JIRA 5.0 RC 2 Release Notes

8 December 2011

JIRA 5.0 RC 2 (a.k.a 5.0 milestone 10 or 'm10') is a public development release leading up to JIRA 5.0. A Release Candidate (RC) is a preliminary release leading up to the official release of a JIRA version. RC releases are a fairly stable snapshot of our work in progress and provide an advance preview of new features to the general public. JIRA plugin developers can also use RC releases to test and fix their plugins in advance of an official release. For all production use and testing of JIRA, please use the latest official release.

The Atlassian team is proud to bring you the JIRA 5.0 RC 2 release. Thank you for your feedback during the recent Beta and EAP releases and please keep providing it here.

(info) Upgrading to JIRA 5.0 RC 2:

Overview

The focus of JIRA 5.0 is to help connect people, teams and other applications together. JIRA 5.0 helps connect people and teams by allowing them to share issues and search results and mention other team members in an issue. People and teams are better connected to other applications with Remote 'Issue Links' to other JIRA sites or web page URLs and Activity Streams that span all your linked Atlassian applications.

JIRA 5.0 also introduces a large number of improvements for developers to help connect JIRA to other applications, including the introduction of:

  • New REST APIs to manage every facet of an issue,
  • New Remote 'Issue Link' and Activity Stream features, specifically for integration with other applications, and
  • A stable Java API for JIRA.

Highlights:

Remote 'issue links'

Sharing issues and 'mentions'

Create and edit issues rapidly

  • Create links to JIRA issues on another JIRA site
  • Create links to any URL
  • Create links via JIRA's Java or REST API
  • Share issues quickly with other users
  • Mention a user in an issue comment
  • JIRA uses autocomplete whenever you 'share' or 'mention' a user
  • Create and edit issues rapidly in a dialog box
  • Create multiple issues in succession
  • Customise to show fields you use most often

Do not use in production

Beta releases should not be used in production environments as they are not officially supported.

Please also take note of the following information:

  • Beta releases are not safe— Beta releases are snapshots of the ongoing JIRA development process. As such:
    • While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of testing as a full release.
    • Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before the next full release.
  • No upgrade path — Because Beta releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade path between Beta releases, or from any Beta to the eventual final release. Thus, any data you store in a JIRA Beta release may not be able to be migrated to a future JIRA release.

Highlights


Remote 'issue links'

The remote 'issue links' feature provides a powerful way to link JIRA issues to items external to your JIRA installation, residing on external applications.

Along with a Java and REST API to add these links, end users can also:

  • Add an issue link from a JIRA issue to an issue on another JIRA site via application links.
    • Add a reciprocal issue link from your JIRA issue to an issue another JIRA site.
  • Search for a Confluence page from a JIRA issue and add an issue link to that page via application links.
  • Add an issue link from a JIRA issue to any web page URL, such as a page of documentation, a technical note, or any other page on another web site.

Check out a live example here.

If you are a:

  • JIRA user — see Linking Issues for details on using remote 'Issue Links' within JIRA.
  • JIRA system administrator — see Configuring Issue Linking for details on how to make remote 'Issue Linking' available to your users by setting up the required application links between JIRA and other applications.
  • JIRA developer — see JIRA Remote Issue Links on our developer documentation site.

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Sharing issues and 'mentions'

Screenshot: Sharing an issue with other users

Screenshot: Mentioning a user in an issue comment

Want to let others know about a JIRA issue or a list of search results quickly? Simply visit a JIRA issue or a list of issues on the issue navigator and then do either of the following:

  • Click the new Share button at the top-right (or type s) and specify JIRA users (based on their names or user names) or any email address of people you want to share the page with. Add an optional note and then click Share.

(info) JIRA users specified in the User name or email field will receive details of the issue or a link to a list of issues in an email message (sent to the addresses registered with their JIRA user accounts). The message's subject line will indicate that the person who used this feature 'shared' the issue(s) with them.

