A complete guide to Atlassian Rovo Definitions

Let's be honest, every company has its own secret language. It's a collection of acronyms, project code names, and inside jokes that can feel like a password you don't have. While it's great for team culture, it can be a massive headache for new hires or even folks from other departments. How many times have you been in a meeting, nodding along while secretly wondering what "Project Titan" is or what "QBR" means this time?

It’s a universal problem, and Atlassian is taking a shot at solving it with Rovo, its new collection of AI tools. One of the most talked-about features is Rovo Definitions, which aims to give you quick, on-the-spot explanations right inside the tools you already use.

This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about Rovo Definitions. We'll dig into what it is, how it works, and where it hits its limits. We’ll also look at what it takes to actually solve the puzzle of scattered company knowledge for good.

What are Rovo Definitions?

Rovo Definitions is an AI-powered feature inside the Atlassian world, mainly living in Jira and Confluence. Its job is to automatically explain your company’s unique terms. Think of it as a smart, built-in dictionary that gets your internal lingo.

When you’re reading a Confluence page or a Jira ticket and see a highlighted term, you just have to hover over it. A little "Knowledge Card" pops up with a definition, saving you from having to ping a coworker on Slack or go digging through old documents.

A user interacts with the Rovo Definitions feature in Atlassian, getting an AI-generated answer instantly.

These definitions are sourced in two ways:

1. AI-Generated: Atlassian’s AI scans through your company's information to cook up definitions on its own.

2. Team-Written: Anyone on your team can jump in and write a new definition or tweak an existing one if the AI's first attempt is a little off.

The goal is pretty straightforward: help you stay focused by cutting down on context switching. It’s designed to keep you in your workflow instead of sending you on a wild goose chase for a simple answer.

Key features and functionality

To really get a feel for the tool, it helps to understand what’s going on behind the scenes and how your team can help it get smarter.

How Rovo generates and displays definitions

Rovo isn't just making random guesses. It relies on what Atlassian calls the "Teamwork Graph." This is just a fancy term for a complex map of how your work connects. It understands the relationships between your projects, teams, goals, and even conversations. This context is what helps the AI generate definitions that are actually relevant, rather than something you could have just Googled.

The process is meant to be smooth. You see a term, you hover, and the system shows you a definition. If a definition isn't helpful, you can give it a thumbs-down, which then gives you the option to edit it yourself or send feedback directly to Atlassian. And if Rovo comes up empty, it will prompt you to create a definition yourself. This feedback loop is what helps the system learn and improve over time.

Adding and editing definitions for team knowledge

Let's face it, AI isn't perfect, so Rovo puts the editing power right in your team's hands. If a definition is missing, wrong, or just plain weird, anyone can step in and fix it.

The process is simple enough. You highlight the word you want to define, click Define, and then choose either Add definition or Not quite right? Edit this definition. From there, a window pops up where you can write your own explanation. You can even add a source URL to show where the information came from, which is a nice touch for adding a bit of authority to the definition.

Creating context-specific definitions

This is probably one of Rovo’s most clever features. The same acronym can mean completely different things to different teams. For example, "PIR" might mean "Post-Incident Review" for the engineering team, but for the product team, it means "Product Increment Review." This kind of mix-up can cause some serious confusion.

Rovo lets you create definitions that only show up in specific places. You can scope a definition to a single Jira project, an entire Confluence space, or even just one specific Confluence page. This makes sure the right definition gets to the right people, which helps cut down on those cross-functional misunderstandings.

Personalization and user control

While having terms automatically highlighted is useful, it can get a little noisy if you've been at the company for a while and already know the lingo. Atlassian included a personal setting to turn off the definition highlighting. This only changes your own view, so your teammates who still find it helpful won't be affected. Even with it turned off, you can still manually highlight any term to pull up its definition whenever you need it.

Use cases and limitations

So, where is this feature actually useful, and more importantly, where does it fall short? Let's get into the practical side of things.

Common use cases

• Onboarding new team members: For new hires, Rovo Definitions can be a huge help. It gives them instant access to the company dictionary, which can seriously speed up the time it takes for them to get comfortable and productive.

