A practical guide to Atlassian Rovo Smart Links in 2025

Kenneth Pangan
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Kenneth Pangan

Stanley Nicholas
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Stanley Nicholas

Last edited October 15, 2025

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We’ve all been there. You know that one critical document exists somewhere, but you can’t for the life of you remember if it’s in a Confluence space, a shared Google Drive, or buried in a Slack thread from last week. It turns out the average employee spends nearly a quarter of their workweek just looking for information scattered across different apps. It eats up a ton of time and is a massive source of frustration.

Atlassian's answer to this mess is Atlassian Rovo, a new AI-powered suite designed to connect all your scattered knowledge. At its core is the "Teamwork Graph," a system that maps out how everything and everyone in your company is connected. A key part of this system is Rovo Smart Links, which promise to let you search and summarize content from dozens of apps without ever leaving what you’re doing.

But do they actually work as advertised? This guide will give you a complete, no-fluff overview of Rovo Smart Links: what they are, how they function, where they fall short, and a more straightforward alternative for teams that need something fast, flexible, and fully in their control.

What is Atlassian Rovo? The technology behind Rovo Smart Links

Before we get into Smart Links, it helps to understand the engine running things behind the scenes. Rovo is Atlassian's collection of AI tools, built directly into its cloud products like Jira and Confluence. It’s not just a simple chatbot; it’s powered by a technology Atlassian has branded the "Teamwork Graph."

You can think of the Teamwork Graph as a sort of digital map of your company. It’s an intelligent data layer that understands the relationships between people, projects, documents, and conversations across your tools. Because of this, when you ask Rovo a question, it can give you an answer that actually makes sense for you, considering who you are, what team you’re on, and what projects you’re working on. It’s definitely a step up from a basic keyword search that just dumps a list of vaguely related links on you.

The catch? Rovo and its most powerful AI features are only available on Atlassian's Premium and Enterprise cloud plans. For a lot of teams, this makes it a pretty big investment and puts these advanced tools out of reach.

How Rovo Smart Links work in practice

Smart Links have been around the Atlassian ecosystem for a bit, but Rovo gives them a serious AI boost. The whole idea is to stop you from constantly switching tabs just to find something or get the gist of a document. It works in two main ways: by searching across apps and by summarizing content for you instantly.

Searching across all your connected apps

Once an admin gets it all set up, you can connect Rovo to dozens of external applications. This lets Rovo's search function pull information directly from those sources and show it to you in one place. You can ask a normal question like, "What's the status of the Q3 roadmap?" and get results from Jira, Confluence, and any other connected tools all together.

A user interacts with the Atlassian Rovo chat feature to get answers, demonstrating how Rovo Smart Links work.
A user interacts with the Atlassian Rovo chat feature to get answers, demonstrating how Rovo Smart Links work.

It's a solid attempt to pull everything together. Instead of having to search each app one by one, you have a single place to look. Some of the main integrations include:

  • Google Drive: Find specific text inside Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides.

  • SharePoint/OneDrive: Search through company documents and presentations stored in the Microsoft ecosystem.

  • Notion: Get to your team wikis, project plans, and databases living in Notion.

  • Slack: Pull up relevant messages and conversations from public Slack channels.

  • Figma: Quickly find designs and prototypes without having to leave your project ticket.

Summarizing content with a single click

The other big feature is on-demand AI summaries. Let’s say you’re on a Confluence page and see a Smart Link to an external document. You don’t have to click it, wait for it to load, and read through it just to figure out what it is. You can just hover over the link and click a "Summarize with Rovo" button.

Rovo's AI then reads the content of that file and spits out a short, bulleted summary. This can be a real time-saver. You can quickly understand a linked design file, project brief, or meeting notes without losing your train of thought and clicking away from the page you're working on.

A demonstration of Rovo's AI generating a weekly project summary in Confluence, an example of Rovo Smart Links' summarization feature.
A demonstration of Rovo's AI generating a weekly project summary in Confluence, an example of Rovo Smart Links' summarization feature.

The potential downsides of relying on Rovo Smart Links

While the dream of a single, unified place for all your knowledge sounds great, the reality of setting up and using Rovo Smart Links can come with a few headaches that might leave your team feeling a bit let down.

Why the Rovo Smart Links setup can be tricky and time-consuming

Getting Rovo running isn’t always a simple click-and-go process. As users on community forums like Reddit have noted, figuring out the right "smart values" and prompts to build workflows that actually work can be confusing. For instance, the difference between "{{agent response}}" and "{{page.aiSummary}}" isn't immediately clear and takes some trial and error to get right.

Connecting multiple data sources and building automations that run smoothly often takes a lot of admin time and a pretty deep knowledge of how the Atlassian world works. For teams that don't have a dedicated Atlassian whiz, this can become a real roadblock.

Reddit
Figuring out the right 'smart values' and prompts to build workflows that actually work can be confusing. For instance, the difference between '{{agent response}}' and '{{page.aiSummary}}' isn't immediately clear and takes some trial and error to get right.

Rovo Smart Links: Are they smart, or just fancy shortcuts?

Here’s something important to think about: Rovo Smart Links mostly act as advanced viewers or shortcuts to your other tools. They can show you a summary or a preview, but if you want to edit a document, leave a comment, or do anything else meaningful, you still have to click through and open the original app.

