Atlassian has introduced Rovo, a robust AI tool designed as “a large knowledge model for your company.” Rovo functions as an enterprise search engine, consolidating information from Atlassian’s suite of applications and various third-party platforms to facilitate knowledge discovery, learning, and action-taking among employees.
According to Gartner, nearly half of digital workers find it challenging to locate the information necessary for their jobs. Employees often sift through content stored in emails, cloud services, Slack, Jira, Confluence, Trello, and numerous other applications, making it difficult to remember where everything is. Rovo addresses this issue, promising to enhance workplace productivity.
“Enterprises today operate across numerous tools, and managing knowledge within an organization is incredibly challenging,” states Sherif Mansour, Atlassian’s distinguished product manager and head of Atlassian Intelligence. He emphasizes that organizations utilize various SaaS and internal applications, making it essential to harness this data effectively to boost employee productivity.
What Does Atlassian Rovo Offer?
Atlassian Rovo consists of three components, all powered by Atlassian Intelligence, which debuted last year. Although each component can function independently, their collective use fosters a collaborative loop that enhances the discovery and utilization of information across various internal tools.
Find
Find is an enterprise search feature within the Atlassian cloud. “Rovo Search indexes all content from both third-party and internal tools, consolidating them into one location,” Mansour explains.
The choice of indexed applications lies with the Atlassian administrator, allowing integration with tools such as Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Slack, and Figma. Once permissions are granted, access is organization-wide but respects individual user permissions, ensuring that employees only see files they are authorized to view.
Search results comprise document links, images, and videos. For non-text files, Rovo analyzes transcripts for videos and employs image recognition techniques, with future plans to extract semantic information. Knowledge cards also appear at the top of search results, providing insights about projects, goals, and team members.
Learn
Learn equips employees with a comprehensive understanding of their company’s data. The AI generates detailed write-ups on projects, meeting summaries, and more, functioning like a real-time company glossary.
For instance, asking Rovo about the status of a marketing campaign will prompt it to create a detailed report, referencing relevant documents with citations. Additionally, Rovo offers contextual support by defining unfamiliar terms when users mouse over phrases marked with an underline.
A notable feature within Learn is Rovo Chat, a chatbot designed for answering questions and providing feedback, relying solely on the company’s internal data. This capability extends beyond Rovo’s interface, with plans for a browser extension that integrates this functionality into third-party platforms like Google Docs.
Act
The final element is Rovo Agents—specialized bots designed to automate time-consuming tasks and support project completion. “This is the most exciting part of Rovo for me,” Mansour asserts. “These virtual teammates promise to enhance team productivity.”
One of the first agents available is Backlog Buddy, which assists teams in managing their work backlog. Users can direct this bot to analyze documents and extract tasks, significantly reducing manual effort. Control remains with human users, as AI agents merely suggest actions without executing them automatically.
Agents can perform various tasks, including:
- Generating and refining content for marketing and communications
- Automating task management for design requests and Jira tickets
- Answering questions and recommending best practices
- Facilitating onboarding for new employees
- Organizing and managing tasks in Confluence and Jira
Rovo also accommodates custom agents that can be created without coding, reflecting Atlassian’s commitment to extending its capabilities to developers.
Availability of Rovo
Though announced recently, Atlassian Rovo is currently in early access for a select group of customers, with a waitlist available for future access. Notably, the components of Rovo—Search, Learn, and Agents—are at different stages of development, with Search and Learn further ahead. Rovo's public release is anticipated before the end of the year.
Accessible via the web, Rovo Search can also be utilized on mobile web. Some features from Rovo Learn will integrate with Confluence’s mobile app, with Jira support to follow.
Rovo will be offered within Atlassian’s app cloud editions, with flexible pricing based on seat numbers. Detailed pricing information will be provided closer to the general release date.