Team Collab

From Chaos to Collaboration: Exploring Atlassian’s Atlas

April 12, 2024
Josh Costella
Update: Atlas will be retired and no longer provisioned as a product. Its features will become the first of Atlassian’s Platform Experiences available to every Atlassian customer for free. Read more here:
 

 

In the chaotic world of modern work, the “big picture” of what teams are working towards gets lost in all the emails, project updates, meetings, tasks, and messages found in disparate tools. This often leaves teams asking, "Which tool were we using for this again?" 

Atlassian's Atlas provides a solution that clears the path to seamless collaboration, keeping teams and stakeholders in the know about who is working on what and how that work tracks towards company goals. 

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What is Atlassian's Atlas?

Teams often struggle with communication and alignment, and that’s where Atlas comes in. Built to help teams stay in sync, Atlassian describes Atlas as a “teamwork directory that connects the dots across teams, their apps, and work — wherever it happens.”

As its name suggests, Atlas is your all-knowing guide to help you navigate the terrain of teamwork. Bringing together scattered messages, tasks, and documents, Atlas provides the visibility your teams need to collaborate with ease. With flexible goal-tracking, Atlas empowers teams to track shared goals with whatever framework that suits them best, whether that is with OKRs, SMART goals, or KPIs.

At its core, Atlas serves as your source of truth for understanding how team efforts contribute toward business goals. Armed with clarity and unity, Atlas enables teams to march in sync toward achieving your organization’s strategic vision. 

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Benefits of Using Atlas

It’s easy to lose sight of how and what work is moving forward, but the good news is that Atlas can help solve this problem and benefit your business. Here's how:

  • Clear Visibility: With Atlas, finding information about the who, what, where, and how of projects is no longer a hunt; everything you need to get a clear, organized view of the work being done across teams is in Atlas. 
  • Team-Spirited Collaboration: Atlas doesn't just show you where to go; it brings teams together and facilitates collaboration.
  • Explorer-Friendly: With its user-friendly interface, Atlas is designed for every member of your team.
  • Goal-Mapping Essentials: Atlas's goal-tracking feature breaks down silos, making it easy for teams to discover, understand, and align with shared goals. Whether you're using OKRs or any other framework, you'll know who's responsible for what. This keeps everyone accountable and on track towards collective success.
  • Trailblazing Flexibility: Flexibility is a trademark of Atlassian products, and Atlas is no different. Atlas equips everyone with a way to communicate their project updates in a way that works for them.
  • Resourceful Integrations: By integrating seamlessly with tools like Asana and Jira, Atlas enables teams to continue working with the tools that are best for them. 

How Does Atlas Work?

Unlike Jira, Atlas isn’t where the work happens; it’s where teams communicate about the work happening across the company. Atlas is where teams go to answer:

  • “What are we doing?”
  • “Why are we doing it?”
  • “Who’s working on what?”
  • “How does that work support our shared goals?”

By aggregating project info across all tools, Atlas serves as a central repository for what teams are working on. Every week, Atlas prompts teams to provide status updates and every month, the tool asks them to update their goals. 

Per usual with Atlassian tools, Atlas tightly integrates with other Atlassian tools as well as those outside of the ecosystem. For example, users can post status updates in Atlas or through Jira or Trello, and they can share and receive updates via Slack and Microsoft Teams.

A Common Use Case for Atlas

Now, let’s take a look at an all-too-common use case. The marketing team at a company uses Trello to organize their work, the HR team uses Notion, and the software development team uses Jira Software (naturally!). 

Instead of spending countless hours in status meetings and wasting time updating spreadsheets, Atlas pulls project information from each tool and centralizes it in one place. This way, both teams and leaders can get a high-level overview of how work is progressing towards organizational goals without needing to get into the specifics of each team’s tools and ways of working. 

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After reading how Atlas works, you may think, “That’s a lot of noise with status updates.” Thankfully, there’s a workaround for this since Atlas allows you to follow specific projects, teams, and goals so that you only receive updates that are relevant to you. 

Connect Your Teams with The Atlassian Platform

Collaborating with teams across the enterprise doesn’t have to feel chaotic. Let Atlas be your guide to a more organized and informed workplace. With its goal-tracking capabilities and seamless integrations, Atlassian's Atlas is a powerful tool that redefines collaboration and brings teams and work together, all in one place. 

The Atlassian platform is designed to keep information flowing freely through the organization, but it’s not a plug-and-play. That’s where Praecipio comes in. As one of the fastest-growing Atlassian Solution Partners, we make your Atlassian tools work for your business.  With experts in every product–from Jira Align to Atlassian Compass– we customize the Atlassian tools to support your organization’s needs.

Contact our team and learn how we can guide you through your Atlassian journey. 

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