June 17, 2025 • 31 mins
Atlassian is a suite of products including Jira, Confluence, and Trello.
The Atlassian suite offers powerful tools for business organization and knowledge management that can be adapted for jewelry retailers, with special focus on Trello and Confluence.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Welcome to In the Loop.
This is going to be a quickerepisode, mainly because we got a
couple of exciting thingscoming, including a JCK vlog
which I'm really excited about,but that'll come out next week.
But I really wanted to go overanother Breaking Down the Best
episode because I went throughand I was listening to my
Breaking Down the Best on theGoogle Suite and I was like you
(00:39):
know what?
This is kind of interesting.
I'm going to do more of these.
So here is my Breaking Down thebest for the Atlassian suite,
and that includes Jira,confluence, bitbucket and Trello
and a couple of other ones.
All right, let's jump into it.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the
jewelry industry's favoritewebsite platform and digital
growth agency.
Our mission reaches way beyondtechnology.
With decades of experience andlong-lasting industry
relationships, punchmark enablesjewelry businesses to flourish
in any marketplace.
We consider our clients ourfriends, as many of them have
(01:20):
been friends way before becomingclients.
Punchmark's own success comesfrom the fact that we have a
much deeper need and obligationto help our friends succeed.
Whether you're looking forbetter e-commerce performance,
business growth or campaignsthat drive traffic and sales,
punchmark's website andmarketing services were made
just for you.
It's never too late totransform your business and
(01:42):
stitch together your digital andphysical worlds in a way that
achieves tremendous growth andresults.
Schedule a guided demo today atpunchmarkcom.
Slash go.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
And now back to the show.
Okay, so we're talking aboutAtlassian and before we start,
I'm going to put a couple thingsout there.
The first is I love Atlassian.
There's no product that iscalled Atlassian.
It is a suite of products in asimilar way to the Google suite.
(02:17):
There's no product.
Well, I guess there is aproduct that is Google search,
but whatever, this is going tobe less applicable to the
day-to-day jeweler, but it'smore.
I think that there is one toolin here, or two tools in here,
that I think you could actuallystart implementing at your store
.
What I will say is that theseare infrastructure changes.
(02:39):
These are not an easy switchfor stores to make or businesses
to make, and these are designedaround tech companies, and one
thing that's worth mentioning isthat anytime you switch your
infrastructure, it is a massiveoverhaul, and Punchmark made the
switch to this in probably 2021, I think it was and it was a
(03:04):
huge undertaking.
Anytime you switch onto one ofthese, you really have to like
you have to uproot everythingand put it into this other thing
, unless there's a good import.
So I guess it's one of thosesteps that you can't take
lightly.
So the other thing that'simportant to know is, like I
mentioned, this is fordevelopers or for tech companies
(03:25):
a lot of time.
But some of these tools thatare versatile enough that I
think you know you could findusing them in the day to day,
especially Trello.
Trello is a visual task boardand it is essentially a virtual
version of like a cork boardwhere you can pin post-it notes
(03:45):
up and then move them and moveto-do lists and projects.
What's really nice about it isit's virtual and you can like
attach tickets and projects.
If I was running custom jewelryprojects, I would consider
using Trello, but maybe let'snot get ahead of ourselves.
Let's jump into actuallytalking about Trello.
Not get ahead of ourselves,let's jump into actually talking
(04:08):
about Trello.
Trello is a visualorganizational board and these
things.
What I think is so awesomeabout them is that it takes
about one or two minutes to setup a Trello board.
You can really you can I thinkyou can have up to like 10 or 20
boards attached to your accountand then even then it's just
like oh, if you want another 50boards, it's like $2 a month or
(04:29):
something like that.
So I use them to stay organizedand I use them in college
especially to organize projects,so like if there's multiple
people, it'd be multiplecomponents to a project Then
what you could do is you couldassign them to people, so you
put your face on them, and thenyou could have these columns and
that's what the whole thing isset up on is status columns.
(04:54):
So on your far left a lot oftimes you have your to-do and
then you have your next column.
To the right could be somethinglike next up or on deck, the
right could be something likenext up or on deck, and then
your middle column is inprogress.
And it's nice to have an inprogress column because then no
one ever has to ask hey, whatare you working on?
(05:21):
They can see visually whatyou're working on, and that's
something I had to get used to.
And then the next could be inQC or ready for QC, and that
means that usually you take yourface off of it, or maybe you
keep your face on it and thenyou assign a secondary person to
QC, or maybe they are assignedpermanently QC of the QC column.
(05:41):
If anything comes in there, youknow that the project owner is
going to look through it, andthen the last one might be
either deploy or done orsomething like that, and we use
this actually when we werebuilding the vendor vault and
what the vendor vault is.
The way we used it was we wouldassign every single spread and
(06:02):
component for the magazine andwe would make it ahead of time.
So we'd basically have theentire magazine done essentially
in these cards, and inside ofthem you can attach all of the
inspiration and reference,photos and notes that we took.
Oh, it has to look like thisand not like this, and that way
when you open it up, it's almostlike a little folder that has
(06:25):
all of your information.
I find it very useful to stayorganized like this.
I've used it for things likepersonal projects.
I used it for an art openingone time not this most recent
one, but the one before and whatit did is.
It just allowed me to stayorganized and visually know
where things were and not feeloverwhelmed.
(06:47):
I have a lot of anxiety and oneof the things I've learned is
that if I write everything downand I get all the pieces out of
the box is what I always say IfI take all the pieces out of the
box, then I kind of feel lessoverwhelmed.
It's more in front of you.
So that's Trello.
It takes two seconds to sign upfor.
Uh, get a Trello going.
I might even consider doing it.
(07:09):
If I use the custom uh, if Iwas doing custom jewelry, I
might think about doing that too.
You need to stay organized.
I'm sure you have a ticketingsystem or whatever, but what's
cool about Trello is you canactually attach PDFs and stuff
to it and you can make it have anew status.
It's like the status is that itis paid or something like that.