This means you’re still switching contexts and bouncing between tabs, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a seamless, unified workspace. The integration is often only skin-deep. It tells you what's in a file but doesn't let you actually work with it from where you are.

You're locked into the Atlassian world

As we mentioned, Rovo is a premium feature. To get it, you have to sign up for Atlassian's more expensive plans. This naturally creates a strong "platform lock-in." The Teamwork Graph is at its most valuable when your whole company is all-in on the Atlassian suite.

This approach can really limit your team's flexibility. If your team has a favorite tool that doesn't have a pre-built Rovo connector, you're pretty much out of luck unless you want to tackle a custom integration project. It gently nudges you toward using Atlassian's entire product line, even if some of its tools aren't the best fit for your team.

A more practical alternative to Rovo Smart Links: Unifying knowledge with eesel AI

If you're looking for a tool that's built for speed, gives you precise control, and offers deep, genuinely useful integrations, there's another way to go. eesel AI is designed to create a powerful AI layer on top of the tools you already use, without forcing your team into a whole new system.

You can get it running in minutes, not months

One of the biggest differences is the setup. eesel AI is built to be self-serve. You can connect your help desk (like Zendesk or Freshdesk), chat tools, and knowledge bases with just a few clicks. You don't have to sit through mandatory sales calls or long demos just to get started.

This is a world away from the complexity of configuring Rovo. With eesel AI, you can start seeing results almost right away, without having to become an expert on a new platform’s unique lingo and rules.

It does more than just show you information

eesel AI goes beyond just pointing to knowledge; it digests it and truly understands it. From the moment you connect it, it can start training on your past support tickets to learn your company’s specific context, common problems, and even your brand voice. This lets it provide answers that are incredibly specific to how your business works.

Even better, its AI agents can perform custom actions. An agent can be set up to look up order details in Shopify, automatically triage a support ticket by adding the right tags, or create a new issue in Jira. This is a much deeper and more helpful kind of integration that saves your team real time and clicks.

You can test everything safely first

Setting up complex platforms like Rovo often means a lot of frustrating trial and error. eesel AI avoids this with its simulation mode, which is a huge differentiator.

You can safely test your AI setup on thousands of your past tickets in a "sandbox" environment. This lets you see exactly how the AI will respond, what its resolution rate will be, and where you might have gaps in your knowledge base before it ever talks to a live customer. It completely removes the risk of launching an AI that isn't ready and gives you the confidence to start automating from day one.

Rovo Smart Links vs. eesel AI: A quick comparison

For a simple breakdown, here’s how the two options compare side-by-side.

FeatureAtlassian Rovo Smart Linkseesel AI
Setup TimeDays or weeks; needs admin help and timeMinutes; self-serve with one-click connections
Core FunctionalitySearches and summarizes linked filesActually understands and acts on your info
TestingLive trial and errorPowerful simulation on your past data
Best ForTeams already deep in the Atlassian worldTeams wanting a fast, flexible AI layer for support and internal knowledge
Platform DependencyHigh (needs Atlassian Cloud Premium/Enterprise)Low (plugs into your existing tools like Zendesk, Slack, etc.)

Rovo Smart Links and choosing the right tool for the job

Look, Atlassian Rovo Smart Links are a decent shot at connecting your company's knowledge. But they really only make sense for organizations that are already heavily invested in the Atlassian platform and are willing to pay for its top-tier plans. Even then, teams might get bogged down by a complicated setup and find that the features are more like advanced previews than truly useful, integrated tools.

For teams that care more about speed, flexibility, and deep integrations that actually work, eesel AI offers a more practical solution. It improves the workflows you already have instead of making you adopt a new one, letting you build powerful, custom AI agents that you can test and launch with total confidence.

If you want to pull your company knowledge together and automate workflows in minutes, not months, try eesel AI for free and see how it performs with your own data today.

Frequently asked questions

Rovo Smart Links are an AI-powered feature within Atlassian Rovo designed to connect scattered company knowledge. They aim to reduce the time employees spend searching for information across various applications by providing a single point of search and content summarization.

They allow users to search across dozens of connected applications from one interface, pulling relevant information together. Additionally, they offer on-demand AI summaries for linked content, enabling quick understanding without needing to open each document individually.

To access Rovo Smart Links and other powerful AI features of Atlassian Rovo, your organization must be on Atlassian's Premium or Enterprise cloud plans. This can represent a significant investment for many teams.

The setup can be quite complex and time-consuming, often requiring deep administrative knowledge of the Atlassian ecosystem. Connecting multiple data sources and configuring workflows often involves trial and error and a good understanding of "smart values."

Rovo Smart Links primarily function as advanced viewers or shortcuts. While they provide summaries and previews, you typically still need to click through to the original application to edit documents, leave comments, or perform other meaningful work.

Rovo Smart Links can integrate with various external applications like Google Drive, Notion, and Slack. However, the system is most valuable when your company is heavily invested in Atlassian's suite, potentially leading to platform lock-in for non-Atlassian tools without pre-built connectors.

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Kenneth Pangan

Writer and marketer for over ten years, Kenneth Pangan splits his time between history, politics, and art with plenty of interruptions from his dogs demanding attention.