As modern developers, we’re expected to build secure, fast and scalable digital experiences. Every organization must navigate its own set of business objectives, customer expectations and regulatory frameworks that dictate the DevOps process. Because each organization has distinct requirements, IT/Dev teams leveraging tools like Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence must often build and apply customizations to these products. Creating custom apps has traditionally been a complex and time-consuming task for developers, but Atlassian’s recently released cloud app development platform, Forge, is expected to change that.
Forge provides developers with a hosted platform to build secure and reliable custom apps that integrate with Atlassian’s products. The marketplace expects app developers to meet increasingly high customer expectations regarding compliance, data management practices and scaling performance, so the Atlassian team built Forge for developers – helping them build apps which achieve these standards. After two years of development, Forge became available to the public this spring, allowing teams to develop custom apps and integrate and share them on the Atlassian Marketplace, where other developers from different organizations can start using them, too.
From a flexible, declarative UI language (Forge UI) to a serverless, Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS) hosted platform, Forge’s design makes it simple for developers to create apps efficiently, distribute them quickly and keep them updated with ease.
Let’s take a closer look at Forge’s capabilities, and how with help from an Atlassian Platinum Solutions provider, developers can seamlessly leverage the platform to build custom apps that benefit their organization.
Forge’s cloud platform alleviates complex tasks
Before Forge, developers had to master cloud architecture and management before building, hosting, and operating independent web applications. But utilizing Forge, these apps can be built directly on Atlassian’s cloud platform, so developers don’t have to spend valuable time and resources either onboarding team members with specific expertise or training developers on building infrastructure for their apps. Forge’s cloud platform allows developers to narrow their focus on executing business objectives, without being held back by the need to configure the cloud services required to run the app.
Forge UI allows developers to create customized apps that run seamlessly with Atlassian’s products in just a few minutes. Not only does this enable developers to build apps quicker with just a few lines of code that are applicable across web and mobile devices, but it also provides a cohesive experience for users since apps run consistent with other Atlassian products’ user experience.
Forge command line interface (CLI) also provides developers with intuitive instruction, reducing barriers to start creating apps. Atlassian offers teams app templates to reference, and an integrated DevOps toolchain to help with testing, deploying and debugging - ultimately carrying the heavy lifting so IT teams can focus on making their Atlassian products work better for their organization.
Concerns about compliance and scalability are taken care of with Forge as well. Customer data can be stored in the Atlassian cloud, which is backed by a robust compliance program equipped with several certifications, making it easy to comply with GDPR, FedRAMP and other regulatory frameworks. And because Forge apps are housed on Atlassian’s framework, they are able to scale up to supporting thousands of users at the moment they’re built.
How Forge unlocks innovation
Once teams are off and running creating apps using Forge, they can submit their apps to the Atlassian Marketplace, where dozens of apps are available for teams to discover new opportunities to bolster their use of Atlassian products. The Marketplace features apps that enhance everything from product management to monitoring and workflows and more.
After an app is submitted to the marketplace, the Atlassian team reviews it to make sure it qualifies for approval and can serve customers or other users successfully, then the app can be listed for free or for purchase on the platform.
This feature creates a sense of community between development teams across organizations. Developers can share their apps on the marketplace for other teams to utilize, as well as explore the apps created by other teams. Each month, 50 new apps are published to the marketplace, contributing to a continuously evolving library of enhancements for Atlassian products as strategic priorities evolve.
How an Atlassian Platinum Solutions Provider can help with Forge
While Forge makes writing apps for Atlassian’s products simple and secure, organizations can also lean on the expertise of an Atlassian Platinum Solutions Provider, like Contegix, whose goal is to make sure adopting Atlassian products is simple and successful.
An Atlassian Platinum Solution Provider can advise a team working with Atlassian products for the first time, adopting new features like Forge, or leveraging Atlassian’s offerings to make sure teams are optimizing Atlassian’s platforms.
As a proven developer of widely-used tools in the Atlassian Marketplace, Contegix can share expertise and experience to help organizations refine application needs, then deploy them effectively.
For more information on how Contegix’s team of experts can assist your organization with Atlassian products, including Forge, click here.