What about mobile access?

The mobile apps for Jira Cloud and Confluence Cloud are different. If your teams are using the Server and Data Center mobile apps for these products, they’ll need to install new apps for Jira Cloud (for Jira Software, Jira Service Management, and Jira Work Management) and Confluence Cloud

Mobile policy (also known as Mobile Application Management – or MAM) is available for both managed and unmanaged users as a part of an Atlassian Access subscription which comes with the Cloud Enterprise plan. Mobile Device Management (MDM) is available with all cloud plans.

General user interface and navigation

We designed the cloud platform to be more intuitive for all of your users - not just developers. We’ve found some of these changes to the core experiences are easier for users to navigate independently.

Both Cloud and Server/Data Center have similar sidebars and horizontal global navigation. You’ll see the same main navigation bar across all Jira Cloud products. This gives you quick access to the projects, filters, and dashboards you use most regardless of the project type. It also lets you create issues, search, and access help notifications and global Jira settings.

Use the diagram below to familiarize yourself with the navigation bar for all Jira Cloud products:

Where did the issues dropdown go?

You’ll most likely notice that cloud doesn’t have an issues dropdown. Instead, your recent activity will appear in the new Your work menu item on the top left, which includes issues. Filters are now a separate menu item and issues can be reached via the search bar.

Key changes to board view

The project board and backlog views are very similar in both versions for Scrum/Kanban projects. In cloud, there’s a 5,000 issue limit per board, and you can view sprint insights to stay on top of progress made and deliver with confidence.

Key changes to issue view

Jira Software Cloud has a new issue view that groups key actions and information in a more logical way, making it easier for you to scan and update your issues. It usually appears as a 2-column layout on boards and as a single column in the backlog but is responsive to the size of your window.

New ways to manage projects

While projects are managed at the company level in Server and Data Center, you have the option in Cloud to manage projects at either the company or the team level. The core functionality of these project types is the same, but it can be helpful to know which type of project your team is working in if you’re looking for certain configurations.

Team-managed projects offer a powerful yet simpler configuration that's independent of other projects on the cloud instance. Anyone on the team can create a team-managed project and serve as the project admin. Project admins administer and have total control over the configuration of their team-managed projects. This includes configuring workflows, custom fields, issue types, permissions, and more without having to contact the Jira product or site admin. With company-managed projects, the Jira product admin is responsible for making these types of configuration changes.

Popular new features in Jira Software Cloud

One of the most common reasons customers cite when deciding to move to cloud is to have access to the latest and greatest features in Atlassian products. We're continuously releasing new value and innovation for you and your teams, and you can see a curated list of some of our most popular new Jira Software Cloud features in this section.

1. Automation

Jira Software Cloud’s native automation engine has powerful features which are exclusive to Cloud and not available for Server or Data Center, even with a purchase of the self-managed app, namely:

• Create variable action
• Lookup issues action
• Sum, min, max, average, and conditional smart values
• The ability to run rules as another user
• Unique triggers

In Jira Software Cloud, advanced triggers and automation functionality are included out-of-the-box. Learn more about automating your processes and workflows. 

2. Advanced Roadmaps (included with Cloud Premium and Enterprise plans)

Advanced Roadmaps, which you may have been using as an app with your Server/Data Center instance, is available out-of-the-box with all Cloud Premium and Enterprise plans with a few minor interface differences (as of Advanced Roadmaps v.3.29).

3. Basic roadmaps

For all cloud plans, you can use the project-specific roadmap. The roadmap is where you can create, manage, and visualize your team's epics. Roadmaps are useful for planning large pieces of work several months in advance and planning large groups of stories across different sprints. While Advanced Roadmaps provide the ability for cross-project roadmaps, basic roadmaps are for single projects.

4. Project templates

Cloud offers over 40 ready-to-use project templates for many use cases, with more being shipped on a regular basis.

5. DevOps Insights

If your admin has integrated your CI/CD pipeline with Jira, you can take advantage of DevOps Insight, which includes cycle time and deployment frequency reports and insights that can be used to analyze risk and measure how often you are shipping value to your customers.

6. Better integrations

With Jira Software Cloud, integrating with other Atlassian products like Confluence, and third party tools like MS Teams and Slack and your development tools is easier than ever.

New project types

In addition to the standard IT service management and customer service management templates, Jira Service Management Cloud also has project templates for other teams such as HR, Marketing, and Legal that are not available in Jira Service Management Server/Data Center.

Find your templates

Start your project off right with a pre-configured template. Or showcase how your team works. Submit your template idea.

Changes to the issue view

The new Jira issue view experience outlined in the Jira Software section above is now available across all Jira products, including Jira Service Management. This means a better and more consistent experience for users. Take a look at the screenshot below to see how it all comes together:

Queues and the new agent experience

With the new agent experience, service teams are now able to triage issues more effectively, scan request details at a glance, and deliver speedy responses to customers.

Differences in the Help Center and Portal

Cloud offers more branding and customization capabilities, including the ability to:

• edit the login screen message and Help Center layout
• customize the columns in your customers' Request lists (to quickly filter and find the requests they’re looking for a status update on)
• implement dynamic forms, checklists, and specific validation rules using forms for Jira

Help channels

Just like in Server and Data Center, requests in cloud can be created via the Help Center, email, and APIs.
In Jira Service Management Cloud, you can embed the portal widget on any page of your site/app to collect requests from your customers. See how the widget works in practice.

Incident management functionality

Opsgenie features such as alerts, on-call schedules, incident command center, post mortems, and heartbeats are bundled in Jira Service Management Cloud.

Change management features

Change management in cloud has additional features which can help teams better plan, schedule, and deploy changes to production. Change calendars and change management automation with connected CI/CD tools ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.

