New Goodies Coming to OnDemand!

Friends, do you have trouble finding the ketchup in your own refrigerator? Do you require Google Maps just to get to the corner store? Ever want to teleport from your seat at the game to that one beer stand across the stadium that sells your favorite craft brew?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you’ll be as excited as we are about this weekend’s Atlassian OnDemand release – full of goodies for the navigationally-challenged and busy user!

Members of the OnDemand team have been toiling away lo these past weeks to bring you a re-designed navigation header that makes your OnDemand experience smoother, faster, and dead-simple. As soon as you log in, you’ll see the difference. Menu options across the top are bolder and easier to see (sufferers of temporary fridge-induced blindness, I’m lookin’ at you).

Over on the left you’ll find the name of the application you’re currently using. Click, and buh-blam! it turns into a menu. It may look like an ordinary drop-down, but it’s actually a quantum wormhole developed by the nerds of Atlassian Labs, deep in their underground lair. Debunking both chaos theory and the Heisenburg uncertainty principle, this menu lets you transition instantly from Jira issues to Confluence pages to Bamboo results to Team Calendars and back again. Not only is that more flow than a yoga class, it’s a life preserver for those of us still working on our orienteering badge from Scouts.

Within each of the OnDemand apps, there are things we want do frequently: find the open Jira issues for a project, peruse the activity stream in Confluence, scan all the builds for breakages, etc. In our on-going effort to battle carpal tunnel syndrome, we’ve reduced those actions to just two mouse clicks. (Apologies to the world’s orthopedists for imposing this threat to your livelihood.)

Click the project icon in the top-left corner of any screen and you’ll be presented with shortcut links.  Hop to important pages inside the app you’re using, or to the corresponding project in another app. Jump to the blog feed for your favorite Confluence space. Or be transported to a list of all the open Jira issues assigned to you. Has the build you kicked off finished yet? The answer is a mere two clicks away! If only getting to that beer stand and back during the 2-minute warning was this easy.

Although this represents a leap forward in making OnDemand the most fluid and intuitive product it can be, we know our work isn’t done. So we’re looking forward to hearing from you. Drop a comment in Atlassian Answers, raise an issue on our public Jira, or just shoot us an email to let us know what you think. There is also  a page available now with more details and screenshots:

Must… know… MORE!