So a lot of these products whatyou'll learn is that they are
(07:34):
sandboxes and there's no rulesand instructions on how to play
with a sandbox.
A lot of the times,instructions are left
intentionally loose with thatloose UX and make it so that you
can kind of experience it alittle bit more.
I've seen people do differentthings with their columns and
(07:54):
stuff that I would never havethought and maybe is arguably
less intuitive than the way thatI would use it.
But if it works for them, thenit works All right.
That was Trello.
The next is similar butdifferent.
This one is called Jira, andJira is the million dollar word.
At Punchmark.
We have a Jira for everything.
(08:15):
A Jira essentially means aproject, but it's more kind of
complex than that.
What I like about Jira is thatit's essentially Trello, just
with hierarchy.
So what I mean by that is thatyou can have different types of
Jiras that cascade and nestunderneath the larger version of
(08:39):
it.
So, for example, if I mighthave a big project at Punchmark,
let's just say I am redoing thecart, let's just say, all right
, I'm going to redo the cart onon Punchmark and all websites.
Well, that is going to be what'scalled an epic.
An epic is kind of like, youknow, like the Odyssey, you know
(09:01):
like the Odyssey.
The Odyssey is the epic, butthen there are subsects of the
Odyssey that are like stories.
That's what they're called.
So a story in the Odyssey couldbe like the Lotus Eaters, so
that one contains individualchapters as well and those
(09:22):
chapters are tasks chapters aswell and those chapters are
tasks.
So, for example, in JIRAthere's an epic, and an epic has
stories inside of.
The stories are tasks and iteven can go as far as a subtask.
A lot of times with subtasksthey are more like a checklist
item, but they still can beassigned out, and the reason why
(09:45):
that's good is that what I havefound is that when you're doing
larger projects.
You really don't get thevelocity on your project if you
are stuck in the starting stages.
So what you can do is with anEpic, you can break all these
subtasks out.
So, for example, with the cartexample, the cart could require
(10:11):
these components.
It's like, okay, we need tohave the address section and the
credit card section and theshipping options section.
Each of those is a story.
But then on the credit cardsection, you also might have,
for example, a whole segmentlike you know, apple Pay versus
credit card, pay versusfinancing, and having those
sections you could then,underneath those individual
(10:36):
parts of the component, it couldbe just like build it out, qc
it and then merge it orsomething like that, or like get
rid of it.
So having those hierarchicalwell, what a word.
Hierarchical segments to yourproject can make things a little
(10:57):
bit more visual and also giveyou some velocity, if you know
what I mean.
So what we mean when we talkabout velocity, we mean like
you're moving, you're goingthrough the project, you know
where to go next and you havethis intuitive link with your
project that allows you to keeppushing forward at higher and
(11:17):
higher speeds what I always likewhen I was a scrum master is
that when you give someone aproject, the first week you're
always underwhelmed by theirprogress, and then the second
week they get done what you kindof expect, and then the third
week they are flying, and thenyou kind of keep that velocity
(11:39):
and a lot of the times I was infavor of velocity over.
You know the need for easygrabs, for example.
Easy grabs meaning like, oh,here's a layup project that's
super easy, like, can you justtake this and quickly do it?
A lot of the times I wouldactually pass on those projects
to other developers and I wouldassign the same dev a project
(12:04):
that could stretch over weeks,because I was a big fan of
velocity and continuing aproject until it was done,
because when you have to shiftgears, a lot of the times I felt
like it slammed on the brakes.
So Jira is a little bit more ofa dev tool than it is, than it
(12:25):
would be available for everybodyelse Again, also free and
Trello and Jira are essentiallythe same thing, except Jira is
just super souped up.
The other thing that I'll startto touch on now, trello, is the
least of this, but Jira, I wouldargue, is the most of this is
the ability to have this likeSymphony, an ability to
(12:49):
integrate and work with theseother products all in one.
Jira has all these integrationswith Confluence, bitbucket and
Status and things like that.
It's pretty cool how they allwork together.
It's all because they're underone suite and, just like in my
episode on Google Drive, whenyou start using the tools to
(13:11):
their fullest, you startrealizing that they were made to
work together.
You know, just like how formsGoogle Forms can pipe
information easily into GoogleSheets and have an easier way to
kind of visualize things.
So too do the Atlassianproducts work together.
Okay, enough of that, let'skeep moving.
(13:33):
The next one is going to be theone that I probably understand
the least.
So, again, when it comes toBitbucket, bitbucket is kind of
like a repository for your code,and what that is interesting
about is we have to give anothermetaphor, and the metaphor when
(13:53):
it comes to writing code is youkind of have to understand that
Punchmark's code base isessentially, let's just say it's
like a gigantic book series.
It is Game of Thrones, andactually that's a good example,
because Game of Thrones is stillnot done.
Come on, and actually that's agood example, because Game of
Thrones is still not done.
Come on, george RR Martin.
So you have this entire, manythousands of pages long series,
(14:25):
but let's just say the book'snever published.
Or the book did publish allseven of them and they're out,
but the published version ischanging.
But the published version ischanging.
That's what the code base isfor.
Punchmark is.
The code base that we launchedwith version six is essentially
the same as when we deployed it.
The only thing is is that wehave made hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of patches to it,and what a patch is is
(14:47):
essentially, you're rewriting asection of the book, and what a
patch is is essentially you'rerewriting a section of the book.
So back to the you know Game ofThrones books.
Let's just say, when hereleased them, he put them all
out, but there's like a lot ofmisspellings and there's parts
of the story that don't reallymake sense, or there's redundant
sections, because, like, achapter is in there twice and
(15:08):
you know it doesn't really makesense to have it in there twice.
Well, what Bitbucket could dois you could have, for example,
in this metaphor, have multiplewriters working on your book and
then they would go in, forexample, and they would take a
page 72 from book three and theycould take it out and then they
(15:31):
would maybe rewrite some of it.
