As Atlassian’s cloud app platform, Forge has rapidly evolved to give developers more power and flexibility. Atlas Bench’s experts have been tracking Forge’s latest enhancements, and we’re excited about how they make building custom apps easier. In this blog, we highlight three key Forge features: a native JavaScript runtime, Forge Remote, and UI Kit 2, and explain how each will help you build better Atlassian apps. By leveraging these new capabilities, development teams can create more powerful, efficient, and user-friendly apps within Jira, Confluence, and other Atlassian products.
Forge’s new native JavaScript runtime allows your app code to run in a standard Node.js environment. This is a game-changer for Atlassian app developers, removing previous limitations and streamlining development workflows. Key benefits of the native runtime include:
Use of Standard Libraries: Forge now runs on a Node.js-compatible runtime, so you can use familiar Node.js APIs and thousands of NPM packages without special workarounds. This means you’re no longer limited to a narrow subset of JavaScript; you have the full power of the JavaScript ecosystem at your disposal.
Better Performance & Compatibility: Running natively allows Forge apps to execute faster and more efficiently. Code that previously might have been restricted or slowed down by Forge’s older sandbox can now run as it would in any Node environment. This improves performance and reduces unexpected behavior, resulting in more reliable apps.
Simplified Development & Debugging: Developers can test and debug Forge functions locally in a true Node.js setting. Because the runtime is consistent with standard JavaScript, it’s easier to reproduce issues and use familiar tools during development. In short, the learning curve is lower: your team can hit the ground running with the skills you already have.
By embracing the native JavaScript runtime, Atlas Bench can help your team build Forge apps faster and with fewer obstacles. It ensures that your custom Jira or Confluence app behaves predictably and can leverage modern JavaScript capabilities for advanced functionality.
Not every aspect of an app can (or should) run inside the Forge cloud. Forge Remote is a new capability that lets you extend your Forge app beyond Atlassian’s infrastructure, giving you the freedom to integrate external services or run heavier workloads on your own systems. In practice, Forge Remote helps development teams build more sophisticated apps in a few important ways.
First, it allows complex processing to be offloaded to external infrastructure. Forge apps traditionally operate within strict limits (such as execution time and memory) to ensure Atlassian’s cloud remains stable. With Forge Remote, you can delegate resource-intensive tasks to a service you control, for example, performing large data transformations or interacting with an on-premise database, and then return the results to your Forge app. This keeps your app responsive for end-users while handling heavy lifting elsewhere.
Second, Forge Remote expands integration possibilities. You can securely connect your Forge app to third-party APIs, legacy systems, or cloud services that were previously out of reach. For instance, if you need to integrate with an internal company API (behind a firewall) or a specialized cloud service, Forge Remote provides a bridge. Your Forge app can call out to your remote service, which does the work and sends data back. The result is an Atlassian app that feels native to the user but can tap into virtually any external capability or data source under the hood.
Finally, Forge Remote maintains seamless user experience and security. From the user’s perspective, everything still happens within the Atlassian app’s interface, but behind the scenes you have the flexibility to run code in the environment of your choice. Atlassian manages the authentication and secure tunneling between Forge and your remote service, so you can focus on your business logic. The end result is an app that’s both more powerful and secure, leveraging Atlassian’s robust cloud and your own infrastructure where needed.
Atlas Bench has the expertise to design Forge Remote architectures that maximize these benefits. By offloading tasks and integrating external systems, you can build Atlassian apps that do far more than was previously possible, all while keeping performance snappy and users happy.
Building an intuitive user interface is crucial for app adoption. Forge’s UI Kit 2 is the next generation of its user interface library, giving developers a wider range of components and more flexibility to create engaging app UIs. With UI Kit 2, Atlassian has significantly improved how you build the front-end of your Forge apps:
More Pre-Built Components: UI Kit 2 introduces a broader collection of Atlassian-styled components, from advanced form fields and tables to modals, menus, and dynamic content elements. Instead of building UI elements from scratch or settling for basic inputs, you can drop in ready-made components that look and feel like native Jira or Confluence features. This speeds up development and ensures consistency with Atlassian’s design guidelines.
Greater Flexibility and Customization: The new UI kit is more flexible in layout and styling. You can arrange components in more complex layouts and have greater control over their appearance and behavior. This means your app’s interface can be tailored to complex use cases without feeling constrained by the framework. Developers have reported that UI Kit 2 feels less “rigid”, allowing for creative UI solutions that were hard to achieve with the earlier version.
Improved User Experience: Apps built with UI Kit 2 are simply more user-friendly. With richer components and smoother interactions, your Forge app can provide a modern, polished experience. For example, you might use a new table component to display data with sorting and filtering built-in, or a wizard component to guide users through multi-step setups. These enhancements make your app more intuitive, reducing training time and user errors. A better UI translates to happier users and higher adoption of your custom app.
By leveraging UI Kit 2 in your Forge development projects, you ensure the end product is something users will enjoy using. Atlas Bench specializes in creating bespoke Atlassian app interfaces, and with UI Kit 2, we help clients deliver interfaces that rival native product features. The result is a custom app that not only performs well (thanks to the features above) but also delights users with a clean, efficient UI.