Content Design for Atlassian’s Smart Values Help Panel
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Context
This feature was created for Atlassian Automation. Automation is available in Jira and Confluence, two of Atlassian’s most popular products. For context, Automation helps users to focus on what matters. It removes the need for users to perform repetitive manual work, by allowing them to create rules which will automatically perform the tasks on their behalf. Automation rules can carry out tasks such as sending emails, commenting on pages, transitioning work and more. When creating and editing their rules, users can input dynamic pieces of code, referred to as ‘smart values’, in order to automatically input data into the rule - such as an assignee’s name, a user ID, and more. This helps users to save time when creating rules, and the dynamic nature of these values allows them to be flexible.
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Problem Space
Up until May 2024, if customers wanted to use smart values, they had to search through Atlassian’s extensive support documentation articles, try and find a list of available smart values and copy them, and then paste them into the Automation rulebuilder and hope they worked. This led to less experienced users struggling to use Atlassian’s smart values, a fact which was highlighted by a heightened number of customer support tickets related to smart values in mid 2024.
Our team wanted to fix this issue by introducing a help panel for smart values, which would be accessible within the UI of the Automation rulebuilder. This panel would contain a list of all available smart values in the UI, and allow users to instantly learn about how they work, as well as copy and paste them directly into their rule. No more needing to search through documentation to find smart values.
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What were my tasks?
As the lead content designer and UX writer for this project, I was tasked with the following:
Write UX copy - including writing descriptions, naming features, adding example outputs and finalising success/error messaging.
Write and publish support documentation - creating help content to be published on Atlassian’s support site, release notes and community posts.
UX Copywriting
When writing the UX copy for the help panel, which you can see in the gallery of images, I ensured the panel:
Provided detailed descriptions of each category, and then when the user selects a category, each value within it also has a description of what it does and what an output of the value may look like. Having these descriptions and examples lowers the learning curve for users, and makes the function of the smart values more easily understandable.
Provided users with more specific information about what the smart values does when they select it, to ensure they’re happy with its function before adding them to their rule.
Support Documentation
In my documentation for smart values, which I wrote, edited and published to ensure users had more detailed support if they needed it, I ensured I had:
Provided an overview of how to use this feature for new users, which lowers the learning curve and allows more people to feel comfortable using smart values.
Included images to help visual learners understand these concepts - it’s important to not only rely on text when writing content, and add visual elements if possible.
Placed article in a location with high visibility, for easier access for users - more traffic means more users are going to see it!
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Results & Impact
Once Automation’s Smart Values Help Panel was publicly released in May 2024, we observed the following results, which demonstrated the positive impact of this project:
The ‘friction’ rating was 19.5% in Feb 2024, but after the publication of the support documentation, it reduced to 14.6% in May 2024
The number of support tickets submitted by customers, who needed help with smart values, decreased from 75 in Apr 2024 to only 52 in Jun 2024