Craft detailed status updates with the update composer

Communication is HARD. Getting started from a blank page. Knowing what to include for your audience. Striking that balance between simplicity and providing enough context. For goals and projects, one of our aspirations is to help everyone become a better communicator, so work can move forward smoother.

One of our best vehicles for building stronger communicators when it comes to talking about work and outcomes is the unique update composer built for goal and project updates. We envision a powerful experience where our project and goal owners can easily curate their weekly and monthly updates, through quick start actions, context from work surrounding them, and AI.

But until then, here are some features of the update composer that make it so special

Add commentary to status and target date changes

Whenever a key change happens in your project or goal, whether that be a status change or target date slips, you can add some commentary to provide context to your stakeholders on why that occurred and normalize these kinds of updates.

You can even choose a target date that represents a day, month or quarter depending on your level of confidence in the target date, to help communicate timeframes without the anxiety of committing to a hard launch date from day 1.

Intentional status updates in 280 characters or less

It may be controversial, but our character limit is meant to encourage you to edit and prioritize the information you include in your updates. By intentionally communicating the most important pieces of information for stakeholders, you spend less time writing updates and your followers spend less time reading to get to the point.

More space when 280 characters isn’t enough

Sometimes, more work happens in your week or month than can possibly fit in 280 characters. We suggest using the 280 characters as a summary of the MOST important things to highlight to your stakeholders, but we also provide the ability to add a more detailed note so you can elaborate on the extra details, for those who are curious to dig in deeper.

Add a detailed note via the + button and click Note. This note is not character-constrained and when published, will display in a collapsed view so your more curious readers can click to expand it for additional information. You can only add one detailed note per update.

The power of the Atlassian editor

Our Atlassian editor enables you to write rich updates with formatting, media, and links to boost your communication to the next level. Format text for emphasis. Add emojis for some colour. Include media to help visualize your update. Link out to pages or designs for more context. Embed views to illustrate things.

Jog your memory with a previous update

If you find it hard to get started on your update, you can now paste your previous update to give you a platform to start from and refresh your memory on if there are any loose ends to close from last week.

Paste your previous update by entering the /last command and selecting Last update.

Start with an update template

Want some more inspiration on what to share in your update? There are a few templates for both goals and projects to help you get started. Simply click on the Templates dropdown on the top right of the update composer, or type /templates.

Add risks, learnings, and decisions to your weekly updates

The weekly and monthly checkpoints are a great time to reflect on your progress and call out any risks, learnings, or decisions faced in your project or goal.

For any existing risks, learnings, or decisions that have been created within the week (or month for goals) from their respective tabs, you will see them displayed on your latest update. You can also create new risks, learnings, or decisions straight from your update, using the /learning, /risk or /decision commands or click the + button and select Learning, Risk or Decision in the dropdown.