Atlassian is a worldwide, well-known enterprise that develops products concerning mainly the improvement of the software development process and project management. Established in 2002, it has so far gained over a million users.Atlassian released lots of products aimed at the improvement of task management and teamwork collaboration. Their flagship product released in the same year is Jira — an issue-tracking solution that allows project management of agile teams.

Two years later, they launched Confluence — a popular web-based team collaboration platform that allows users to work together on projects efficiently and share documents or other media between them. Despite having their own products, Atlassian acquired several additional solutions. The most recognized ones are:

• Bitbucket — a hosted service for code collaboration.
• FishEye, Crucible, and Clover — apps for code review, acquired through the Cenqua company.
• Bamboo — an application for continuous integration, deployment, and delivery.
• HipChat — an instant messenger for workplace environments.
• Trello — an app allowing one to organize and prioritize projects.
• Atlassian Marketplace — a kind of market on which you can discover all add-ons and plugins improving and expanding the Jira Software functionalities.
• Opsgenie — an app for alert management.

…And much more.

Atlassian Partnership: The Beginning

Using Atlassian products since 2009, SolDevelo observes its development.

Thanks to active participation and everyday use of Atlassian products, we noticed some shortcomings in Jira’s functionalities. This is why we decided to launch our own products for the Atlassian Marketplace — the place where customers can find and download add-ons for various Atlassian products. Our first plugin was a time-tracking and reporting tool for team members called Worklogs – Time Tracking and Reports. The great success of this product encouraged us to write more add-ons and also opened the door to becoming an official partner for Atlassian.

In 2014, Atlassian introduced a special program for its partners to formalize the benefits and appreciate the loyalty and contribution to the improvement of the platform called Atlassian Verified. The program was developed in order to symbolize the high level of quality apps from vendors. Four years later, as Atlassian’s ecosystem continued to grow, the program name was changed to Top Vendor for better alignment with program requirements and customer expectations. SolDevelo has achieved exactly this title — the Top Vendor.

Obtaining the Top Vendor title means that the vendor meets Atlassian’s standard of quality, which includes benchmarks for adoption, support, and vendor reliability. Plugins from Top Vendors usually have higher review ratings and better customer service satisfaction.

Top Marketplace Vendor Program — Requirements

The list of requirements that had to be fulfilled to achieve the Top Marketplace Vendor title was quite long and required focusing all efforts on delivering services at the highest level of quality. For SolDevelo, it was a milestone to reach one of the basic conditions — 500 actively-used product instances. Despite this, Atlassian was focused also on providing efficient support both by clear documentation (e.g. product specification, service level agreement, Data Security & Privacy Statement, etc.) and simple contact ways. It was obligatory to maintain the support for 8 hours, 5 days a week.

The key purpose of changing the program’s name was to unify the programs around one brand.

Top Vendors were verified with the use of three major criteria:

• App traction: It measures active installed customer instances.
• Timely support: Adhering to service level agreements and provision of support websites.
• Vendor reliability: Atlassian verifies vendors periodically to ensure users’ best experience.

Atlassian constantly monitored app vendors to ensure that the criteria are met all the time, even after the vendor had been accepted into the program.

This year, Atlassian announced a new change in the name of the program and now you will find Top Marketplace Vendors as Marketplace Partners. But the change is not only about the name. A refreshed program was launched to incentivize cloud and Data Center app development and promote enhanced security practices.

Marketplace Partner Program 

Because Marketplace Partners are verified and supported by Atlassian, users are ensured that the partners are always ready to meet their evolving requirements. The new program is divided into three-level partnerships (Platinum, Gold, and Silver), and each of them requires meeting other conditions but also provides other benefits. These levels allow us to recognize what the investment contribution to the platform was and demonstrates compliance with the company’s strategy.

The major differences between these two programs (Top Vendor and Marketplace Partner) are in such areas as payment, support, sales, and security.

Moreover, SolDevelo completed the Security Self-Assessment Program. This program is a result of the collaboration between Atlassian and Marketplace Vendors.

