Well, while I enjoy movies in my spare time, professionally my team and myself are responsible for all marketing activities we are doing at Actonic: Content (like this), social media, webinars, our website, SEO, and so on. In this role in general, and during a world-wide pandemic specifically, it is very easy to get trapped inside a self-made bubble of assumptions about yourself, your company or your products. You sit in your office or home office, alone with your thoughts and those of your colleagues, and without any input from outside, a certain kind of “reality” forms. Or at least something you perceive as reality. You know what you know and what the people around you know. You exchange that knowledge, ideas and experiences, but what you are lacking is a true outside perspective.
This is in some ways like being trapped inside the Matrix. Captivated in your own little world in which you can be comfortable in, but that’s not necessarily real. In this world, you might think you know exactly what your customers need or want. You might think you understand how your product or service is being received. Because you know everything about it, everyone else who encounters it must also have the same point of view as yourself, right?
While this might sound logical in some way, it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Going to an event like Atlassian Day as an exhibitor will very quickly teach you otherwise. While talking to people – either to Jira/Confluence users or administrators, or to other Atlassian Solution Partners or Marketplace Vendors – you will quickly realize that many of the things you assumed to be true are, in fact, just in your head. You step into the “real world” and everything, or at least some things you think you know, get turned upside down.
And that’s great!
Why? Because after you handle the initial shock, you realize what you have to do to make people understand what you understand. How you can help them solve their problems by either explaining your solution better or take home ideas to improve the solution itself. This is why I love attending conferences like this: it gives me the chance to get in direct contact with all kinds of people, put myself in their shoes and take their position.
Take our Jira app “Report Builder” for example. It’s a framework to create any kind of report, no matter what your requirement is. You either start simple and use our unique “Universal Report” to configure it to your needs with a few clicks – or you build your very own custom report using HTML, CSS and JavaScript to make complex calculations and render them in fancy diagrams. There truly are no limits to what you can do. It will redefine your reality and you will feel like Neo in the Matrix. 
And if you don’t have any expertise in these things, our Report Building Service team will build anything you need.
Sounds great, right? Well, except that people don’t necessarily understand what that all really means. They need to see examples to envision a possible benefit for themselves.
That’s why I was very thankful for the opportunity to hold a presentation about Jira reporting and its possibilities on Day 2 of Atlassian Day. I can’t wait to share the recording with you, but until it is ready, feel free to have a look at the custom Jira report from my presentation: We built it in Report Builder for one of our German customers, BÜFA. They needed an overview to make sure their deliveries are on time, and you can read all about it here: How BÜFA Chemicals used a custom Jira report to boost delivery targets rapidly.
Do you know Report Builder? If not, I’d like to extend the offer I made at my presentation to you and all readers of this article: Use Report Builder one year for free to experiment with its capabilities and give us feedback of what you want improved. Sounds interesting? Contact us with the catchword “Report Builder AD7” and I will send you a discount code for your hosting platform of choice (Server and Data Center as well as Cloud is fully supported).
Meanwhile, feel free to check Report Builder on the Atlassian Marketplace.
On the other hand, if you do know the app, please share your experiences with us: What’s your use case? Does our solution solve your problem? What do you wish you could do with it beyond its current capabilities? What kind of report template would you like to see? Let’s break down the barriers of the Matrix and replicate the live interaction we can have at an event like Atlassian Day: book a demo and feedback session here, and we will be happy to answer your questions and listen to your suggestions: actonic.de/app-demo.
In any case, I’ve now reconnected to my own Matrix, thinking back to the great days we had in Budapest. With me on the trip was my colleague Laura and you can read about her experiences in her article.
Next chance I get, I will definitely take the red pill again, so I can keep showing Actonic’s solutions to the world. After all, they are among the best ones available.
At least in my reality. What do you think? Let me know!
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