News & Announcements
Narva Software Apps Powered by Forge: What It Means for You
May 8, 2026
•
min read
Active users of Atlassian apps know the value and importance of apps running on the Atlassian ecosystem. That’s why we at Narva Software have dedicated the past few months to moving our Jira and Confluence apps to Atlassian Forge. To ensure their security, reliability, and future readiness.
If you are still new to it, this article explains what Forge is, what the little badge “RUNS ON ATLASSIAN” means to the teams using Narva Software apps daily, and why you should care about it.
What is Forge?
Forge is Atlassian's own development platform for building apps that run directly inside Jira, Confluence, and the rest of the Atlassian suite. The key difference from older frameworks is where the code actually runs with Forge, it stays inside Atlassian's infrastructure, not on an external server managed by the app vendor.
With older frameworks, your data had to leave Atlassian's environment to get processed and then come back. That round trip introduced latency, added external dependencies, and created more surface area for things to go wrong. Forge cuts that out. The app runs where your data already lives, which has some pretty meaningful consequences for security and performance.
What this means for you (customer benefits)
Building on Forge is simply good engineering discipline and teams using our apps benefit from it.
Security that actually makes sense
When your data doesn't leave Atlassian's infrastructure, you're not granting permissions to some external system you've never heard of. There's no third-party server in the middle, no outside database holding your Jira issue data. Forge apps run sandboxed within Atlassian's own environment and are subject to Atlassian's security controls.
For IT admins evaluating tools for their organization, this matters. It's one less vendor to vet, one less data flow to account for in a security audit. On top of that, our secure Atlassian apps carry Cloud Fortified status and SOC 2 Type 2 certification, so the security story holds up beyond just the Forge architecture.
Better performance and reliability
Because Forge apps run closer to the core product, they don't need to make outbound API calls to do their job. That translates directly to faster load times and fewer timeout errors, which is especially noticeable when you're working with large Confluence pages or handling a high volume of Jira issues.
It's not dramatic, but it's consistent. And consistency matters more than you'd think when a tool is part of your team's daily workflow.
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Built for seamless integration
One underrated benefit of Forge is how naturally it fits within the Atlassian UI. Because Forge apps are native to the platform, they don't need to replicate Atlassian's visual language or work around interface limits. The experience feels native, because it is.
This also means fewer compatibility headaches when Atlassian updates its products. Forge apps are built on a framework that Atlassian actively maintains and evolves, which keeps our apps aligned with platform changes rather than scrambling to catch up after every release.
No more “it broke after an update”
One of the quiet frustrations with older Atlassian apps was compatibility. Atlassian would ship an update, and suddenly an app would stop working or behave oddly until the vendor caught up. Because Forge apps are built on a framework that Atlassian actively maintains, they stay in sync with platform changes far better. Updates cause little to no surprises.
Built for where Atlassian is heading
Atlassian has been clear that Forge is its platform for the long term. Legacy frameworks aren't being shut down tomorrow, but new capabilities, security features, and tooling are being built around Forge. Apps that aren't on Forge will increasingly fall behind; not dramatically, but gradually. Jira Forge apps and Confluence Forge apps are simply going to have access to more, and do more, over time.
Why we chose Forge for our apps
This was the right call for our customers, even if it took real work to get there.
Migrating our entire product lineup (Issue Templates Pro for Jira, LaTeX Math for Confluence, Markdown Exporter for Confluence, HTML Macro for Confluence, and Advanced Label Manager for Jira) to Forge wasn't a small project. But teams at organizations like Deloitte, Paramount, and Harvard use Narva Software apps to manage workflows they actually depend on. That kind of trust deserves infrastructure that holds up.
It also lines up with how we think about building software. We're an Atlassian Gold Marketplace Partner, and that status comes with real requirements around security investment and technical depth. Forge is part of how we meet and maintain that bar and not just the certification, but the underlying commitment it represents.
Why Forge apps are the future
The Atlassian Marketplace is already reflecting this shift. Forge-built apps get better visibility, and more enterprise buyers are filtering for them when evaluating tools. For developers still on older frameworks, things are quietly getting harder: fewer new features, stricter security reviews, and tooling that isn't keeping up. It's not a cliff, but the gap is growing
For users, it's simpler: apps built on Atlassian Forge are going to be better maintained, more secure, and more capable as the platform evolves.
Why our apps stand out
Our goal has always been to fix things that Atlassian's native tools leave incomplete, not to build sprawling feature sets that try to do everything.
Issue Templates Pro for Jira is a good example. It solves a frustration every Jira team runs into eventually: recreating the same issue structures from scratch, over and over. Since moving to Forge, the app has gotten faster and more reliable, with no external round-trips slowing things down.
Advanced Label Manager for Jira works the same way. It brings actual structure to label management for teams dealing with hundreds or thousands of issues, where Jira's native labeling starts to fall apart. The Forge migration made it more stable under exactly the kind of heavy use where label governance matters most.
So, what does the “Runs on Atlassian” badge actually mean?
It means the app you're using doesn't live on some server somewhere else. It means your data stays in the same environment you already trust. It means the app is built on a platform Atlassian is actively investing in, by a team that takes that infrastructure seriously.
That's what we've been working toward, and that's what Forge makes possible for our apps. If you have questions about the migration or what it means for any specific app, feel free to reach out. We're happy to talk through it.
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