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As the head of a company that uses HipChat... Thank you Atlassian. We have intended to migrate to the (free and better) Mattermost for a long time and just have

As the head of a company that uses HipChat... Thank you Atlassian. We have intended to migrate to the (free and better) Mattermost for a long time and just have been waiting for it to hit the top of our priority list. Knowing you are abandoning the terrible HipChat for an entirely new product, with no migration path and 50% more cost, makes this an easier choice. You have been abandoning us on JIRA and Confluence as well. There are many features that are not available on our self-hosted versions even when fully upgraded. Your licensing and pricing terms get worse year after year even though essentially absolutely nothing useful (to us anyway) ever gets added. We even use Trello a little here and there... I expect that to go south too. Well, at least we have GitLab and soon Mattermost, both suitable for much of what we need, for free. Thank you for making our decisions easier.

orand 9y ago
Which Jira and Confluence features aren't available for fully upgraded self-hosted instances?
- Karunamon 9y ago
  Seconding this. It always seemed to me that you lose features by going to the cloud hosted version.
- SomeHacker44 9y ago
  Not to beat a dead horse about it, but Atlassian made improvements to the Kanban functionality, especially regarding the backlog (a backlog manager), and didn't make it available to our on-premise locally-installed stuff. Additionally, they jacked up the prices on the Service Desk software users and changed who can do what at what prices. All in all, I wouldn't choose Atlassian for any new installations/companies. I would definitely look elsewhere. And, I've been using their products since before FishEye was an Atlassian product (and they destroyed that product too).
  - compuguy 9y ago
    Ouch (and self-hosted atlassian products were pricy to begin with). Are there any good alternatives to Jira and Confluence out there (that are self-hosted/on-prem)?
    - vacri 9y ago
      I'm of the opinion that there are no good ticketing systems. I've seen a fair few of them (but haven't looked in the last year or two) and I realised that the problem is this: the amount of information you need to store to make a ticketing system really useful is more than people are comfortable putting in. Lightweight ticketing systems are great for small things, but suck for serious work. Heavyweight ticketing systems are a grind to use. Assigning metadata is tedious, remembering workflows is tedious, but if you want more power, you have to do those tasks, regardless of the particular software in use.
      - richman777 9y ago
        This is why I've finally accepted the fact that for my own personal tracking, nothing beats a post-it note. I'm not going to spend the time to put down all the real information I should and dealing with an app is another barrier preventing me from getting stuff done.
        vacri 9y ago
        I moved to post-its about six weeks ago during an intense period with lots of small jobs. I am the only one who does what I do here, so the interoperability isn't really required... and I'm not keen on going back to a digital ticketing system (post-its are also satisfying to scrunch up when finished). I will eventually though, as ticket history can be useful, but at the moment I feel a bit like a dog who has escaped the yard and is roaming freely :)
      - solatic 9y ago
        > Assigning metadata is tedious, remembering workflows is tedious, but if you want more power, you have to do those tasks, regardless of the particular software in use. This is why you hire dedicated Scrum Masters / PMO, and direct the PMOs to automate away what they can, as the domain becomes clearer. Jira is actually really great for this because the REST API is so powerful, which can allow the PMOs to build systems which extract work from elsewhere, populate all the necessary fields which are repetitious and tedious for users to fill out, and then submit everything against the REST API and watch it all turn into issues. When you start to understand that what Atlassian really did with Jira was build a powerful general UI abstraction over relational tables that even non-technical users can use, then you start to understand the sheer power of what's on the table.
BackendAndBBQ 9y ago
> Knowing you are abandoning the terrible HipChat for an entirely new product, with no migration path AFAIK, they offer migration from Hipchat to Stride https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/upgrading-to-stride-937165569.html https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/upgrad... > We'll move all of your teammates, rooms, files, custom emoticons, and message history over to Stride for you so your team won't miss a beat.
- Operyl 9y ago
  Sounds like they might be using HipChat self-hosted, not in their "Cloud" solution.
- x0x0 9y ago
  The question is why one would trust Atlassian to make decent software this time when hipchat is such a POS. On a former team we were forced to use hipchat and their android client just nuked my battery. It was like night and day; remove the app and my battery lasts 24-30h; with it hipchat installed it would last 10 hours. This was a stock Nexus device btw.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    I don't keep the client running all the time, but i do get notifications when I'm mentioned by name; haven't noticed any egregious problems. I don't think Hipchat is a POS - it gets the job done - but it is lacking some features that I would consider to be fairly basic. (Why can't I edit messages except with the s// syntax? Why can't I do basic text formatting?) I do agree with you on the lack of faith, though. Jira's text formatting is even worse than Hipchat's.
    - pat_space 9y ago
      I am very satisfied with the Confluence cloud web text editor, but the Jira cloud editor is TERRIBLE. I wish they would bring the Confluence functionality to Jira.
yalooze 9y ago
It seems the migration path is straightforward > All of your rooms, teammates, files, custom emoticons and message history from HipChat Cloud will be in Stride waiting for you, just as you left it. https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/upgrading-to-stride-937165569.html https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/upgrad... But I hear you on Atlassian seeming like they're abandoning things. I'm still waiting for them to fix Bitbucket's online editor which breaks when you try to edit files with different character encoding https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issues/13450/file-character-encoding-changes-from-utf-8 https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issues/13450/file-characte...
new299 9y ago
What are good options for replacing Confluence? I looked at available open source wiki's maybe 1 or 2 years ago and there seems to be nothing that was as easy to use for non-technical people (which would include having WYSIWYG style editing). Are there any good options now?
- Karunamon 9y ago
  MediaWiki now has a decent WYSIWYG editor (you can demo it on wikipedia), but IMO, it's still way too unfriendly for people that don't know their way around markup language. Confluence has a nice balance of ease when you need it and flexibility when you don't.
  - new299 9y ago
    Shame, sounds like it's the only option. It would be nice to see some competition in this area and wiki's are a great collaboration tool in interdisciplinary environments.
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  A wiki that allows referencing to a ticketing system - the way you can tie confluence docs to jira - is, imo, one of the unique tie-ins I've not seen replicated in any other system. Check list of items in confluence? Click and ... bam - tickets where you can track discussion, media, code, etc. Link back to the definition doc, and the doc has a status view of the ticket(s). I've wondered if they've got some patent on this which has prevented other folks from replicating it. Or... is everyone else so focused on "disparate tools that talk to each other" that this tie in has never made it on anyone's radar? If this was in redmine (for example) - having the wiki be aware of the ticket system - that would be great.
  - seanp2k2 9y ago
    The JIRA <-> Stash integration is also nice. Create a bug in JIRA and reference a release tag (which integrates with Stash), create a branch to fix it right from the ticket, ticket shows when that branch gets a PR and is eventually merged. It's possible to e.g. close the ticket when the bug fix gets merged too.
dionian 9y ago
HipChat is fine. Try using Cisco Spark.