  • In an issue comment or the issue's description field, type the @ symbol and begin typing the name or username of a JIRA user. Select the appropriate user from the dropdown. You can do this with multiple users and after submitting the form, those users will be notified that you mentioned them in the comment or the issue's description field.

(info) Users will receive details of the issue in an email message (sent to the addresses registered with their JIRA user accounts). The message's subject line will indicate that the person who used this feature 'mentioned' them on that issue.

(info) Please Note:

    • Users required the Browse Users global permission to access the Share button or the autocomplete feature when 'mentioning' a user. However, if you know the username of a JIRA user, you can still mention them.
    • JIRA system administrators will need to configure JIRA's outgoing mail server for the 'share' and 'mentions' features to work.

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Create and edit issues rapidly

JIRA 5.0 provides a rapid and customisable dialog box for creating and editing JIRA issues and sub-tasks. Unlike the old Create/Edit Issue forms, these dialog boxes do not require a page reload.

By default, the Create/Edit Issue dialog boxes show all available fields, which you can quickly remove or re-add. JIRA remembers your last set of field choices, giving you a personally customised dialog box that presents you with your most commonly edited fields whenever you create or edit an issue.

The Create/Edit Issue dialog box allows you to rapidly create a series of related issues with similar options. When you select the 'Create another' check box before clicking the 'Create' button, JIRA creates your issue and automatically pre-populates a new 'Create Issue' dialog box with your previous options, whilst leaving the 'Summary' field blank. Note that this feature does not carry across any attachments that were attached to your previously created issue.

Note that the 'Assignee', 'Project' and 'Issue Type' fields use 'autocompletion' too. Hence, you no longer a need to scroll through a whole raft of items to specify these fields when creating or editing an issue.

You can easily access this feature by typing 'c' to access the create issue dialog box or 'e' from a currently selected issue on the Issue Navigator or 'View Issue' page to access the edit dialog box for that issue.

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Search for issues based on their history

"CHANGED" operator introduced

Introduced in JIRA 4.4.3, JQL's "CHANGED" operator can accept the optional predicates FROM, TO, ON, DURING, BEFORE, AFTER and BY, and can be used on the Status, Assignee, Priority, Reporter, Resolution and Fix Version fields.

For example, this link shows all the issues logged against the JIRA project on our 'jira.atlassian.com' site, whose Fix Version field was changed to "5.0".

You can also create more complex JQL queries with the "CHANGED" operator by fine-tuning them with predicates. For example, the following JQL query:

status changed FROM "In QA Review" TO "QA Rejected" BY freddo AFTER startOfWeek() BEFORE endOfWeek()

will find any issues whose Status field value was at some point "In QA Review" but changed to "QA Rejected", by user 'freddo' between the start and end of the current week.

You can use complex queries such as these to generate the 'Single Level Group By Report' in the screenshot above, which shows grouping by 'Team'.

"WAS" operator enhanced

Also introduced in JIRA 4.4.3 was the ability of the "WAS" operator to work with the Fix Version field. For example, the following JQL query:

fixVersion WAS 4.4

Will find any issues whose Fix Version field was at some point (or currently is) set to 4.4.

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Activity streams now show activity from other applications


Screenshot: Activity stream gadget showing activity
from other Atlassian applications

Screenshot: Activity stream gadget showing activity
from non-Atlassian applications

We are expanding the Activity Stream features introduced in JIRA 4.4 with:

    • The ability to show external activity from another Atlassian application (such as Confluence, FishEye/Crucible and Bamboo) via an Application Link.
    • The ability to combine this external activity into an Activity Stream gadget on a JIRA dashboard.
    • An API for creating entries in activity streams from remote applications via the REST API or locally via Java.

Refer to the Preparing for JIRA 5.0 section of our developer documentation site for more details.

With these new features, you can:

    • See Confluence page updates from your activity streams in JIRA, then drill down into those Confluence pages for more information.
    • See updates from another JIRA site. For example, activity streams on your development team's JIRA site (behind the firewall) can include activity on your support team's customer facing JIRA site.