• Cross-functional collaboration: It helps break down silos between departments. An engineer can finally understand a marketing project's codename, or a salesperson can make sense of a technical acronym in a support ticket.

• Maintaining project clarity: When everyone working on a project has the same understanding of key terms and goals, there's a lot less room for miscommunication and mistakes.

Where Rovo Definitions fall short

Rovo Definitions is a good idea, but it operates inside a walled garden. For most companies today, that’s just not enough.

• Limited knowledge sources: Rovo is great at understanding what’s happening in your Atlassian world. But what about all the critical information living in Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Docs, or your old support tickets in Zendesk? A massive amount of your company’s real knowledge exists outside of Jira and Confluence, and Rovo can’t touch it. This means its "brain" is incomplete, which leads to some pretty big gaps in its understanding.

• Reactive, not conversational: The feature is passive. It only gives you a definition when you find and hover over a term. But what if you don't know the exact word to look for? You can't ask it follow-up questions like, "What were the results of Project Titan?" or "Who was the lead on that project?" It's a dictionary, not a knowledgeable teammate you can have a conversation with.

• Requires manual upkeep: The system's accuracy really depends on your team constantly going in and fixing the AI's mistakes or adding definitions that are missing. This might sound like a small task, but it can quickly turn into a real maintenance headache for people who are already busy. It just becomes another thing on the to-do list instead of a tool that actually reduces work.

Bottom line: Rovo Definitions works well with Atlassian data, but a truly helpful knowledge tool needs to see all your company's information to be effective.

Rovo Definitions pricing

Here’s an important detail: Rovo, including the Definitions feature, isn't something you can buy separately. It’s included at no extra cost if you're an Atlassian Cloud customer on a Premium or Enterprise plan for Jira, Confluence, or Jira Service Management. Atlassian has mentioned that access for Standard plans is coming, but they haven't given a firm date yet.

While the feature is technically "free," its power is tied to your subscription level. Your plan decides how many "indexed objects" (like pages and issues) and "AI credits" you get each month per user.

A better alternative for unified internal knowledge

The limitations of Rovo really highlight the need for a solution that’s more connected and complete. An internal knowledge tool should work across your entire tech stack, not just one corner of it. This is where eesel AI comes into the picture.

Unify your knowledge, wherever it lives

Unlike Rovo’s Atlassian-only approach, eesel AI connects with over 100 sources right away. You can plug it into everything: Confluence, Google Docs, Slack, Notion, and even your old help desk tickets from platforms like Zendesk or Jira Service Management. It gathers all your scattered information into one central brain, creating a single source of truth that your whole team can actually trust.

eesel AI's extensive integrations library, a key advantage over the limited sources of Rovo Definitions.::A screenshot of the eesel AI integrations library, showing its wide range of connections as an alternative to Rovo Definitions.

Go beyond definitions with a conversational AI assistant

Instead of just defining a term, what if your team could just ask questions? eesel AI's Internal Chat lets your team ask complex questions in plain English, right from Slack or Microsoft Teams where they're already working.

Imagine being able to ask, "What were the key outcomes of Project Phoenix and who was the lead engineer?" and getting a straight answer that was pieced together from a project plan in Google Docs, meeting notes in Confluence, and conversations in Slack. That’s the real difference between a simple dictionary and an intelligent partner.

Get started in minutes with a truly self-serve platform

Setting up enterprise software can often feel like a six-month project. By contrast, eesel AI is built to be incredibly simple and self-serve. You can connect your knowledge sources and launch a powerful internal AI assistant in just a few minutes, without having to book a demo or wait for a long implementation process.

Final thoughts on Rovo Definitions

Rovo Definitions is a genuinely useful feature for teams who are all-in on the Atlassian Premium or Enterprise ecosystem. It does a decent job of solving the immediate problem of defining company jargon right where you work.

However, its limitations are hard to ignore. Its knowledge is stuck within Atlassian products, it can't hold a conversation, and it depends on your team to manually keep it updated. For a knowledge solution that can actually grow with your company, you need a platform that brings all your data together and lets your employees ask questions the same way they'd ask a person.

Ready to build a real knowledge brain for your company? Try eesel AI for free and see how easy it is to give your team the answers they need, right where they already work.