The Idea That Started It All

I work as a software developer and have been immersed in Atlassian products for years. Throughout my journey, I’ve accumulated a substantial list of ideas to enhance my workflow, address pain points, save time, and add some enjoyment to my work.

One of these ideas revolved around sharing data with external users, not in the conventional formats like PDFs or Word documents, but as live data. Sending constant updates to external users can be a hassle, leading to challenges in tracking what was shared with whom. Offering a unique, always up-to-date link to the content seemed like a more efficient solution, both in terms of time and effort. It’s a simple concept – you send it, and when the recipient needs updated data, they click a link to view it. Surprisingly, such a solution was missing from the Atlassian Marketplace.

The Beginnings of External Share for Jira

External Share for Jira made its debut in the Atlassian Marketplace on April 22, 2019. In its initial version, it could only share a single issue and required sending an email with a link to the external user. That’s about all it could do at first. However, over time, we added more features, including sharing comments, attachments, custom fields, and the ability to share JQL filter results. A significant turning point occurred when we introduced the ability to share boards, transforming what we initially considered a niche feature into a major selling point.

The Origins of External Share for Confluence

External Share for Confluence joined the Atlassian Marketplace on May 21, 2019. Initially, we thought the Jira version made more sense, as you could already make a Confluence space public and share its content with external users. However, we decided to give it a shot, leveraging the hard work done in the Jira version. To our surprise, there were numerous use cases for sharing Confluence pages with external users without making the entire space public. The Confluence version gained popularity much faster than its Jira counterpart.

Server and Data Center Versions

In January 2020, we introduced External Share for Jira server/Data Center versions, followed by External Share for Confluence server/Data Center versions in February 2020. However, these versions did not see significant adoption, possibly because many self-hosted Jira and Confluence instances were behind firewalls, requiring external users to access the infrastructure. Setting up external users under these circumstances remained a challenging task.