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Riley Venable
Author

Riley Venable

VP of Services, Atlas Bench

Riley Venable is a full-stack engineer who has spent more than a decade inside Atlassian estates, from small businesses running one Jira instance to Fortune 500 companies running dozens, and he still writes the code. He leads services at Atlas Bench, and the work he is known for is the layer most people never see: identity and permissions, infrastructure, change control, and what breaks when AI is pointed at all three.

His range runs from application code to the metal underneath it. He has designed and led Jira, Confluence, and Jira Service Management migrations from Data Center to Cloud, built Forge and ScriptRunner apps used across roughly three thousand Atlassian Cloud sites, designed SSO, SAML, and SCIM integrations across Okta and Atlassian Guard, and built the cloud, networking, and device-management infrastructure that sits under all of it. He has been building with AI in production since before it was a product category, in environments where every agent needs an owner and every action needs an audit trail.

Riley is an Atlassian Certified Instructor and an Atlassian Community Champion, and he co-leads the Orlando Atlassian Community Events chapter. He writes about the parts of the platform people usually learn the hard way: permission inheritance, identity debt, cutover nights, and what an agent inherits when nobody decided what it should own.

Recent posts

October 2, 2026

Non-human identities in Atlassian Cloud, explained

How to govern non-human identities in Atlassian Cloud: service accounts, API tokens, Forge apps, and Rovo agents, each with an owner, scope, and expiry.

October 1, 2026

How to choose an Atlassian partner for a Jira migration

How to choose an Atlassian Solution Partner for a Jira migration to Cloud: what to verify, eight questions to ask, red flags, and a shortlist scorecard.

September 30, 2026

The complete guide to agent readiness in Atlassian Cloud

Agent readiness for Atlassian Cloud: the five checks to run before you switch on Rovo agents, from identities and permissions to the off switch.

September 28, 2026

How to review Rovo agent access in Jira and Confluence

A step-by-step access review for Rovo agents in Jira and Confluence: who can create them, who can use them, what they can change, and what gets logged.

September 24, 2026

What identity debt means for an Atlassian migration

Identity debt is the access nobody owns: unowned accounts, stale permissions, and legacy groups. Here is how it surfaces in an Atlassian migration.

September 21, 2026

Rovo agent governance in Atlassian Cloud: a 2026 guide

How to govern Rovo agents in Atlassian Cloud with identity controls, Guard policies, workflow guardrails, and audit trails, so each agent has an owner.

September 19, 2026

What Rovo agent governance means in Atlassian Cloud

Rovo agent governance in Atlassian Cloud: the permission model agents run under, the admin controls that limit them, and who answers for each agent.

April 16, 2026

New Work Types in Jira Business Spaces

Learn how Jira's new work type hierarchy in business spaces gives non-technical teams better structure, and control over their work.

April 16, 2026

Web Search in Rovo Agents: What It Is and How to Use It

See how web search in Rovo Agents works, how to set it up, and how teams are using it to bring live web context into their workflows.

March 31, 2026

Atlassian Guard Has a New Data Security Policy

Learn how Atlassian Guard's new unified data security policy simplifies enterprise-wide protection across Jira and Confluence.

February 25, 2026

Connect Third-Party Data Sources in Atlassian Analytics

Learn how to connect third-party data sources to Atlassian Analytics for richer, more complete business insights.

February 20, 2026

Best Practices for Writing Pull Requests on Bitbucket

Learn the best practices for writing better pull requests on Bitbucket Cloud and how its built-in features help teams and ship cleaner code.

All posts

Recent resources

guide

Atlassian usage-based pricing on December 3: what changes and what to set first

On December 3, 2026, Atlassian starts billing usage above your included monthly allowances for most meters, including Rovo credits and Automation steps, as a usage layer on top of your existing subscription. Allowances pool across your organization and refresh monthly, and when extra usage is off or a limit is reached, only that meter pauses. Before December 3, check each meter's extra usage setting in Atlassian Administration, set a monthly limit, and name an owner, because Atlassian's own pages describe the default differently.

guide

How to control which MCP clients and agents reach Jira and Confluence

Control MCP access in Atlassian Administration, under Connectors, then Atlassian MCP server: allow only the client domains you approve, keep API token authentication off unless a named pipeline needs it, and set Read, Write, and Search permissions per app. Every connection still acts as a person or an account with that account's existing Jira and Confluence permissions, so give each one a named owner, minimum scope, an expiring credential, and a review date. The audit log records every MCP tool call with the tool, the action, and the user.

guide

Service accounts vs agent identities in Atlassian Cloud: which to use and who owns each

Use an Atlassian service account when a script or integration calls Jira or Confluence on its own, and give a Rovo agent its own Agent's account when it runs in automation with no person present. Agents that people chat with should use that person's permissions, and every non-human identity needs a named human owner, a written scope, a credential or access grant with a review date, and a known off switch.

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