Silver Marketplace Partner for SolDevelo 

SolDevelo is now a Silver Marketplace Partner! By meeting current requirements, we proved that SolDevelo is ready for new challenges. The ability to adapt quickly is our strength, so we fulfilled additional conditions almost immediately. In this manner, we showed our skills and assured our customers that the continuity of operation of our products is and will be maintained.

In addition to achieving the Silver Marketplace partnership, we have to boast of the considerable success of our products. The Worklogs — Time Tracking and Reports plugin has been approved as the Staff Pick!

What does it mean?

If an app is marked as a staff-pick, it means that the plugin is available for multiple platforms and has recorded successes (high ratings, installs, frequent releases) or shows a favorable trend of growth.

By achieving this, our “Worklogs — Time Tracking and Reports” is now visible as Staff-Pick on Atlassian’s homepage, and is displayed at the top of the recommended plugins. We treat this distinction as something great because such a badge is granted only to a few add-ons per quarter from thousands available.

How did we achieve it?

Our team has worked bravely for this success. What adversities did they have to fight and how did they achieve this goal?

Paweł, Software Developer

“I was responsible for fulfilling the “Security and trust” requirements for the Marketplace Partner Program. The first thing to do was participating in the pilot for the Marketplace Partner Security Self-Assessment Program. It was a self-assessment of our cloud applications in the Marketplace and our organization’s overall approach to security. Then, it was reviewed by Atlassian, which helped us identify gaps in our approach towards security. The next thing to do was applying to the Marketplace Bug Bounty Blitz. We needed to complete the program brief by April and then, Blitz started on the 26th of May 2020 and ended on the 1st of July. 240 researchers were invited to help us identify security vulnerabilities with penetration tests for Worklogs and Checklists. Our job was to accept or reject their findings and then, fix them if necessary. In July, we started our own Bug Bounty Program to meet the Silver Partner requirements. There are 2 apps in that program, but we are planning to extend it successively on our other apps.”

Monika, Software Test Engineer

“A major part of my job was to make sure we provide the best possible products to the customers. Verifying each functionality and feature to make sure the specified requirements are met, and identifying any gaps or defects. This often included testing the software with the perspective of their end-users in mind. I was also responsible for providing first-line support for customers, processing information in response to their inquiries, concerns, and requests about our products.

It was a real challenge for us, as we dealt with many clients with different problems at the same time on a daily basis. Over time, this began to cause us fewer problems, and the experience also turned into a time-saver that we spent on analyzing and solving each user’s problem.

Currently, I believe that our support perfectly copes with the dynamics of activities, as well as with understanding our clients’ needs.”

Piotr, Software Developer

“Development of the first plugin started on 04/16/2018. The project was new to me on many levels: New technologies, new software development methodology, new tools, and new people. The first release officially ran on May 9, 2018, in a solemn atmosphere, then there was only waiting for approval from Atlassian.

However, everything went well, and a dozen days later, our employees could see our plugin on the Jira platform, and we in the team celebrated our first small success (with a glass of champagne in hand). To become a significant vendor, it was necessary to earn the “Top vendor” award, which required a sufficient number of plugin installations. To achieve this, we decided to develop existing plugins, as well as release new ones, and so, we created:

• Team Performance Reports and Insights
• Agile Dashboard for Project Management

Then, we started to measure the statistics of our plugins in order to predict when we will meet the requirements for “Top vendor”, which motivated me to work even more. To the best of our ability, we constantly tried to solve the problems of our clients that they reported to us on the service desk. We paid special attention to the efficiency and quality of our solutions.

We made many important decisions — among other things, we decided to implement some of our plugins on a server. In the meantime, our team grew in people, which made it possible to issue new plugins even more efficiently.

And so, we currently have 6 plugins:

• Worklogs — Time Tracking and Reports
• Multiple Checklists for Jira
• Agile Dashboard for Project Management
• Team Performance Reports and Insights
• QAlity — Test Management for Jira
• QAlity Plus — Test Management for Jira

with a total number of installations over 2,000.

The “Top vendor” award was achieved approximately one year after the project had started.”

All of this also helped us to improve our internal processes and communication in the teams. We believe that achieving the Silver Marketplace Partner is just the beginning for us, and we will be still setting the next goals to provide our customers with the best products and services quality.

Delivered with Passion by SolDevelo — a Solutions Development Company.

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