They fix some spellings andthey re orchestrate a couple of
paragraphs and they make it alot cleaner and tighter, maybe
according to a reader's feedbackor maybe according to their own
feedback.
And then what Bitbucket wouldallow them to do in this code
(15:52):
kind of metaphor is then theywould take that nicely rewritten
piece of paper and then put itback into the book and then
suddenly the book is completeand altered.
But what would be important is,if you rewrote some of the book,
it would be important to firstof all give context.
(16:15):
Why did these changes get made?
So maybe when you put thatlittle sliver of the book in,
you might put like a littlepost-it note on the side of or
in the column of the paper thatsays fixed spellings here, here,
here, reorganize the paragraphremoved, that so-and-so was
(16:37):
eating this.
Well, that's an easy one.
You put it in there.
Suddenly the book is better.
And that would be an example ofa developer improving some of
the code base and merging it iswhat we call it merging it back
in.
However, it's also important.
Let's just say if later on inthe book it's you know, that
(16:59):
chapter referenced thatso-and-so was eating this.
Well, if later on the book thatbecomes relevant, oh he, uh,
chokes on this.
It's important for them to makesense.
So that could be an example ofa conflict.
So what Bitbucket allows is itwould allow to show if there
(17:21):
might be conflicts, and thenthey would need to be resolved
before the rewritten piece ofpaper is inserted back into the
entire, you know, compendium ofbooks.
Wow, that is a crazy example,but that actually does explain
it pretty well.
I'm not going to get too into itbecause I know that the people
who I'm listening to are mainlyjewelers, so, and not tech
(17:45):
people.
But that's one thing that weuse, and I think that I'll
probably move on the next oneand this.
I'll skip the last two or I'llkind of breeze over the last two
, but this one is also actuallyone that I think would be very
useful for jewelers to use, andthis is probably my favorite.
So this is called Confluence,and what's funny is that
(18:07):
Confluence is an actual word, aconfluence of things, but
confluence is essentially aprivate Wikipedia for your
whatever.
You need to know, or you havewritten about it, and what
happens is a lot of times.
I mean, raise your hand, ifyou're guilty of writing an
(18:28):
instruction manual for somethingin like a Google document or in
a Microsoft document and thenprinting it out or writing it on
a piece of paper and pinning itup, well, that's all well and
good.
But what happens when you havepeople that are not in the same
spot and then you can't write it?
Or what happens when you can'tfind it?
(18:49):
Or what happens when you havemultiple employees and they all
have their own instructionmanuals and then suddenly, maybe
people are writing the sameinstruction manual twice because
they didn't know it had beenwritten already.
Or what happens if an employeegets fired or leaves and they
have a lot of the instructionmanuals and then suddenly no one
(19:11):
knows how to use the toolsbecause the instruction manuals
are gone.
That's the type of stuff thatConfluence can solve, and I'm a
big fan because I'm rather proudof this.
I actually was the one whoundertook and architected.
We have two knowledge bases, sowe use the term knowledge base a
lot instead of confluence, butthey're essentially the same
(19:33):
thing is a knowledge base, is a,like this, centralized
repository of information, andwe have two of them, one of them
you probably have used before.
If you're a Punchmark clientand that is the Punchmark
knowledge Base it's on, you canlook it up helppunchmarkcom.
(19:53):
That's helppunchmarkcom andthat is our knowledge base, and
it has hundreds and hundreds andhundreds of articles all in
there, and what they all do isthey're all cataloged by product
type.
So we have a section for sitemanager and a section for page
builder and a section for howto's and frequently asked
(20:16):
questions.
We also have a section in therefor our API.
Our API explains, you know, forother developers and partner
companies, how to use ourproducts or integrate with our
code base in an easy way, and wepublish it freely so that
people are able to do it easily.
But we also have an internalconfluence, and what I think is
(20:37):
really cool about this is I havethis one password protected, or
essentially like permissionprotected, so you can't even
find it or access it.
I have it so that I have toapprove you, and the reason why
is there's kind of you know,some sensitive information in
there, and what's cool is weeven have certain sections of it
that have sensitive informationin it that are behind
(21:00):
permissions.
So, for example, we have asection where you have to be a
director and above, and we havea section for developers and we
have a section.
I'm sure that there's.
There might even be sectionsthat I don't even know about.
That's okay, but what's coolabout it is that everybody that
you grant permission to is ableto edit it and it becomes this
(21:21):
very easy to catalog and searchcentralized knowledge base.
And it has 100% changed ourcompany for the better.
The biggest thing for it is wealways used to make this joke
and it's not in very good taste,but we used to make this joke
about Brian, our CTO, and for along time Brian was the chief as
(21:44):
the chief dev.
So much stuff was in his brain,so much he had built so much of
the Punchmark code base and theplatform and he was our what we
call DevOps.
He was our DevOps guy, so hewas the one who, like, set up
servers and infrastructuresystems and we always used to
(22:04):
joke that any time Brian wouldgo up in a plane that suddenly
the servers would get wonky andthey would, like you know, start
to, we'd get someone would tryto DDoS us or someone would try
to take one of our servers down.
Or you know, or we just get alot of traffic or something.
Something was amiss and if wedidn't know how to fix it
(22:27):
ourselves, we would have to waituntil Brian got out of the sky
because he didn't have internetor service.
And sometimes I still rememberthere was this one.
It was like such an easy thingbut it required like two factor
authentication and it was like,oh, we can't fix it until Brian
gets the two, the two FA back tous.
(22:47):
And he landed, he sent it over,the two, the two FA back to us.
And he landed, he sent it over.
And the next meeting that I had,I sat Brian down and I said all
right, brian, we have to getall of this stuff into a
centralized location, otherwise,like we're too contingent on
him, because imagine, you knowwhat if something happened to
him, you know what if he gotsick, or what if he was, you
(23:12):
know something unimaginablehappened.
Well, would that cause thedeath of parts of our company?
No, that's not how it should beand I think that that's also
something you should think aboutfor your company.