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Manage other users' shared filters and dashboards

Introduced in JIRA 4.4.1, JIRA administrators have the ability to change the ownership of or delete other user's shared filters and dashboards. A shared filter or dashboard is a filter/dashboard created (and hence, owned) by a user, which the user has then shared with others.

Since JIRA only allows the editing or modification of shared filters/dashboards by their owners, this new JIRA feature is especially helpful in situations where a user has left an organisation, but the shared filters or dashboards they created continue to be used by others within the organisation.

You can access these features by selecting 'Administration' > 'Users' > 'Shared Filters' or 'Shared Dashboards' (or using the keyboard shortcut 'g' + 'g' + start typing 'shared filters' or 'shared dashboard').

On the 'Shared Filters' or 'Shared Dashboard' pages, you can search for any shared filters/dashboards, or use the cog icon to change the owner of a shared filter/dashboard to another user or delete the shared filter/dashboard.

(info) Only users with the Create Shared Objects global permission can share their filters and dashboards with other JIRA users.

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Administration user interface improvements

Following on with improvements to the Administration User Interface (UI) in JIRA 4.4, JIRA 5.0 will provide further improvements to the Administration UI by converting various forms and pages in this area to convenient dialog boxes.

In addition to the dialog box for adding a new user, the 'Attachments' and 'Workflows' pages have been redesigned and the forms associated with these pages have been converted into convenient dialog boxes too.

For example, the form for editing attachment settings is now a dialog box, which is accessed by clicking 'Edit Settings' on the 'Attachments' page of JIRA's Administration area.

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REST API (with tutorials) for working with issues in JIRA

JIRA's REST API is undergoing a significant number of changes and improvements to provide the following:

  • Create new issues.
  • Retrieve metadata for creating new issues and editing existing ones.
  • Delete existing issues and their subtasks.
  • Create remote 'issue links'.
  • Retrieve metadata from your favourite filters and dashboards.
  • Retrieve metadata about your permissions.
  • Almost all system fields and JIRA's built-in custom field types are supported.

(info) Please also note that the we have changed the api-version name component of URLs for JIRA's REST API calls from '2.0.alpha1' to simply '2' (or 'latest' to use the latest REST API version available with your version of JIRA).

Refer to the Preparing for JIRA 5.0 section of our developer documentation site for more details.

We also have a series of REST API Tutorials to help you get started using our new REST API improvements.

(info) You might also want to try out Atlassian's new REST API Browser, which is available in the Atlassian Plugin SDK and can be accessed by adding /plugins/servlet/restbrowser#/user/search to the end of the URL for accessing JIRA (e.g. http://localhost:2990/jira/plugins/servlet/restbrowser#/user/search) within the SDK environment.

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Stable Java API

JIRA's Java API is undergoing a significant number of changes and improvements to provide the following:

  • More stability and reliability with future versions of JIRA. See our Java API Policy for JIRA for details.
  • Removal of deprecated OSUser classes.
  • Removal of deprecated portlets (replaced by gadgets in JIRA 4.0) and their related APIs.
  • Active Objects is bundled with JIRA 5.0. A new version of Active Objects will be available in the official JIRA 5.0 release. However, if you are developing against JIRA 5.0 RC 2, we recommend that you can obtain the latest version of Active Objects (0.18.4) from our public Maven repository. Refer to our instructions on how to upgrade to this version of Active Objects in JIRA 5.0 RC 2.

Refer to the Preparing for JIRA 5.0 section of our developer documentation site for more details.

If you are developing plugins for JIRA 5.0, please also check out our newly published set of JIRA plugin tutorials.

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Performance improvements

Lucene 3.2 is now fully integrated into JIRA. Customers with moderate to large JIRA installations may notice a significant performance improvement in searches, particularly when other actions and operations such as creating and editing issues are conducted simultaneously.