orand 9y ago

Which Jira and Confluence features aren't available for fully upgraded self-hosted instances?

Karunamon 9y ago
Seconding this. It always seemed to me that you lose features by going to the cloud hosted version.
SomeHacker44 9y ago
Not to beat a dead horse about it, but Atlassian made improvements to the Kanban functionality, especially regarding the backlog (a backlog manager), and didn't make it available to our on-premise locally-installed stuff. Additionally, they jacked up the prices on the Service Desk software users and changed who can do what at what prices. All in all, I wouldn't choose Atlassian for any new installations/companies. I would definitely look elsewhere. And, I've been using their products since before FishEye was an Atlassian product (and they destroyed that product too).
- compuguy 9y ago
  Ouch (and self-hosted atlassian products were pricy to begin with). Are there any good alternatives to Jira and Confluence out there (that are self-hosted/on-prem)?
  - vacri 9y ago
    I'm of the opinion that there are no good ticketing systems. I've seen a fair few of them (but haven't looked in the last year or two) and I realised that the problem is this: the amount of information you need to store to make a ticketing system really useful is more than people are comfortable putting in. Lightweight ticketing systems are great for small things, but suck for serious work. Heavyweight ticketing systems are a grind to use. Assigning metadata is tedious, remembering workflows is tedious, but if you want more power, you have to do those tasks, regardless of the particular software in use.
    - richman777 9y ago
      This is why I've finally accepted the fact that for my own personal tracking, nothing beats a post-it note. I'm not going to spend the time to put down all the real information I should and dealing with an app is another barrier preventing me from getting stuff done.
      - vacri 9y ago
        I moved to post-its about six weeks ago during an intense period with lots of small jobs. I am the only one who does what I do here, so the interoperability isn't really required... and I'm not keen on going back to a digital ticketing system (post-its are also satisfying to scrunch up when finished). I will eventually though, as ticket history can be useful, but at the moment I feel a bit like a dog who has escaped the yard and is roaming freely :)
    - solatic 9y ago
      > Assigning metadata is tedious, remembering workflows is tedious, but if you want more power, you have to do those tasks, regardless of the particular software in use. This is why you hire dedicated Scrum Masters / PMO, and direct the PMOs to automate away what they can, as the domain becomes clearer. Jira is actually really great for this because the REST API is so powerful, which can allow the PMOs to build systems which extract work from elsewhere, populate all the necessary fields which are repetitious and tedious for users to fill out, and then submit everything against the REST API and watch it all turn into issues. When you start to understand that what Atlassian really did with Jira was build a powerful general UI abstraction over relational tables that even non-technical users can use, then you start to understand the sheer power of what's on the table.