You should think aboutdecentralizing your knowledge,
which is the opposite of what Ijust said, because we're
centralizing our knowledge butdecentralizing away from a
(23:36):
single person's mind.
So start thinking about partsof your business that might be
locked up if you're the owner.
That might be locked up in yourbrain.
For example, how do you dopayroll If you're the only one
who can run payroll?
Well, what happens if you getsick and payroll is still due?
(23:56):
Are you going to drag yourselfout of bed while you're sick and
do payroll?
Admirable, but maybe there's abetter way to do it.
Maybe you could write a quicklittle bulleted instruction
manual and make it so thatpeople can can read it and
follow it.
And the thing about that is itdoesn't even have to look nice.
(24:18):
That's what I think is funnyabout Confluence is that our
external one is dressed upbecause it's a product and we
want it to look nice.
We consider our knowledge baseto be a product, even though
it's integrated with the rest ofour products.
But our internal knowledge basea lot of the times looks
terrible, and that is almost bydesign, because knowledge is
(24:40):
more valuable having it downrather than having less of it
and having it dressed up.
So I 100% recommend you can getall this just by signing up
with Atlassian, and Confluenceis free.
We haven't paid a single dollarfor it ever.
So the last two, which I'm goingto breeze over and then I'm
going to get to how to sign upfor an Atlassian account, but
(25:02):
the last two is one is calledOpsGenie, and what this is?
I had to look it up.
This is OpsGenie helps IT andsupport teams respond to alerts
and outages.
It notifies the right peoplewhen something breaks fast so
they can fix it before customerseven notice.
So essentially, the option isis it's like a canary in the
(25:23):
coal mine.
It lets you know as early aspossible when anything is amiss,
and what this can be is justthese automated tests that pass
information regularly.
I won't get into it too muchbecause, again, this is just IT
and like techie stuff.
But what you?
(25:43):
You probably have an Ops Geniesystem in your, in your own
company, but it's probablyverbal.
So you probably have a system,or you should have a system,
where if something goes wrong,for example, a fire alarm goes
off you know a fire alarm isessentially your version of Ops.
A fire alarm goes off.
You know a fire alarm isessentially your version of Ops
Genie.
It goes off.
Well, you should probably leavethe premise and you'll probably
(26:06):
call what 911 or call the firedepartment.
That's essentially what OpsGenie is going to do.
Ross, if you're listening, Idon't really know.
Maybe explain it to me someday.
And then the last is this isalso from Atlassian, but we
don't use this one.
It's called a status page.
Is status page?
Essentially all of these thingscoming together and creating a
(26:30):
visual display for what's goingon with your products, products,
and that way, if someone couldbe like oh, is something wrong
with products, they can justcheck this page.
And for me, I actually checkedthis one on.
I've checked this one for Slackbefore, where it's like why is
my Slack not loading?
It's?
It's broken all the time.
What's going on?
Well, what you can do is youcan just pull up the same page
(26:54):
it's like called like.
Pull up the same page.
It's like called like isslackdowncom or something like
that, and it shows you know, yes, messaging has like a red light
next to it and that usuallymeans it's broken.
You can see status pages in thewild, for example at, for
(27:14):
example, ski resorts.
Sometimes ski mountains have astatus you know display next to
their ski list and this willshow you know this lift is down
or this lift is experiencingsuper high traffic, maybe you
should go somewhere else, orthis lift is open and you know.
So that way you know and youhave your options up above.
But status pages, it'simportant to remember, are only
(27:38):
as good as the trust you buildin them.
And the second you start having, you know, slow or old statuses
display, suddenly it becomes anissue.
So that is the Atlassian suiteof products.
We have Jira suite of products.
(28:00):
We have Jira, which is kind oflike a super powered version of
Trello.
Jira allows thesehierarchically categorized parts
and components.
Trello is more of likeorganizational to do visual task
board.
Confluence is good forknowledge-based systems and
documenting things into acentral repository so that
(28:23):
everybody knows how to doeverything which is important.
Bitbucket, which is about codebases and being able to merge
and develop books into eachother.
And we have Ops Genie, which isfor alerts and outages in
status page, which kind ofdisplays them in visually to
(28:44):
visitors.
Okay, so that is the Atlassiansuite.
Let's talk about how you couldsign up for one.
So if you wanted to get anAtlassian account, so if you
wanted to get an Atlassianaccount this is not sponsored
but you could go to Atlassiancom.
So that is A-T-L-A-S-S-I-A-NAgain, that is
(29:05):
A-T-L-A-S-S-I-A-Ncom, and allyou got to do is just sign up
with a Google account, a Gmail,and suddenly you'll have access
to all of them Google account, aGmail, and suddenly you'll have
access to all of them.
You'll need to create thespaces for where you'll actually
use them, but that's the firststep, and then, I would
recommend, jump into a Trello,start to play around with your
(29:29):
columns and suddenly, if thesethings sound interesting, I
would love to walk you throughone.
Maybe reach out to me, michael,at punchmarkcom, I'd love to
talk to you about it.
So I think that's where we'llleave it.
This is kind of one of thoseepisodes I've, you know, been
thinking about for a while.
I listened to the last GoogleSuite one and I kind of liked it
(29:49):
.
I did explain it.
I realized I didn't explainsome of the products as well as
I wanted to, but I think you getthe gist and I hope that maybe
I kind of explained Google Suiteyou know better than you knew
it, or maybe I illuminated atool or two that you had never
even tried.
But with this one.
I don't know if all of theseproducts are applicable to you,
(30:11):
but I think some of them areespecially Trello and especially
Confluence for the knowledgebase.
I think that the better we'reorganized and the better we have
centralized information, thebetter for everybody involved.
All right, everybody.
I think that's where I'll endit.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll be back next week,tuesday, with another episode.
(30:32):
Cheers Bye, cheers Bye.
All right, everybody, that'sthe end of the show.
Thanks so much for listening.
This episode was brought to youby Punchmark and produced and
hosted by me, michael Burpo.
This episode was edited by PaulSuarez with music by Ross
(30:52):
Cocker.
