 am.

          Aside from that, this app adds interactivity to your collaboration with colleagues. You can easily check who are the most active contributors in your team and access real-time statistics on total edits. The app displays a countdown timer until the next update sprint cycle to keep your team in the loop.

          update this for confluence

          Update This+ for Confluence takes your work with content in Confluence to a new level keeping your documentation up-to-date.

          Pricing: The Update This+ for Confluence app pricing for Confluence Cloud starts at $20/mo for 20 users and ends at $1,155/mo for 5,000 users.

          Easy Heading Free Macro for Confluence

          If you want to have the Table of Contents always at hand, Easy Heading Free Macro for Confluence will help you with that. This app adds the floating Table of Contents to your Confluence pages. You can always access this macro on the right of your page and it will appear when you need it.

          Moreover, you can collapse and expand headings of your text taking advantage of the floating header.

          easy heading for confluence

          Plus, you can apply the Easy Heading Macro to all pages across in your Confluence space.

          Pricing: Easy Heading Free Macro for Confluence Server is a free app.

          Issue Preview for Confluence

          Issue Preview for Confluence lets you get more information about your Jira issues right in Confluence. All you need to do is just hover over the issue key.

          Now there is no need to switch between Confluence and Jira when you need more information about issues while working in Confluence. This app provides you with a detailed overview at a glance.

          issue preview for confluence

          Note that you will need a valid license for Issue Preview for Jira to work with this app.

          Pricing: Issue Preview for Confluence Server is free to use.

          User Deactivator for Confluence

          User Deactivator for Confluence is a simple tool that helps you get your user directory in order helping you detect inactive users.

          This app allows you to perform bulk operations when you need to deactivate multiple users or remove several users from the group filtering them by the last activity date. You can exclude certain users who are or are not members of the groups you are working with.

          Administrators can use this app to disable inactive users based on selected criteria.

          Pricing: The pricing for User Deactivator for Confluence Server starts from $10 for 25 users and ends at $5,000 for the unlimited number of users.

           

          These were five of the new Confluence apps released in the last quarter of 2019. If you missed our previous list, check out apps that will help you refine your Confluence experience.

          If you have any questions, feel free to comment on this blog post below. Don’t forget to subscribe to email notifications about new blog posts in this series!

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            5 New Confluence Apps to Refine Confluence Experience – Third Quarter 2019

            December 13, 2019
            #Confluence
            9 min

            As we do every quarter, we present you with the five new Confluence apps we like most. We have created this list to help you discover apps that will increase your productivity at work.

            So let’s discuss each app in more detail and see some examples of how you can benefit from using these solutions.

            New meeting experience for Confluence

            Meetical Meetings for Confluence helps you sync your events in calendars with your Confluence pages. You can easily prepare and hold meetings, so your team always knows what’s next. So how does it work?

            Confluence page will be created based on your event in Google Calendar and the link to the event will be automatically added to the event description. If you decide to change anything, this information will be automatically updated in Confluence. This app allows you to track the attendance status of your colleagues right in Confluence.

            This app groups recurring meetings and creates a parent report page keeping you up-to-date with all important events. This means that the overview of all your meetings is always at hand in Confluence. You just need to click the Meetings tab on the Confluence menu.

            Use this solution to effortlessly schedule meetings with your teammates.

            Pricing: Meetical Meetings for Confluence Server is free to use.

            Version control for Confluence templates

            Page Templates Change History Control provides Confluence with a version control feature for templates. Now you can monitor and control changes of page templates in any Confluence space and Global page templates.

            You can access the required information on a space level in the Space tools menu to have a detailed overview of page template history. You can also access the Global Templates History tab in the administration menu. In both cases, you will see the list of available templates. You can see the history of changes for each template in more detail: view the body of any template version, restore any version, or delete it.

            This app allows you to quickly get information about users who made changes, check when they did it, and view additional information.

            Pricing: The pricing for Page Templates Change History Control Server starts from $15 for 25 users and ends at $500 for the unlimited number of users.

            Multi-level navigation in Confluence

            Navigator for Confluence allows you to populate the Confluence header with useful links to your top-visited or work-related sites. You can create a multi-level structure and rapidly group the required links.

            After installation of this app, visit the administration page to configure it properly. You can add as many items to the menu as you need; in this case, parent tabs are not clickable.

            Pricing: The pricing for Navigator for Confluence Server starts from $95 for 25 users and ends at $1,770 for the unlimited number of users.

            Powerful search for Confluence

            iFinder Universal Search for Confluence takes the search capability of Confluence to the next level. With this app, you will find the content you are looking for because it doesn’t just search within Confluence. You can connect various tools you are using internally (like file shares, Jira, SharePoint, Office 365, and more)  to Confluence. In this case, the app will also search within these applications.

            The app indexes Confluence spaces, pages, blog posts, comments and attachments including their access rights for later full-text search. Users can only access information in accordance with their user roles and rights.

            iFinder provides users with a powerful searchbar that autocorrects and autocompletes your quires. This app allows you to view and informative list with your search results with highlights, useful filters, search tabs.

            You can use this solution to power up your Confluence and make your search experience more pleasant.

            Pricing: The pricing for iFinder Universal Search for Confluence for Data Center starts from $4,000/year for 500 users.

            Highlights for your Confluence pages

            vSearchHighlighter is a simple tool that highlights the word you are searching for within the page. This app provides users with a simpler and more powerful search experience in Confluence. When you search for something in Confluence, you need to choose the required Confluence page in the search results and the app highlights every occurrence of the search term within the page.

            It can be useful when you need to edit a long page in Confluence, you can easily find specific terms.

            This app enhances your search experience when you need to find any information in Confluence.

            Pricing: The pricing for vSearchHighlighter Server starts from $57 for 25 users and ends at $1,062 for the unlimited number of users.

            We hope that you will find all these solutions useful for your team and reveal their potential for getting work done most productively and effectively.

            If you have any questions, feel free to comment on this blog post below. Don’t forget to subscribe to email notifications about new blog posts in this series!

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