BackendAndBBQ 9y ago

> Knowing you are abandoning the terrible HipChat for an entirely new product, with no migration path AFAIK, they offer migration from Hipchat to Stride https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/upgrading-to-stride-937165569.html https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/upgrad... > We'll move all of your teammates, rooms, files, custom emoticons, and message history over to Stride for you so your team won't miss a beat.

Operyl 9y ago
Sounds like they might be using HipChat self-hosted, not in their "Cloud" solution.
x0x0 9y ago
The question is why one would trust Atlassian to make decent software this time when hipchat is such a POS. On a former team we were forced to use hipchat and their android client just nuked my battery. It was like night and day; remove the app and my battery lasts 24-30h; with it hipchat installed it would last 10 hours. This was a stock Nexus device btw.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  I don't keep the client running all the time, but i do get notifications when I'm mentioned by name; haven't noticed any egregious problems. I don't think Hipchat is a POS - it gets the job done - but it is lacking some features that I would consider to be fairly basic. (Why can't I edit messages except with the s// syntax? Why can't I do basic text formatting?) I do agree with you on the lack of faith, though. Jira's text formatting is even worse than Hipchat's.
  - pat_space 9y ago
    I am very satisfied with the Confluence cloud web text editor, but the Jira cloud editor is TERRIBLE. I wish they would bring the Confluence functionality to Jira.

yalooze 9y ago

It seems the migration path is straightforward > All of your rooms, teammates, files, custom emoticons and message history from HipChat Cloud will be in Stride waiting for you, just as you left it. https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/upgrading-to-stride-937165569.html https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride-documentation/upgrad... But I hear you on Atlassian seeming like they're abandoning things. I'm still waiting for them to fix Bitbucket's online editor which breaks when you try to edit files with different character encoding https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issues/13450/file-character-encoding-changes-from-utf-8 https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issues/13450/file-characte...

new299 9y ago

What are good options for replacing Confluence? I looked at available open source wiki's maybe 1 or 2 years ago and there seems to be nothing that was as easy to use for non-technical people (which would include having WYSIWYG style editing). Are there any good options now?

Karunamon 9y ago
MediaWiki now has a decent WYSIWYG editor (you can demo it on wikipedia), but IMO, it's still way too unfriendly for people that don't know their way around markup language. Confluence has a nice balance of ease when you need it and flexibility when you don't.
- new299 9y ago
  Shame, sounds like it's the only option. It would be nice to see some competition in this area and wiki's are a great collaboration tool in interdisciplinary environments.
mgkimsal 9y ago
A wiki that allows referencing to a ticketing system - the way you can tie confluence docs to jira - is, imo, one of the unique tie-ins I've not seen replicated in any other system. Check list of items in confluence? Click and ... bam - tickets where you can track discussion, media, code, etc. Link back to the definition doc, and the doc has a status view of the ticket(s). I've wondered if they've got some patent on this which has prevented other folks from replicating it. Or... is everyone else so focused on "disparate tools that talk to each other" that this tie in has never made it on anyone's radar? If this was in redmine (for example) - having the wiki be aware of the ticket system - that would be great.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  The JIRA <-> Stash integration is also nice. Create a bug in JIRA and reference a release tag (which integrates with Stash), create a branch to fix it right from the ticket, ticket shows when that branch gets a PR and is eventually merged. It's possible to e.g. close the ticket when the bug fix gets merged too.

dionian 9y ago

HipChat is fine. Try using Cisco Spark.