Building with Forge: Recap from the Atlassian Builders’ Summit
At the first Atlassian Builders’ Summit, over 150 practitioners explored Forge through keynotes, workshops, and hands-on sessions. This recap highlights how admins and non-developers are building apps, boosting security, and leveraging key Forge features such as custom workflow rules, UI components, REST APIs, board action modals, dynamic tables, external data macros, and advanced JSM portal extensions.
At the end of October, about 150 Atlassian practitioners came together at the Atlassian Builders’ Summit. This recap covers the Forge presentations, hands-on workshops, and expert sessions that showed how admins and non-developers can build useful apps, boost security, and explore new Forge features.
I’m still buzzing from the first Atlassian Builders’ Summit, a three-day event where Atlassian admins and practitioners came together for hands-on workshops to learn more about the tools they use every day.
This was the very first time our Atlassian Champions organized an event with a dedicated Forge track. I was excited to be involved from the beginning, helping to create the content and run the Forge workshops.
It was also a milestone for our community. Many members presented on Forge, led workshops, and even shared their knowledge in a Forge-focused keynote for the first time.
What did we hear about—and from whom?
Matt Doar: Forge Keynote & Why It Matters
The Forge sessions kicked off with a keynote by Matt Doar (Adaptavist), who shared his honest opinion about Forge today, why it’s so relevant for Atlassian admins, and why it should be part of their toolset. He then explored what can be built with Forge—from simple reports and custom workflow rules to complex apps and automations. Matt also shared tips for getting started and key considerations for anyone embarking on a Forge journey.
Liz Tanner: Getting Started with Forge
Liz Tanner (Catelis Learning Solutions) guided our audience through their first steps with Forge. She covered the basics, from Forge CLI concepts to UI components and essential Atlassian REST APIs. Liz then helped attendees build their first Forge apps: a Jira app that provides a board action modal with visual statistics (pie charts) for issues, and a Confluence app that organizes page data in a dynamic table—giving admins relevant insights.
Darryl Lee: Building with AI as a Non-Developer
Our third session was presented by Darryl Lee (Atlassian Admin at Roku). He shared how a non-developer built his first Forge app using AI, and how admin experience with REST APIs makes developing on Forge easier. Darryl walked the audience through creating a word count app, coding live with attendees, and sharing his learnings.
Tanya Botta: Marketplace Apps & Security Best Practices
The day ended with a session by Tanya Botta (APPsolute Best LLC). She shared her perspective on building an app for the Atlassian Marketplace as a non-developer, and explained what it takes to make an app available on the Marketplace. Tanya also showed attendees how to save code in a source control system, set up vulnerability scans, and respond to vulnerability reports to keep apps secure. These steps are not just for Marketplace apps—following them will benefit any Forge app, including those built for internal use.
Ryan Talusan & Caterina Curti: Surfacing External Data with Forge
The next day, we kicked off another round of sessions with Ryan Talusan (Atlassian) and myself (Caterina Curti, Atlassian). We demonstrated how to create a Forge Confluence macro with configurable options to surface external data (IT survey data) as a table and, later, as a chart.
We also added a contextual menu to load specific survey responses for each tool.
Zishan Aslam: Advanced JSM Portal Extensions
The last workshop, led by Zishan Aslam (Valiantys), showed us how to extend a Jira Service Management portal using Forge. He covered intermediate to advanced topics, sharing with an audience of mostly new-to-Forge Atlassian experts the true power of this development platform. This session demonstrated how to add a Rovo-powered conversational chat to the Jira Service Management portal—a creative solution that inspired everyone to go beyond the basics of Forge.
Shout-outs
I’m so grateful to all the presenters for sharing their time and expertise, and to the co-founders and organizers (Alex Ortiz, Bernardina Ortiz, Bryan Guffey and Fabian Lopez) for making this event a reality.
Learn More & Join the Community
If you want to learn more about Forge and see practical examples of how to use it, join our Atlassian Developers community!
We regularly host webinars on Forge capabilities and use cases—perfect for learning directly from experts and asking your questions live.