Don't forget to rate thepodcast on Spotify and Apple
Podcasts and leave us feedbackon punchmarkcom slash loop.
That's L-O-U-P-E.
Thanks.
I'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode.
Cheers Bye, thank you.
Welcome to In the Loop.
This is going to be a quickerepisode, mainly because we got a
couple of exciting thingscoming, including a JCK vlog
which I'm really excited about,but that'll come out next week.
But I really wanted to go overanother Breaking Down the Best
episode because I went throughand I was listening to my
Breaking Down the Best on theGoogle Suite and I was like you
(00:39):
know what?
This is kind of interesting.
I'm going to do more of these.
So here is my Breaking Down thebest for the Atlassian suite,
and that includes Jira,confluence, bitbucket and Trello
and a couple of other ones.
All right, let's jump into it.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the
jewelry industry's favoritewebsite platform and digital
growth agency.
Our mission reaches way beyondtechnology.
With decades of experience andlong-lasting industry
relationships, punchmark enablesjewelry businesses to flourish
in any marketplace.
We consider our clients ourfriends, as many of them have
(01:20):
been friends way before becomingclients.
Punchmark's own success comesfrom the fact that we have a
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(01:42):
stitch together your digital andphysical worlds in a way that
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Schedule a guided demo today atpunchmarkcom.
Slash go.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
And now back to the show.
Okay, so we're talking aboutAtlassian and before we start,
I'm going to put a couple thingsout there.
The first is I love Atlassian.
There's no product that iscalled Atlassian.
It is a suite of products in asimilar way to the Google suite.
(02:17):
There's no product.
Well, I guess there is aproduct that is Google search,
but whatever, this is going tobe less applicable to the
day-to-day jeweler, but it'smore.
I think that there is one toolin here, or two tools in here,
that I think you could actuallystart implementing at your store
.
What I will say is that theseare infrastructure changes.
(02:39):
These are not an easy switchfor stores to make or businesses
to make, and these are designedaround tech companies, and one
thing that's worth mentioning isthat anytime you switch your
infrastructure, it is a massiveoverhaul, and Punchmark made the
switch to this in probably 2021, I think it was and it was a
(03:04):
huge undertaking.
Anytime you switch onto one ofthese, you really have to like
you have to uproot everythingand put it into this other thing
, unless there's a good import.
So I guess it's one of thosesteps that you can't take
lightly.
So the other thing that'simportant to know is, like I
mentioned, this is fordevelopers or for tech companies
(03:25):
a lot of time.
But some of these tools thatare versatile enough that I
think you know you could findusing them in the day to day,
especially Trello.
Trello is a visual task boardand it is essentially a virtual
version of like a cork boardwhere you can pin post-it notes
(03:45):
up and then move them and moveto-do lists and projects.
What's really nice about it isit's virtual and you can like
attach tickets and projects.
If I was running custom jewelryprojects, I would consider
using Trello, but maybe let'snot get ahead of ourselves.
Let's jump into actuallytalking about Trello.
Not get ahead of ourselves,let's jump into actually talking
(04:08):
about Trello.
Trello is a visualorganizational board and these
things.
What I think is so awesomeabout them is that it takes
about one or two minutes to setup a Trello board.
You can really you can I thinkyou can have up to like 10 or 20
boards attached to your accountand then even then it's just
like oh, if you want another 50boards, it's like $2 a month or
(04:29):
something like that.
So I use them to stay organizedand I use them in college
especially to organize projects,so like if there's multiple
people, it'd be multiplecomponents to a project Then
what you could do is you couldassign them to people, so you
put your face on them, and thenyou could have these columns and
that's what the whole thing isset up on is status columns.
(04:54):
So on your far left a lot oftimes you have your to-do and
then you have your next column.
To the right could be somethinglike next up or on deck, the
right could be something likenext up or on deck, and then
your middle column is inprogress.
And it's nice to have an inprogress column because then no
one ever has to ask hey, whatare you working on?
(05:21):
They can see visually whatyou're working on, and that's
something I had to get used to.
And then the next could be inQC or ready for QC, and that
means that usually you take yourface off of it, or maybe you
keep your face on it and thenyou assign a secondary person to
QC, or maybe they are assignedpermanently QC of the QC column.
(05:41):
If anything comes in there, youknow that the project owner is
going to look through it, andthen the last one might be
either deploy or done orsomething like that, and we use
this actually when we werebuilding the vendor vault and
what the vendor vault is.
The way we used it was we wouldassign every single spread and
(06:02):
component for the magazine andwe would make it ahead of time.
So we'd basically have theentire magazine done essentially
in these cards, and inside ofthem you can attach all of the
inspiration and reference,photos and notes that we took.
Oh, it has to look like thisand not like this, and that way
when you open it up, it's almostlike a little folder that has
(06:25):
all of your information.
I find it very useful to stayorganized like this.
I've used it for things likepersonal projects.
I used it for an art openingone time not this most recent
one, but the one before and whatit did is.
It just allowed me to stayorganized and visually know
where things were and not feeloverwhelmed.
(06:47):
I have a lot of anxiety and oneof the things I've learned is
that if I write everything downand I get all the pieces out of
the box is what I always say IfI take all the pieces out of the
box, then I kind of feel lessoverwhelmed.
It's more in front of you.
So that's Trello.
It takes two seconds to sign upfor.
Uh, get a Trello going.
I might even consider doing it.
(07:09):
If I use the custom uh, if Iwas doing custom jewelry, I
might think about doing that too.
You need to stay organized.
I'm sure you have a ticketingsystem or whatever, but what's
cool about Trello is you canactually attach PDFs and stuff
to it and you can make it have anew status.
It's like the status is that itis paid or something like that.
So a lot of these products whatyou'll learn is that they are
(07:34):
sandboxes and there's no rulesand instructions on how to play
with a sandbox.
A lot of the times,instructions are left
intentionally loose with thatloose UX and make it so that you
can kind of experience it alittle bit more.