The content of each 'activity' tab on the 'view issue' page now loads independently of the rest of the 'view issue' page. Instead, the content of an activity tab now only loads when the user clicks the tab. This revised behaviour allows the information on these tab to show up more rapidly.

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New troubleshooting and debugging tools

JIRA 5.0 adds several tools to help Administrators debug the configuration of their instance.

  • A number of email debugging tools are now provided to System Administrators in the new 'Logging and Profiling' page under 'Troubleshooting and Support'
    • Enable or disable mail logging
    • Turn debug mail logging on or off
    • Configure a logging level for a new package easily in the default loggers section.
  • For testing and troubleshooting LDAP connections, much more comprehensive testing is now provided, including basic connections, user retrieval, user membership, group retrieval, group membership and authentication.

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New email handler wizard

JIRA 5.0 incorporates a new email handler wizard that greatly simplifies the process of configuring incoming mail handlers for creating issues or comments from email messages.

You no longer have to configure a JIRA service and enter in a complex string of Handler parameters for your email handler. Instead you configure your email handler through a convenient wizard.

Improvements have been made to the layout of JIRA's mail configuration options. The configuration options in the 'Mail Servers' tab has been separated into two tabs — one for 'Outgoing Mail' (SMTP) and another for 'Incoming Mail' (POP/IMAP) configuration. The configuration options for mail handlers in the 'Services' tab has been incorporated into the 'Incoming Mail' tab.

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New plugin to try out — JIRA to JIRA issue copy

This new JIRA 5.0-compatible feature currently under development as a plugin, allows you to copy issues from one JIRA site to another.

After establishing an Application Link between your JIRA site and another and one or more Project Links across these sites, a new 'Remote Copy' action will become available when viewing an issue belonging to a project involved in this project link.

Using JIRA to JIRA issue copy

After clicking the 'Remote Copy' menu item, the Remote Copy 'wizard' will prompt you to choose a remote JIRA project to copy the issue to and will then automatically map fields between your local and remote JIRA projects.

Most system fields and some custom fields are supported. For a detail list of supported fields, see our Issue Field copy rules documentation.

When copying an issue, you can define a bidirectional remote 'issue link' between the issues. If the remote site is on a version of JIRA that does not support remote 'issue links' (prior to 5.0), you can create a single remote 'issue link' from the local issue to the remote issue and a comment will be added to the remote issue with a link to the local issue it was copied from.

Configuring JIRA to JIRA issue copy

The JIRA to JIRA issue copy feature is available to all users by default, although it can be restricted to a particular group.

If certain mandatory System or Custom fields in your local JIRA project are unlikely to exist or have valid values in the remote JIRA projects from which you are copying issues, you can specify default values for these required fields in your local JIRA project. These default values will also be used in the event that the user copying an issue remotely does not have permission to set these fields in your local JIRA project.

Getting the JIRA to JIRA issue copy plugin

The JIRA to JIRA issue copy feature is currently available as a plugin that needs to be installed on each JIRA server you wish to copy issues between.

(warning) The JIRA to JIRA issue copy plugin is not bundled with JIRA, although it can currently be download from from the Atlassian Plugin Exchange.

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Other enhancements and fixes

For a list of more issues resolved in JIRA 5.0 so far, click here.

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Plugin Developers: Differences between RC1 and RC2

There were some minor changes to markup/style handling between RC1 and RC2, notably:

  • If you are not using the JIRA decorators, but your plugin includes markup with <div class="content-body"> elements, you will need to add an additional aui-panel class attribute to these elements, i.e. <div class="content-body aui-panel">
  • If your plugin was replicating the behaviour of the 'view issue' page, there were some changes made to the markup:
    1. A new class page-type-viewissue is required on the body.
    2. The content of the stalker (<header id="stalker" class="stalker">) is now wrapped in a div element with a stalker-content class attribute, i.e. <header id="stalker" class="stalker"> ... </header> is now <header id="stalker" class="stalker"><div class="stalker-content"> ... </div></header>

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Last modified on Jan 19, 2012

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