You're in-house developers are keen to get the job done, Adaptavist's developers have extensive experience of Atlassian products. Imagine what happens when you combine them...
Overview
Like any enterprise software, Atlassian's products are based on a large number of industry standard open frameworks. But as any developer will know, it's the configuration and interaction between those frameworks, as well as the proprietary code of the product, that makes customising or working with a new product time consuming.
Adaptavist already know how everything fits together and why. We can help your developers become more productive simply by being on-hand to answer questions and advise on best practice based on our in-depth knowledge of the products and their plugins.
Are your developers constantly having to spend time searching for the answers to questions like the following?
- How does this work?
- How do I make it do X?
- What is the best way to do Y?
- How does component A interact with component B and why?
- Where can I get more information on Z?
If so, our service will be of value to you! The time saved by not having to constantly go searching for information alone makes this service worthwhile.
Why use our Developer Assistance service?
With the exception of Atlassian themselves, we are second to none in terms of both knowledge and experience of Atlassian products.
We've been working with Atlassian software for years - we're not just a reseller and regularly work with the product APIs, release and maintain plugins. We are one of the only companies in the world that have contributed to the source code of Atlassian's products.
Because we provide hosting, support and a wide range of other services to customers in over 55 countries we've built up immense knowledge of all aspects of the products.
This service provides a method for your developers to tap into our knowledge and as a result become more productive because they're not constantly having to spend time researching unfamiliar aspects of the system.
Adaptavist are also extremely well connected in the developer community and have extensive contacts with staff at Atlassian as well as many companies in Atlassian's partner network. If there's a question we can't answer (a rare occurrence) we can introduce you to someone who can.
Having our engineers are on hand can be the difference between success and failure, and asking us inevitably leads to a faster completion time helping you keep your development schedules on track.
How does it work?
The process can be thought of as "passive training" - rather than time consuming up-front training or R&D, your developers can start getting on with work. When they run in to a problem or need advice, Adaptavist's developers are on hand to help them.
We'll answer the same question a couple of times and then expect your developer to be able to take it from there should a similar issue occur. All questions are asked and replied to via our online secure tracker - this way you build up a searchable archive of all the passive training that has occurred.
The service assumes that your developers are already skilled in the core technologies and is specifically aimed at helping them quickly overcome obstacles specific to the new products they are being asked to work with.
What does this service _not_ include? (click to expand)
This service is not intended for training your developers how to develop. If they don't know Java, CSS, HTML or whatever core technology they are working with, we can't help with that – there are plenty of training companies and online resources that can help with that requirement.
Likewise, developing plugins, etc., is not covered by this service - we offer services such as Plugin Development and Theme Customisation for those sorts of things.
Finally, this service is not intended for general support, change management, hosting, etc. We offer services such as Support, Consultancy and Hosting if you need help with those requirements.
The service is specifically aimed at providing your in-house developers with a direct means to contacting our in-house developers when they need information to help them solve an issue or decide the best way to tackle a specific problem.
Examples
Common questions that we get from developers include:
- What are the major components of Confluence, what roles do they play and how do they interact?
- What is the recommended project architecture?
- How do I setup my system so I can build plugins using Maven 1 or 2?
- Should I use Eclipse or IDEA for plugin development?
- How do I modify the output of an action, and what side effects should I be aware of?
- How do I interact with the search index?
- What does this error mean?
- I want to do achieve objective A, what is the best approach?
The list above is by no means exhaustive, but should give you a general idea of the types of things we can help with.
Can't I just use Atlassian's mailing lists and forums?
Yes, you can. However if you want fast, reliable and accurate answers our service will yield better results. For guaranteed response times you can also apply a Service Level Agreement to this service.
Atlassian aren't equipped to answer developer questions, and the developer mailing lists and forums are hit and miss in terms of response times and quality. Complex questions often take too long for volunteers to answer and confidential information can't be discussed in public forums.
If you've ever tried to get technical information via Atlassian support you will have first-hand experience of the latency caused by hitting first line, second line and then third line support as your request is escalated to more knowledgeable people. A complex question can take days or even weeks to get an authoritative answer.
Our engineers not only have in-depth knowledge themselves but have a direct communication channels (such as Instant Messaging) into the heart of Atlassian and major plugin vendors (Gliffy, Comala, CustomWare, etc), completely bypassing their first and second line support and giving us access to their system architects and lead engineers. We drink beer with them at Java conferences in Belgium!
How much does it cost?
Pricing is £400 GBP per developer per month within which we expect the developer to use no more than 5 hours per month on average for the duration of the service subscription.
As this is effectively on-demand training, we charge per developer that we interact with. These defined points of contact also have the beneficial side effect of creating a rapport with our team enabling faster resolution of issues.
Your developers are encouraged to disperse the information they get form our team within your organisation. They can act as a conduit for other developers in your organisation to ask us questions.
However, bear in mind that the service provides a fixed number of hours per developer - if you need more hours you'll need to subscribe additional developers to the service.
We have limited resources available for this service and demand for our expertise is high. As such we recommend that you pursue sales enquiries in advance of starting a project wherever possible.
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