I've seen people do differentthings with their columns and
(07:54):
stuff that I would never havethought and maybe is arguably
less intuitive than the way thatI would use it.
But if it works for them, thenit works All right.
That was Trello.
The next is similar butdifferent.
This one is called Jira, andJira is the million dollar word.
At Punchmark.
We have a Jira for everything.
(08:15):
A Jira essentially means aproject, but it's more kind of
complex than that.
What I like about Jira is thatit's essentially Trello, just
with hierarchy.
So what I mean by that is thatyou can have different types of
Jiras that cascade and nestunderneath the larger version of
(08:39):
it.
So, for example, if I mighthave a big project at Punchmark,
let's just say I am redoing thecart, let's just say, all right
, I'm going to redo the cart onon Punchmark and all websites.
Well, that is going to be what'scalled an epic.
An epic is kind of like, youknow, like the Odyssey, you know
(09:01):
like the Odyssey.
The Odyssey is the epic, butthen there are subsects of the
Odyssey that are like stories.
That's what they're called.
So a story in the Odyssey couldbe like the Lotus Eaters, so
that one contains individualchapters as well and those
(09:22):
chapters are tasks chapters aswell and those chapters are
tasks.
So, for example, in JIRAthere's an epic, and an epic has
stories inside of.
The stories are tasks and iteven can go as far as a subtask.
A lot of times with subtasksthey are more like a checklist
item, but they still can beassigned out, and the reason why
(09:45):
that's good is that what I havefound is that when you're doing
larger projects.
You really don't get thevelocity on your project if you
are stuck in the starting stages.
So what you can do is with anEpic, you can break all these
subtasks out.
So, for example, with the cartexample, the cart could require
(10:11):
these components.
It's like, okay, we need tohave the address section and the
credit card section and theshipping options section.
Each of those is a story.
But then on the credit cardsection, you also might have,
for example, a whole segmentlike you know, apple Pay versus
credit card, pay versusfinancing, and having those
sections you could then,underneath those individual
(10:36):
parts of the component, it couldbe just like build it out, qc
it and then merge it orsomething like that, or like get
rid of it.
So having those hierarchicalwell, what a word.
Hierarchical segments to yourproject can make things a little
(10:57):
bit more visual and also giveyou some velocity, if you know
what I mean.
So what we mean when we talkabout velocity, we mean like
you're moving, you're goingthrough the project, you know
where to go next and you havethis intuitive link with your
project that allows you to keeppushing forward at higher and
(11:17):
higher speeds what I always likewhen I was a scrum master is
that when you give someone aproject, the first week you're
always underwhelmed by theirprogress, and then the second
week they get done what you kindof expect, and then the third
week they are flying, and thenyou kind of keep that velocity
(11:39):
and a lot of the times I was infavor of velocity over.
You know the need for easygrabs, for example.
Easy grabs meaning like, oh,here's a layup project that's
super easy, like, can you justtake this and quickly do it?
A lot of the times I wouldactually pass on those projects
to other developers and I wouldassign the same dev a project
(12:04):
that could stretch over weeks,because I was a big fan of
velocity and continuing aproject until it was done,
because when you have to shiftgears, a lot of the times I felt
like it slammed on the brakes.
So Jira is a little bit more ofa dev tool than it is, than it
(12:25):
would be available for everybodyelse Again, also free and
Trello and Jira are essentiallythe same thing, except Jira is
just super souped up.
The other thing that I'll startto touch on now, trello, is the
least of this, but Jira, I wouldargue, is the most of this is
the ability to have this likeSymphony, an ability to
(12:49):
integrate and work with theseother products all in one.
Jira has all these integrationswith Confluence, bitbucket and
Status and things like that.
It's pretty cool how they allwork together.
It's all because they're underone suite and, just like in my
episode on Google Drive, whenyou start using the tools to
(13:11):
their fullest, you startrealizing that they were made to
work together.
You know, just like how formsGoogle Forms can pipe
information easily into GoogleSheets and have an easier way to
kind of visualize things.
So too do the Atlassianproducts work together.
Okay, enough of that, let'skeep moving.
(13:33):
The next one is going to be theone that I probably understand
the least.
So, again, when it comes toBitbucket, bitbucket is kind of
like a repository for your code,and what that is interesting
about is we have to give anothermetaphor, and the metaphor when
(13:53):
it comes to writing code is youkind of have to understand that
Punchmark's code base isessentially, let's just say it's
like a gigantic book series.
It is Game of Thrones, andactually that's a good example,
because Game of Thrones is stillnot done.
Come on, and actually that's agood example, because Game of
Thrones is still not done.
Come on, george RR Martin.
So you have this entire, manythousands of pages long series,
(14:25):
but let's just say the book'snever published.
Or the book did publish allseven of them and they're out,
but the published version ischanging.
But the published version ischanging.
That's what the code base isfor.
Punchmark is.
The code base that we launchedwith version six is essentially
the same as when we deployed it.
The only thing is is that wehave made hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of patches to it,and what a patch is is
(14:47):
essentially, you're rewriting asection of the book, and what a
patch is is essentially you'rerewriting a section of the book.
So back to the you know Game ofThrones books.
Let's just say, when hereleased them, he put them all
out, but there's like a lot ofmisspellings and there's parts
of the story that don't reallymake sense, or there's redundant
sections, because, like, achapter is in there twice and
(15:08):
you know it doesn't really makesense to have it in there twice.
Well, what Bitbucket could dois you could have, for example,
in this metaphor, have multiplewriters working on your book and
then they would go in, forexample, and they would take a
page 72 from book three and theycould take it out and then they
(15:31):
would maybe rewrite some of it.
They fix some spellings andthey re orchestrate a couple of
paragraphs and they make it alot cleaner and tighter, maybe
according to a reader's feedbackor maybe according to their own
feedback.
And then what Bitbucket wouldallow them to do in this code
(15:52):
kind of metaphor is then theywould take that nicely rewritten
piece of paper and then put itback into the book and then
suddenly the book is completeand altered.
