Confluence 5.4 Release Notes

3 December 2013

Highlights of Confluence 5.4 

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Confluence and JIRA: better together for agile teams

We have streamlined working with JIRA Agile (formerly known as Greenhopper) and Confluence to help software teams through all phases of the agile development process - defining requirements, planning sprints, populating the backlog, reporting on progress and running retrospectives.

In Confluence you can: 

  • Create issues and epics without leaving the editor.
  • Highlight text to create stories in JIRA and automatically link them to an epic.

In JIRA Agile you can:

  • Create a page from an epic - for example your requirements page for that theme of work.
  • Create a page from a sprint - for example a your sprint meeting notes.
  • Link epics, issues and sprints to existing Confluence pages - for example design docs, technical specifications, customer research.
  • Create a retrospective page when completing a sprint.

We think these improvements will make a huge difference for team leads and developers who spend much of their time in JIRA, and for product managers, project managers and business analysts who spend more of their time in Confluence.  No matter where you are, related JIRA and Confluence content is only a click away. 

What versions of JIRA and JIRA Agile do I need?

  • JIRA 6.1.3 or above to create JIRA issues from text in a Confluence page.
  • JIRA 6.1.3 or above and JIRA Agile 6.3.5 or above to create pages, link to pages or view linked pages from JIRA Agile.

Create JIRA issues from Confluence

If you use Confluence and JIRA together it is now even easier to create JIRA issues right from your Confluence page. Highlight any text on a Confluence page and you will see a Create JIRA Issue option near your selection. What can you do with it?

  • Create a single issue from the highlighted text.
  • Create multiple issues from highlighted text in a table - an issue for each row in the table.
  • Automatically embed the new issues on to the page so you can track their progress.
  • Link the new issues to an epic, if your page already has epic embedded on it.

This is a big timesaver for common tasks like transitioning your requirements into your team's backlog. For example, in the Product Requirements blueprint - you can add an epic, highlight some text in the Story column, choose Create JIRA Issue and follow the prompts to create all your stories in one easy step!

 Learn more: Watch the create JIRA issues from Confluence video   (2min)

You'll need  JIRA 6.1.3 or above to use this feature.

Give feedback fast with Quote in Comment

Reviewing a requirements document, meeting notes, decision or project plan?

Highlight any text on a Confluence page and you'll see a Quote in Comment button near your selection. This will add your selected text to the comment field, with the quote style applied - much faster than copy and paste.  

Communicate your releases with new JIRA Reports

If you use JIRA and Confluence, creating change logs and status reports is now simple with the new JIRA Report blueprint. Choose Create JIRA Report and follow the prompts. 

The Status Report uses the new JIRA Chart macro, which enables you to display information from JIRA as a pie chart.  The Change Log report displays a snapshot of your progress.

As with most page blueprints, the templates can be edited so you can customize the reports for your team or project. 

Reflect and improve on your sprints with Retrospectives

Confluence now has a Retrospectives blueprint to help you take inventory of what went well and what didn't during a sprint or project. Choose Create > Retrospective.

Use this page blueprint at the end of a sprint, release cycle or project, and collaborate with your team to document your strengths, address opportunity areas, and assign tasks for the future.  

If you use JIRA Agile 6.3.5 or above, you'll be prompted to create a retrospective page right from your sprint!

Complete JIRA traceability

Get immediate context about how your content relates to your projects in JIRA.

A new button appears at the top of your page when there are connections between the page and JIRA or JIRA Agile.  Click the button to see details of issues, epics and sprints connected to the page -  giving you great traceability right from within Confluence.

You can link items in JIRA to Confluence pages:

  • in Confluence by embedding a JIRA issue on the page
  • in JIRA by linking a page to an issue, and
  • in JIRA Agile by linking a page to a sprint or epic.

We've also made some changes to the page byline to make it easier to see information about your page at a glance.

Manage your docs with the Documentation space blueprint

Ready to share your software with your customers? Manage your documentation in Confluence with the new Documentation space blueprint. Documentation spaces use the full page tree in the sidebar, a search field to search only in that space, and labels to add topics to your pages.  

Try it for yourself, choose Create Space > Documentation. 

Macro and blueprint improvements

NEW JIRA Chart macro

The new JIRA Chart Macro enables you to display the results of a JIRA search as a pie chart on a Confluence page.  See it in action in the JIRA Report blueprint or add it to any page via the macro browser.

IMPROVED JIRA Issues macro

We've made a number of improvements to the JIRA Issues macro. You can now:

  • create Epics from within the Confluence editor via the Insert > JIRA dialog
  • configure the number of results returned by the macro, and
  • use autocomplete to select which columns to include in the JIRA issues macro (table view).

There's also a handy refresh icon, so you can refresh the macro when viewing a page to see recently added or updated issues. 

IMPROVED Page Properties Report macro

This macro has been updated to include pagination and sorting. You can specify the number of items to display on each page of the table (with links to additional pages of results) and also specify a column to sort the table by.

