Building Secure & Cloud-Native Apps in the New Era of Atlassian Forge

As our digital environment keeps speeding up, the search for improvement of our daily work tools seems to be an obvious consequence - after all, adapting is in our nature. This occurrence doesn’t omit the Atlassian ecosystem and add-ons on Atlassian Marketplace. In the light of constant changes, the Forge platform has emerged as a modern solution that enables developers to create not just powerful solutions, but ones that meet the requirements of the future.  

What is Atlassian Forge and why use it?

In a nutshell, Forge is a development platform that allows teams to build add-ons for Jira, Confluence or other Atlassian products. It aims to cater only for Cloud-hosting - an aspect that, perhaps, differentiates this new platform from Connect the most. Out of all of the arguments in favor of Forge, there may be three main points to be distinguished:

Seamless integration

Forge apps have access to Jira’s APIs, allowing for deep integration with native workflows, issues and custom data. This is an opening of new possibilities for automating processes, customizing interfaces and creating dynamic features.

Simplified development and deployment

Forge handles much of the infrastructure complexity, such as authentication, hosting, scaling - so developers can truly focus on building features. With a straightforward CLI and a library of prebuilt UI components, deploying, updating and maintaining apps becomes faster, without the risk of an error-flood.

Enhanced security and data residency

All data processing happens within Jira’s Cloud infrastructure, ensuring data never leaves the environment where it resides. This approach aligns with strict security policies, especially for organizations managing sensitive or regulated data, such as customer data, legal documents or any confidential project details. And when compliance with data protection regulations isn’t a problem anymore, trust from customers and partner-companies becomes a constant. 

How does building apps on Forge work?

Feature design, writing code in JavaScript or TypeScript and utilization of Forge’s API tools - that’s just a snippet of app development in Forge. Forge CLI is used by developers to create projects, test apps locally with Forge Tunnel and deploy directly to Atlassian Cloud Marketplace - all done with a few commands.

On top of that, Forge offers a rich set of UI components -buttons, modals, fields -and each of those elements can be customized for different workflows. The architecture ensures that  the app operates securely and is isolated from other add-ons or external servers, maintaining organizational compliance.

Appsvio’s Journey with Forge

For us, recognition of Forge came quite early, as we aimed to discover new possibilities and grow. Our apps, such as Appsvio Test Management (ATM) or Issue Templates Agent, have been built on Forge from the beginning and leverage the platform’s security and flexibility. 

ATM is the first solution for test management built on the new platform. The simplicity of design and a high level of integration with Jira is what makes it a unique alternative to other tools. With ATM, testers can manage the whole testing process in Jira - from requirements definition to test case execution and result analysis with reports.

Issue Templates Agent is an add-on that allows users to create and manage structured Jira work item templates, from the simplest, single-task ones, to the most advanced epics. With the templating app, users save time without losing the quality of the work items created, as templates ensure consistency in work items across projects.

Besides being practical and intuitive with design, thanks to Forge, these apps keep up with the security standards of Atlassian Marketplace: all of the data remains within the Jira Cloud environment. 

The Future of Forge in the Atlassian Ecosystem

Although Forge is a work in progress, Atlassian continues to enhance its capabilities - adding new UI components, API endpoints and integration options. With this growth,the picture becomes clearer: Forge will be the standard platform for Cloud app development. For organizations focused on data security, at this moment, it is the most optimal platform, when it comes to products in the Atlassian ecosystem. With our experiences of building on Forge, whether it’s about ATM or Issue Templates Agent, we can honestly say that it is possible to create apps that meet modern business needs, not just in terms of design or functionality, but data safety as well.

About Appsvio

Appsvio is a Polish company established at the end of 2020, specializing in developing proprietary Jira extensions. Their most popular add-ons include Feature Bundle and Issue Templates Agent. Recognized for their innovation, Appsvio received the “Partner of the Year in ITSM App Solutions” award in 2024 and was nominated in the “High Velocity Service Management Apps” category in 2025. The company’s passionate team is composed of experienced professionals dedicated to enhancing Jira’s capabilities by leveraging Atlassian