JIRA 4.0 Release Notes
October 6, 2009
The Atlassian JIRA team is delighted to present a brand new version of one of the world's favourite issue-trackers.
We have improved the UI to provide contextual awareness, improving the navigation and usability with features like activity streams and issue history. We have also added the most powerful searching capabilities ever seen in a bug tracker, called JIRA Query Language (JQL). The simple auto-complete entry system makes it incredibly easy for any user to create sophisticated queries.
We have completely overhauled the JIRA dashboards to make it quick and easy for anyone to create and add gadgets, move them around using drag & drop, and share dashboards with other team members. Using the new Plugins 2.0 architecture, we built new dashboards using OpenSocial. This means each JIRA dashboard is an OpenSocial container allowing you to consume any OpenSocial compliant gadgets from either Atlassian tools or other external sources. Conversly, JIRA gadgets can be exposed in any OpenSocial container (like iGoogle, and soon, Confluence).
Upgrading to JIRA 4.0 is free for all customers with active JIRA software maintenance as of October 6, 2009.
Upgrading to JIRA 4.0
JIRA 4.0 can be downloaded from the JIRA Download Center. Before upgrading, please refer to the JIRA 4.0 Upgrade Guide.
Also note that you will need to obtain a new license key before you can upgrade. Obtaining a new JIRA 4 license key is free and the key is valid for the remainder of your existing maintenance period. For details, please see the JIRA licensing changes FAQ.
Highlights of JIRA 4.0
Advanced Searching
The power of search can never be understated, especially in a system like JIRA that sits at the centre of your development team.
JIRA Query Language (or JQL) brings search to whole new level!
JQL is a structured query language that provides support for logical operations, including AND, OR, NOT, NULL, EMPTY — even on custom fields:
Using JQL is simple even for those who don't know what "DBA" means. Just start typing and the auto-complete feature starts to suggest fields, operators and values for you to define your query.
You can now create more advanced filters such that you can stay up to date using RSS feeds & e-mail subscriptions, as well as see detailed statistics and charts, on issues that you are actually interested in.
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Dashboard Gadgets
Whether you are tracking bugs or managing your entire development process, JIRA dashboards let you stay up to date on what matters most.
The new-look JIRA dashboard not only looks awesome, it now uses industry-standard 'gadgets'. So you can add external gadgets to your JIRA dashboard, as well as displaying JIRA gadgets in other places (such as iGoogle).
You can easily customise your dashboard by choosing a different layout, adding more gadgets, dragging the gadgets into different positions and changing the look of individual gadgets.
What's happened to your favourite JIRA portlets? Don't worry, every portlet that previously shipped with JIRA has been converted to a gadget.
If you are a plugin developer and have created your own portlets, see the instructions for converting your portlets to gadgets.
Activity Streams
The new activity stream allows you to stay up to date with exactly what is going on right this moment, what happened in that last hour or last few days.
Activity streams appear where you need them most — your user profile, project summary and view issue screens. You can even add an activity stream as a gadget on your dashboard.
The activity stream also provides an RSS feed, allowing you to subscribe to very specific RSS feeds of only the information that is most relevant to you.
See the documentation for more details.
New-look "Browse Project"
Understanding the status of your projects just got a lot easier with the new browse project UI.
Quickly see what work is complete as well as outstanding. You can then drill down to specific issues you want to see.
Your Bamboo builds, FishEye source information and Crucible code reviews are only a click away, as well.
See the documentation for more about browsing projects, versions and components.
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Charting Now Comes Standard
We've built charts into JIRA and given them a visual redesign as well.
- "Recently Created Issues" report and gadget — Shows the rate at which issues are being created.
- "Created vs Resolved Issues" report and gadget — Shows the number of issues created vs number of issues resolved over a given period of time.
- "Resolution Time" report and gadget — Shows the average time taken to resolve issues.
- "Pie Chart" report and gadget — Shows the search results from a specified issue filter (or project) in a pie-chart, based on a statistic of your choice.
- "Time Since Issues" report and gadget — Shows the number of issues for which your chosen date field (e.g. 'Created') was set on a given date.
- "Average Age" report and gadget — Shows the average age (in days) of unresolved issues, e.g.:
Also, the "Resolution Time" field from the Charting plugin is now part of JIRA, so every issue now automatically has its resolution time recorded.
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New-look Header
The new-look JIRA header gives you quick access to all of the most commonly-used functions. Creating an issue just got even faster!
Click to zoom in:
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If you prefer keystrokes rather than mouse-clicks, you'll be pleased to know that you can use your keyboard to navigate the new header menus.
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Issue Actions in the Issue Navigator
By popular request, issues are now actionable directly from the Issue Navigator:
The "Actions" menu is also available for the list of sub-tasks within an issue.
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Project Icons
You can now give your project a visual identity, thanks to the introduction of project icons ('avatars'):
"History" is now permanent
Your list of recently-viewed issues is now stored in JIRA's database — so it's available after you log out and back in, even if you use a different machine.
Engine Room
Beyond the 'Back' Button
When navigating away from a page where you have modified data, you will be prompted to see if you would like to save the data or discard your changes (see JRA-14911).
Index Queue
Index updates are now put in a queue. So even if the update takes longer than 30 seconds, the operation remains on the queue and is not lost. (See JRA-14220.)
Plus over 900 other fixes and improvements
The top 50 most popular issues resolved in JIRA 4.0 are listed below. Click here for the full list.
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