But what would be important is,if you rewrote some of the book,
it would be important to firstof all give context.
(16:15):
Why did these changes get made?
So maybe when you put thatlittle sliver of the book in,
you might put like a littlepost-it note on the side of or
in the column of the paper thatsays fixed spellings here, here,
here, reorganize the paragraphremoved, that so-and-so was
(16:37):
eating this.
Well, that's an easy one.
You put it in there.
Suddenly the book is better.
And that would be an example ofa developer improving some of
the code base and merging it iswhat we call it merging it back
in.
However, it's also important.
Let's just say if later on inthe book it's you know, that
(16:59):
chapter referenced thatso-and-so was eating this.
Well, if later on the book thatbecomes relevant, oh he, uh,
chokes on this.
It's important for them to makesense.
So that could be an example ofa conflict.
So what Bitbucket allows is itwould allow to show if there
(17:21):
might be conflicts, and thenthey would need to be resolved
before the rewritten piece ofpaper is inserted back into the
entire, you know, compendium ofbooks.
Wow, that is a crazy example,but that actually does explain
it pretty well.
I'm not going to get too into itbecause I know that the people
who I'm listening to are mainlyjewelers, so, and not tech
(17:45):
people.
But that's one thing that weuse, and I think that I'll
probably move on the next oneand this.
I'll skip the last two or I'llkind of breeze over the last two
, but this one is also actuallyone that I think would be very
useful for jewelers to use, andthis is probably my favorite.
So this is called Confluence,and what's funny is that
(18:07):
Confluence is an actual word, aconfluence of things, but
confluence is essentially aprivate Wikipedia for your
whatever.
You need to know, or you havewritten about it, and what
happens is a lot of times.
I mean, raise your hand, ifyou're guilty of writing an
(18:28):
instruction manual for somethingin like a Google document or in
a Microsoft document and thenprinting it out or writing it on
a piece of paper and pinning itup, well, that's all well and
good.
But what happens when you havepeople that are not in the same
spot and then you can't write it?
Or what happens when you can'tfind it?
(18:49):
Or what happens when you havemultiple employees and they all
have their own instructionmanuals and then suddenly, maybe
people are writing the sameinstruction manual twice because
they didn't know it had beenwritten already.
Or what happens if an employeegets fired or leaves and they
have a lot of the instructionmanuals and then suddenly no one
(19:11):
knows how to use the toolsbecause the instruction manuals
are gone.
That's the type of stuff thatConfluence can solve, and I'm a
big fan because I'm rather proudof this.
I actually was the one whoundertook and architected.
We have two knowledge bases, sowe use the term knowledge base a
lot instead of confluence, butthey're essentially the same
(19:33):
thing is a knowledge base, is a,like this, centralized
repository of information, andwe have two of them, one of them
you probably have used before.
If you're a Punchmark clientand that is the Punchmark
knowledge Base it's on, you canlook it up helppunchmarkcom.
(19:53):
That's helppunchmarkcom andthat is our knowledge base, and
it has hundreds and hundreds andhundreds of articles all in
there, and what they all do isthey're all cataloged by product
type.
So we have a section for sitemanager and a section for page
builder and a section for howto's and frequently asked
(20:16):
questions.
We also have a section in therefor our API.
Our API explains, you know, forother developers and partner
companies, how to use ourproducts or integrate with our
code base in an easy way, and wepublish it freely so that
people are able to do it easily.
But we also have an internalconfluence, and what I think is
(20:37):
really cool about this is I havethis one password protected, or
essentially like permissionprotected, so you can't even
find it or access it.
I have it so that I have toapprove you, and the reason why
is there's kind of you know,some sensitive information in
there, and what's cool is weeven have certain sections of it
that have sensitive informationin it that are behind
(21:00):
permissions.
So, for example, we have asection where you have to be a
director and above, and we havea section for developers and we
have a section.
I'm sure that there's.
There might even be sectionsthat I don't even know about.
That's okay, but what's coolabout it is that everybody that
you grant permission to is ableto edit it and it becomes this
(21:21):
very easy to catalog and searchcentralized knowledge base.
And it has 100% changed ourcompany for the better.
The biggest thing for it is wealways used to make this joke
and it's not in very good taste,but we used to make this joke
about Brian, our CTO, and for along time Brian was the chief as
(21:44):
the chief dev.
So much stuff was in his brain,so much he had built so much of
the Punchmark code base and theplatform and he was our what we
call DevOps.
He was our DevOps guy, so hewas the one who, like, set up
servers and infrastructuresystems and we always used to
(22:04):
joke that any time Brian wouldgo up in a plane that suddenly
the servers would get wonky andthey would, like you know, start
to, we'd get someone would tryto DDoS us or someone would try
to take one of our servers down.
Or you know, or we just get alot of traffic or something.
Something was amiss and if wedidn't know how to fix it
(22:27):
ourselves, we would have to waituntil Brian got out of the sky
because he didn't have internetor service.
And sometimes I still rememberthere was this one.
It was like such an easy thingbut it required like two factor
authentication and it was like,oh, we can't fix it until Brian
gets the two, the two FA back tous.
(22:47):
And he landed, he sent it over,the two, the two FA back to us.
And he landed, he sent it over.
And the next meeting that I had,I sat Brian down and I said all
right, brian, we have to getall of this stuff into a
centralized location, otherwise,like we're too contingent on
him, because imagine, you knowwhat if something happened to
him, you know what if he gotsick, or what if he was, you
(23:12):
know something unimaginablehappened.
Well, would that cause thedeath of parts of our company?
No, that's not how it should beand I think that that's also
something you should think aboutfor your company.
You should think aboutdecentralizing your knowledge,
which is the opposite of what Ijust said, because we're
centralizing our knowledge butdecentralizing away from a
(23:36):
single person's mind.
So start thinking about partsof your business that might be
locked up if you're the owner.
That might be locked up in yourbrain.
For example, how do you dopayroll If you're the only one
who can run payroll?
