JIRA 4.2 Release Notes
21 October 2010
The Atlassian JIRA team is delighted to present a brand new version of one of the world's favourite issue-trackers.
JIRA 4.2 gives you a few extra minutes of precious time every day, by providing the ability to triage issues directly from the Issue Navigator without you having to open each issue. For the mouse-averse, the new 'Operations Dialog' box provides access to all menu options via the keyboard.To help speed up your ability to work on issues, we've also made common actions and workflow operations accessible from convenient dialog boxes.
Time-tracking has become much more flexible: you can now edit the Original Estimate, and set the Remaining Estimate to zero when resolving an issue. You can also log work via workflow 'transition' (or any other) screens.
The 'Labels' plugin is now a permanent part of JIRA, simplifying system management for GreenHopper users and administrators — and everyone else who likes to label their JIRA issues.
Note to developers: JIRA 4.2 includes the Atlassian Plugin Framework version 2.5, and an alpha release of the JIRA REST API. We are very keen to hear your feedback on the REST API — please try it out and add your comments to JRA-22139.
Upgrading to JIRA 4.2 is free for all customers with active JIRA software maintenance as of October 21, 2010.
Highlights of JIRA 4.2:
Thank you for your feedback:
More than 40 new feature requests implemented
More than 850 votes fulfilled
Your votes and issues help us keep improving our products, and are much appreciated.
Upgrading to JIRA 4.2
JIRA 4.2 can be downloaded from the JIRA Download Center. Before upgrading, please refer to the JIRA 4.2 Upgrade Guide.
Highlights of JIRA 4.2
Dialogs for Common Actions and Workflow Operations
For faster edits to an issue, pop-up dialogs have replaced screen changes for common actions and workflow operations.
You can now perform an action on an issue (via a dialog) directly from the Issue Navigator — without opening the issue first. The issue marker shows which issue you have selected (via your keyboard) in the result list.
Keyboard Shortcuts and 'Operations Dialog'
JIRA users can now do more without a mouse — perfect for power users:
Hints also appear at the bottom of a dialog, helping you to learn keyboard shortcuts on the fly:
The new 'Operations Dialog' lets you perform actions via the keyboard (instead of the mouse), using the full-stop ('dot') key to access the 'Actions' and 'Workflow' menus. The Operations Dialog works from the Issue Navigator and also when viewing an individual issue.
See Using Keyboard Shortcuts for more information.
Issue Labelling
The functionality from the Labels plugin is now included in JIRA out-of-the-box. The labels dialog has a great new UI, and email notifications are now optional when updating labels for an issue.
See Labeling an Issue for more information.
Improvements to the 'View Issue' Screen
We have improved the look and feel of the 'View Issue' screen even more. Some improvements include:
- Tighter spacing between lines to reduce space between elements
- Stronger section headings
- The 'Description' field separated into its own section
- Horizontal division lines between each custom field
- Votes and Watchers fields on the same line
- Labels represented as bubbles
Individual blocks can now be collapsed to streamline your issue view. The view state (i.e. which blocks are expanded/collapsed) will also be remembered across issues. You can also add a comment at the bottom of the 'Comments' section.
Auto-complete for Versions and Components
Editing the Component, Affects Version(s) and Fix Version(s) is now quicker and easier. Upon typing into one of these fields, a dropdown menu appears with a list of options matching the first few characters you typed.
For convenience, the version lists are divided into Released and Unreleased categories.
Attachment Sorting by Date or Name
Attachments can now be sorted by date or by name, in ascending or descending order.
See Attaching a File for more information.
Viewable Files in Zipped Attachments
You can expand an attached zip file to see its contents. The first 30 files will be shown for larger zip files.
See Accessing ZIP-format File Contents for more information.
'Log Work' Improvements
You can now log work when you resolve an issue, saving you a step. You can also set the Remaining Estimate to 0 upon resolving an issue.
You now have the ability to edit the Original Estimate, even if work has been logged on an issue (not shown here).
We've also included the ability to add work log descriptions in wiki-markup (not shown here).
Lastly, you can add the 'Log Work' fields to any screen in JIRA (not shown here).
See Logging Work on an Issue for more information.
Improvements to the Issue Navigator
The Issue Navigator has been updated to match the look and feel of an issue.
We've also added: an issue marker and colour highlight for keyboard navigation (blue); colour highlight for mouse selection (grey); toggle to collapse the search form.
When a change is made via a dialog, JIRA will give you feedback on that change as confirmation.
'Filter' Gadget creation via the Issue Navigator
When viewing search results, you can quickly add a 'Filter Results' gadget to your dashboard via the 'Views' menu.
User Avatars and Hover Profile
JIRA users can now add an avatar to their profile. You can then mouse-hover over a user's name to show information about that user — this is available when viewing an issue, using the Issue Navigator, browsing a project, viewing activity, viewing a user profile and performing some administration tasks.
See Adding a User Avatar and Using Hover Profile for more information.
New JQL Functions
Additional JQL functions for projectsLeadBy and componentsLeadBy — useful for finding all issues where a particular user is the lead of a component, or a project.
See Advanced Searching for more information.
Other Enhancements and Fixes
- If you use Firefox or IE, you can now search JIRA issues from the convenience of your browser's search box. Just add your JIRA site as a search engine/provider, via the dropdown menu next to the browser's search box. This is because JIRA now supports the autodiscovery part of the OpenSearch standard.
Plus over 120 other fixes and improvements
The top 50 most popular issues resolved in JIRA 4.2 are listed below. Click here for the full list.
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