IMPROVED Product Requirements blueprint 

We've improved the Product Requirements blueprint to make use of the new integration points between Confluence, JIRA and JIRA Agile. There's a new prompt to create a JIRA issue or epic to track your requirements and we've renamed some table headings to make the experience clearer when you highlight text to create your stories in JIRA. 

We've also introduced a new type of instructional text that can be used in any template that, when clicked, triggers the JIRA Issues macro dialog allowing users to search for or create an issue. Learn more about how you can using this feature in your own templates.

Using JIRA Agile?

We've made it easier for scrum masters or project leads to:

  • link or create pages such as requirements, designs or specifications to epics
  • link or create pages such as meeting notes, specifications or sprint goals for sprints, and
  • conduct a retrospective after completing a sprint. 

Learn more about the JIRA Agile side of these new features here: JIRA Agile 6.3.5 Release Notes.

Infrastructure changes and API improvements

Notable infrastructure improvements: 

  • New version of the Atlassian Plugins Framework, which includes an upgrade of Spring from version 2 to 3. 
  • Upgrade to Joda-Time version 2.3.
  • PostgreSQL 9.1 and 9.2 are now officially supported.

Improved APIs:

  • New plugin point: additional instructional text type that triggers the JIRA Issues macro dialog allowing users to search for or create an issue. 
  • New plugin point: page byline - the area where the new JIRA Links button is located is now pluggable.
  • New plugin point: contextual highlight panel.

For a full description of these changes and tutorials, please see our guide to Preparing for Confluence 5.4.

Credits

Our wonderful customers - we (heart) you guys!

Our customers play an important role in making Confluence better, so here's a shout out to those customers who gave up their time to help us make Confluence even more awesome:

  • Karalee Kikiros from CGU Insurance
  • Adhip Pokharel from Fncinc
  • Joe Wagner from On Tech Solutions
  • Guy Eden from Traiana
  • Denis Cabasson from Statcan
  • David P Humeniuk from University of Dayton
  • Dany McArdle from PayBackLoyalty.com
  • Chris Graham from Ping Identity
  • Nitin Malhotra from Live Career

... and the many more of you that made suggestions and reported bugs on our issue tracker!

The Confluence 5.4 team

Say hi to the team!
Development

Agnes Ro
Alexander Dickson
Ali Kord
Alice Wang
Ángel Eduardo García Hernández
Anna Katrina Dominguez
Craig Petchell
Dave Loeng
David Ma
David Richard
David Rizzuto
David Taylor
Don Willis
Duy Quoc Tran
Duy Truong Luong
Edith Tom
Esther Asenjo Reyes
Fabian Krämer
Hao Trung Ho
Hieu Ta
Huy Tuong Nguyen
Issac Gerges
Ivan Loire
Joe Xie
Julien Michel Hoarau
Kai Fung Chong
Kenny MacLeod
Khoa Pham
Lap Tran
Matthew Erickson
Mitermayer Reis
Nguyen Dang
Nhi Nguyen
Niraj Bhawnani
Oliver Burn
Olli Nevalainen
Patrick Saw
Paul Curren
Peggy Kuo
Petro Semeniuk
Quang Ho
Phong Hong Nguyen
Richard Atkins
Samuel Day
Steve Haffenden
Steven Lancashire
Ted Piotrowski
Tin Vuu
Truong Vu
Tue Dang
Tung Thanh Dang
Vu Vo
Xavier Sanchez Taixe

Architecture 
Charles Miller
Huy Tuong Nguyen 

Plugin updates
David Chui
Kai Chong
Ong Kang Leng
Philip Cher

Management

Product management 
Bill Arconati
John Masson
Sherif Mansour
Natasha Prasad 
Geoffrey Bergdoll 

Product marketing management 
Matthew Hodges
John Wetenhall
Ryan Anderson
Terrence Caldwell

Development management 
Matt Ryall
Anatoli Kazatchkov
Chris Kiehl
Mark Schaschke
Martin Papy 

Cross-product team

Design 
Henry Tapia
Royce Wong
Valter Fatia   

Quality assistance   
Mark Hrynczak
Glenn Martin
Hai Nguyen
Jonas Soderstrom
Phuc Thi Minh Nguyen
Son Lien Hoang

Technical writing      
Rachel Robins

Support

Sydney support 
Michael Seager
Denise Unterwurzacher
David Mason
Lachlan Dally

Amsterdam support 
Theodore Tzidamis
Alex Conde
John Inder
Peter Koczan
Ruchi Tandon
Shannon Mackie
Yilin Mo

Brazil support 
Alyson Reis
Guilherme Heck
Rodrigo Adami
Bruna Griebeler
Luiz Carlos Junior
Giuliano de Campos
Bernardo Acevedo
William Zanchet
Deividi Luvison 

Japan support

Adam Laskowski
Seiji Morita 

Kuala Lumpur support 
Joachim Ooi
Septa Cahyadiputra
Foogie Sim
Hanis Suhailah
Amalia Sanusi
Jing Hwa Cheok
Hossein Toussi 

San Francisco support 
Rick Bal
Tim Wong
Robert Chang
Ryan Goodwin
Andrew Campbell
Brian Tom
Ann Worley

Service enablement 
Renan Battaglin

Last modified on May 27, 2016

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