Well, what happens if you getsick and payroll is still due?
(23:56):
Are you going to drag yourselfout of bed while you're sick and
do payroll?
Admirable, but maybe there's abetter way to do it.
Maybe you could write a quicklittle bulleted instruction
manual and make it so thatpeople can can read it and
follow it.
And the thing about that is itdoesn't even have to look nice.
(24:18):
That's what I think is funnyabout Confluence is that our
external one is dressed upbecause it's a product and we
want it to look nice.
We consider our knowledge baseto be a product, even though
it's integrated with the rest ofour products.
But our internal knowledge basea lot of the times looks
terrible, and that is almost bydesign, because knowledge is
(24:40):
more valuable having it downrather than having less of it
and having it dressed up.
So I 100% recommend you can getall this just by signing up
with Atlassian, and Confluenceis free.
We haven't paid a single dollarfor it ever.
So the last two, which I'm goingto breeze over and then I'm
going to get to how to sign upfor an Atlassian account, but
(25:02):
the last two is one is calledOpsGenie, and what this is?
I had to look it up.
This is OpsGenie helps IT andsupport teams respond to alerts
and outages.
It notifies the right peoplewhen something breaks fast so
they can fix it before customerseven notice.
So essentially, the option isis it's like a canary in the
(25:23):
coal mine.
It lets you know as early aspossible when anything is amiss,
and what this can be is justthese automated tests that pass
information regularly.
I won't get into it too muchbecause, again, this is just IT
and like techie stuff.
But what you?
(25:43):
You probably have an Ops Geniesystem in your, in your own
company, but it's probablyverbal.
So you probably have a system,or you should have a system,
where if something goes wrong,for example, a fire alarm goes
off you know a fire alarm isessentially your version of Ops.
A fire alarm goes off.
You know a fire alarm isessentially your version of Ops
Genie.
It goes off.
Well, you should probably leavethe premise and you'll probably
(26:06):
call what 911 or call the firedepartment.
That's essentially what OpsGenie is going to do.
Ross, if you're listening, Idon't really know.
Maybe explain it to me someday.
And then the last is this isalso from Atlassian, but we
don't use this one.
It's called a status page.
Is status page?
Essentially all of these thingscoming together and creating a
(26:30):
visual display for what's goingon with your products, products,
and that way, if someone couldbe like oh, is something wrong
with products, they can justcheck this page.
And for me, I actually checkedthis one on.
I've checked this one for Slackbefore, where it's like why is
my Slack not loading?
It's?
It's broken all the time.
What's going on?
Well, what you can do is youcan just pull up the same page
(26:54):
it's like called like.
Pull up the same page.
It's like called like isslackdowncom or something like
that, and it shows you know, yes, messaging has like a red light
next to it and that usuallymeans it's broken.
You can see status pages in thewild, for example at, for
(27:14):
example, ski resorts.
Sometimes ski mountains have astatus you know display next to
their ski list and this willshow you know this lift is down
or this lift is experiencingsuper high traffic, maybe you
should go somewhere else, orthis lift is open and you know.
So that way you know and youhave your options up above.
But status pages, it'simportant to remember, are only
(27:38):
as good as the trust you buildin them.
And the second you start having, you know, slow or old statuses
display, suddenly it becomes anissue.
So that is the Atlassian suiteof products.
We have Jira suite of products.
(28:00):
We have Jira, which is kind oflike a super powered version of
Trello.
Jira allows thesehierarchically categorized parts
and components.
Trello is more of likeorganizational to do visual task
board.
Confluence is good forknowledge-based systems and
documenting things into acentral repository so that
(28:23):
everybody knows how to doeverything which is important.
Bitbucket, which is about codebases and being able to merge
and develop books into eachother.
And we have Ops Genie, which isfor alerts and outages in
status page, which kind ofdisplays them in visually to
(28:44):
visitors.
Okay, so that is the Atlassiansuite.
Let's talk about how you couldsign up for one.
So if you wanted to get anAtlassian account, so if you
wanted to get an Atlassianaccount this is not sponsored
but you could go to Atlassiancom.
So that is A-T-L-A-S-S-I-A-NAgain, that is
(29:05):
A-T-L-A-S-S-I-A-Ncom, and allyou got to do is just sign up
with a Google account, a Gmail,and suddenly you'll have access
to all of them Google account, aGmail, and suddenly you'll have
access to all of them.
You'll need to create thespaces for where you'll actually
use them, but that's the firststep, and then, I would
recommend, jump into a Trello,start to play around with your
(29:29):
columns and suddenly, if thesethings sound interesting, I
would love to walk you throughone.
Maybe reach out to me, michael,at punchmarkcom, I'd love to
talk to you about it.
So I think that's where we'llleave it.
This is kind of one of thoseepisodes I've, you know, been
thinking about for a while.
I listened to the last GoogleSuite one and I kind of liked it
(29:49):
.
I did explain it.
I realized I didn't explainsome of the products as well as
I wanted to, but I think you getthe gist and I hope that maybe
I kind of explained Google Suiteyou know better than you knew
it, or maybe I illuminated atool or two that you had never
even tried.
But with this one.
I don't know if all of theseproducts are applicable to you,
(30:11):
but I think some of them areespecially Trello and especially
Confluence for the knowledgebase.
I think that the better we'reorganized and the better we have
centralized information, thebetter for everybody involved.
All right, everybody.
I think that's where I'll endit.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll be back next week,tuesday, with another episode.
(30:32):
Cheers Bye, cheers Bye.
All right, everybody, that'sthe end of the show.
Thanks so much for listening.
This episode was brought to youby Punchmark and produced and
hosted by me, michael Burpo.
This episode was edited by PaulSuarez with music by Ross
(30:52):
Cocker.
Don't forget to rate thepodcast on Spotify and Apple
Podcasts and leave us feedbackon punchmarkcom slash loop.
That's L-O-U-P-E.
Thanks.
I'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode.
Cheers Bye, thank you.
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Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com