Home page

Both Cloud and Server/Data Center have a common access point to the home page: the Confluence logo at the top left. Most elements of the Cloud home page are also on the Server/Data Center home page and relatively straightforward to find. However, the home page itself has a very different appearance and layout as you can see below.

General interface

Both versions have sidebar navigation for pages in spaces. Some elements are in different parts of the page. One key difference is that Space Tools moves to the top of the left navigation and is now called Space Settings in Confluence Cloud.

Editor

This is one of the biggest differences you’ll experience in cloud as we’ve made significant updates in our Confluence Cloud editor including:

• Templates: Many new templates have been added for your use in cloud. Start off with templates to save time and learn new organizational and formatting tricks.
• Macros: In Confluence Cloud, we built easier and more efficient ways to do many tasks, including tasks that previously required macros. We removed those macros as well as some macros that had a negative impact on performance. You can see a list of the removed macros and alternative methods here. Cloud does not currently support user macros.

Autocomplete keyboard shortcuts in editor

One of the biggest changes that power users will pick up on are the autocomplete shortcuts used in the editor. Those accustomed to the Server/Data Center editor may be very familiar with the { wiki markup notation. In cloud, you’ll switch to using the / autocomplete slash command which is a single command to add macros and tools.

Other editor changes

• Inline comment when editing: Whether you're editing a page or viewing it, the process for adding inline comments is the same.
  • Highlight the text you want to comment on.
  • Select the add comment button that appears above the highlighted text.
  • Enter your comment and select Save (Ctrl+S or ⌘+S).
• Anchor links: Anchor links are automatically created in cloud for headings. Non-heading links still need to be specified by the Anchor macro.
• Adding attachments: To add an attachment in cloud, users must copy and paste an attachment link directly. It is important to inform users of this change as they may be used to natively linking or rendering attachments from other pages, or setting up image or file “libraries” that can be referred to from other pages.
• Editing tables: Tables in cloud are edited and managed differently. The new experience is more intuitive, but may require some adjustment, so be sure to inform your users of these changes ahead of time.

Smart Links

Smart Links reveal important context about links within a Confluence page (or Jira issue) without leaving that page. When you paste a link in the editor, it will transform into a Smart Link. We support Smart Links for Atlassian products and many other third-party products. There are a few different ways to view Smart Links:

Search

Confluence Cloud search provides better results with relevance and improved experience, which makes it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

Admin roles in Server and Data Center

Admin roles allow organizations to delegate different responsibilities among many admins instead of relying on just one person. What you can access and configure is determined by the type of admin you are. In Server and Data Center, there are three admin roles: System admin, Product admin, and Project admin. See below how these roles relate to admin roles in cloud:

System admin

The system admin is responsible for managing the physical servers and all hardware and planned and unplanned downtime. They have the same permissions as the product admin plus access to the hardware and the servers and the ability to modify all system settings.

Product admin (or Jira admin)

The product admin can modify most of the system settings in the product(s) they administer. They can also simultaneously serve as the system admin, as they can also be the system admin as both admin roles have overlapping permissions. Product admins can assign permissions via group control and are able to create new projects, fields, and users and change workflows.

Project admin

The project admin is assigned to a single person by role assignment in the respective project. They have the capability modify various configurations of the project.

Extended project administration rights are also available to project admins and allow them to adapt workflows and screens under certain conditions. For example, they can add a status if it is already contained in an active product instance. New statuses cannot be created, and existing statuses cannot be edited. The project admin can also add, rearrange, or remove, but not create custom fields.

Admin roles in cloud

Similar to Server/Data Center, there are several types of admin roles in Cloud and it’s possible to have multiple admin roles at the same time. The admin roles you can have and assign to other members within your organization depend on whether you are using the original user management experience or the centralized user management experience within Atlassian Administration (admin.atlassian.com).

Which user management experience do you have?

To check, go to your organization at admin.atlassian.com and select Directory. If the Users and Groups lists are found here, then you are using the centralized user management.

Organization admin

When you create an organization, you automatically become an organization (or org) admin - the highest level of admin - and can complete any administrative task in Atlassian Administration. We recommend you have more than one org admin in case one account is lost or compromised.

Product admin

A product admin can manage administration settings for a specific product. They don’t have access to Atlassian Administration. With the exception of Jira admins, product admins can access the content within the product they administer. It’s possible to be a product admin for one or more Atlassian products.

Site admin

A site admin manages the users, groups, and administration settings of the site they’ve been assigned to (as well as any products that sit within this site). Site admins have access to any content within their assigned site. The role allows limited access to manage billing.

Keep governance processes and practices up to date

To effectively manage admin access requests, minimize unauthorized changes, and maintain a compliant administrative environment, consider establishing an approval process for users seeking org, user, product, and project/space administrative permissions. You can streamline this process by creating a dedicated request type or a user-friendly form where users can provide essential details about the access they require and the purpose behind their request. By implementing this process, admins like yourself can stay in control and ensure adherence to your organization's product governance practices.

To keep up with evolving needs, be sure to regularly review and update your product governance policies, scheduling periodic check-ins (e.g., annually or bi-annually) to align them with your organization's growth and changing requirements.

When embarking on a project to review and enhance governance practices, Atlassian provides valuable resources to support you along the way. Check out the following plays from our Team playbook to align with internal stakeholders who share cloud governance responsibilities and may be impacted by changes:

• Team goals, signals, and measures
• Defining roles and responsibilities for team members

To capture and document discussions and agreements made during the process, ensure calirty, consensus, and success in governance-related endeavors, use the following Confluence templates:

• Sparring
• Working agreements
• Goals, signals, measures
• Roles and responsibilities