Comala Checklists for Confluence - Forge

Comala Checklists keeps your team focused on what needs to be done. The app's checklists take seconds to create, inside Confluence pages.
Teams might use the app to enable checklist of items related to a page, start an onboarding page, or assign team members project to-do's.
Comala Checklists has the potential to fill a variety of needs. So team members project to-do's can check-off themselves when complete.
With Checklists your team can provide context when completing an item, by leaving a comment on the task to provide additional details.
If you click on Audit log you can view all the information on the actions taken, your team can have transparency in the items pending.

Inspiration

As we were going through the process of attaining SOC 2 certification, it became clear that a lightweight checklists app would be really useful for keeping team members connected to a project. Codegeist gave us the perfect inspiration to utilize Forge to build something we think other teams will really find useful.

What it does

Quickly add checklists of tasks and to-dos to your Confluence Cloud pages. Assign team members to complete these to-dos, and keep track of which have been completed.

How we built it

Our team dove into the process of exploring and learning Forge. We found that it let us prototype and create proof-of-concepts really quickly. In a short amount of time we went from software requirements to an alpha build our team could test internally.

We wanted to explore the full potential of the ModalDialog and how we can store content on a Confluence page, we decided that a core component of the checklist is that is can be auditable by the organization or stakeholders. So we used the Forge Store API we manage to create a backlog of all the checks and un-checks during the lifecycle of the enabled Checklists Macro in a page so we could provide a visual audit trail.

Challenges we ran into

This was our first Forge app, so it was important to familiarize how the Store API and the content-property modules worked together, we ran into an initial problem that our app was not rendering but the Atlassian team was quick to point out the platforms limitations in their documentation and we managed to remove this blocker quickly :)

Setting up a friendly UI was very straight forward and we wanted to build this app with more functionalities using Web Triggers but the team decided to wait for the next release in Forge to implement it, sometimes you cannot have your cake and eat it too :P

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In the beginning we thought that this app could not deliver a lot of value, but it is important to elaborate on the core differences that a checklist provides in comparison to a list. A lot of organizations need their team members to go through auditable processes like - onboarding, review human resource policy or product/service specifications to comply with local, federal or international regulatory compliance.

This is where a checklist can be a very powerful tool that enables individuals or groups to follow strict procedures in a transparent way with just a few clicks and the app can be embedded into any Confluence space.

What we learned

Forge can be a good testing platform so teams can understand what a Function as a Service can do for teams that want to build apps for Atlassian quickly without having to worry about security, since all of this is handle by the Forge service. We have started to work with Amazon Web Services for a few years now and seeing how Forge is built on top of it can give us a glimpse into how server less technology can push software development innovation in the years to come.

What's next for Comala Checklists for Confluence - Forge

We're very excited to see user feedback from Comala Checklists. If the demand is there, we will certainly consider adding additional functionality in the next upcoming releases in Forge as the platform gets ready for prime time.