JIRA 5.2 Release Notes

12 November 2012


The completely redesigned JIRA search lets you quickly find and organise your issues, so you – and your team – can focus on what matters most. Getting the job done!

JIRA 5.2 also includes enterprise scale improvements, redesigned project workflows, new webhooks integration, help features for new users and much more. 

  

JIRA 5.2 Upgrade Notes

 

 

 

We made it easier to create and edit issues with inline editing in JIRA 5.1 and the create/edit issue dialog in JIRA 5.0. In this release, we're making it easier for you to find issues fast.

The new instant search bar and search results let you build the right query the first time. Shared filters are easily accessible on the search page, helping each team member to track progress towards common goals. You can keep across your own priorities at a glance with pre-built system filters for the most common views in JIRA.

Learn more...
  • New system filters — Easily filter for the most common views in JIRA: 'My Open Issues', 'Reported by Me', 'Recently Viewed' and 'All Issues'.
  • Favourite filters on the navigator — Quickly switch between views. Your favourite filters are now just a click away.
  • Intuitive filter management — See who owns a filter at a glance and whether changes have been made.
  • New search bar — Simply select the criteria you want in your search. Focus on the search criteria you care about and hide the rest.
  • Ad-hoc searches — Search and refine on-the-fly with immediate results. Refresh your results without reloading your page.
  • Complex searches — Create and execute complex searches with ease. The new search UI makes this simple, regardless of the number of projects, custom fields, or your JIRA configuration.

Read the documentation...



 

 

JIRA now has the option of re-indexing issues in the background, so your users can use JIRA as normal. We've also made a number of other performance improvements.

Learn more...

Background re-index — JIRA now has the option of re-indexing issues in the background. Performing a background re-index allows your users to use JIRA as normal. You won't need to schedule system-wide downtime just to perform a re-index.

Performance improvements — This release includes a multitude of performance improvements. You may not notice every tweak we've made, but it all adds up to a better user experience.

Reduced Memory Usage

More efficient Search Index caching — Memory usage of searches has improved tenfold. This is particularly noticeable on very large instances that are very busy.
Removed the massive memory use of Postgres and MySQL in data export — You no longer need to increase memory size to very large amount to get an export to work.
Smarter pooling of UI rendering resources — This change saves 90MB of memory.

SSL configuration via the JIRA configuration tool — If you want to run JIRA over SSL or HTTPS, you won't need to tinker around in XML files anymore. The JIRA configuration tool has a new screen that lets you easily configure access via HTTPS. The configuration tool also validates your configuration, so you won't need to worry if you've mistakenly entered an invalid certificate. Read the documentation...


The JIRA data generator now supports more complex data requirements. We've also developed an HTTP requests log analyser to help you performance-tune your JIRA instance.

Learn more...

Improved JIRA Data Generator — In JIRA 5.1, we built the JIRA Data Generator as part of our Enterprise performance work. This tool helps customers create large JIRA data sets quickly, which is useful for testing how your instance will perform at a projected rate. We also released a set of performance test scripts that can be used to test against data sets created by the JIRA Data Generator.  In this release, we've improved the JIRA Data Generator to support screen schemes and field configurations. The tool is not bundled with JIRA, but it is free and customers can get it from the Atlassian Marketplace: JIRA Data Generator.

HTTP Request Log Analyser — The new JIRA HTTP Request Log Analyser provides an analysis of the traffic on your JIRA instance, such as the maximum requests per minute, that can help you performance-tune your JIRA instance. We originally developed this tool to help our customers provide us with performance data for their JIRA instances. This tool is not bundled with JIRA, but it is available as a free download. We also have a summary of the results from our JIRA instances and from some anonymous customers.


We've written two new enterprise guides on federating JIRA and scaling GreenHopper. We've also published our investigations into custom field performance.

Learn more...

New guidesFederating JIRA - Managing Multiple Instances and Scaling JIRA Agile.

Enterprise resources — If you haven't browsed our enterprise resources before, you can find them here: Enterprise Resources. You'll find guides on scaling JIRA, establishing staging server environments for JIRA, garbage collection tuning, and more.

Custom field performance — In JIRA 5.1, we gave our Enterprise customers the Scaling JIRA guide which explains how customers can get the most out of JIRA in large deployments. This guide describes how there are many factors that affect JIRA performance, besides the total number of issues. One of these factors is custom fields. In this release, we've investigated how the configuration of custom fields can affect performance. You can view our findings in the updated Scaling JIRA guide.

 

 

Managing information between systems is a challenge. Do you want to post notifications from JIRA to a chat room? Do you want bug changes to be pushed from JIRA to a test management system? Do you want to send an SMS when issues transition in your workflow?

Webhooks provide you with a lightweight mechanism for letting remote applications receive push notifications from JIRA. No polling required.

Learn more...

Simply register a webhook in JIRA with the URL where the callback should be sent. Any time any issue changes in JIRA, a JSON notification will be sent to the URL.

You can also refine webhooks to suit your needs:

  • Constrain a webhook to fire for a set of issues and/or specific issue events.
  • Use a variable to include the key of the issue that fired it.
  • Configure a workflow post-function to fire a webhook.
Read the documentation...

 

Change is necessary for innovation. In this release, we've redesigned project workflows configuration and screen design to help you quickly adapt JIRA to your team's needs.

Configuring project workflows is easier and faster. View diagrams for all workflows for a project on a single page. Review your changes in draft format before publishing.

You'll also find screen design much more intuitive. Drag-and-drop and autocomplete help make this complex task much simpler.

Learn more...

Following on from the improvements to workflow administration in JIRA 4.4 and project administration in JIRA 5.1, we're continuing to make editing workflows easier within your project. You'll still have the power and flexibility of JIRA workflows at your fingertips, but configuration is much more intuitive.

Project workflows are now shown as a visual representation —  a diagram of each project workflow is displayed in a table, with the associated issue types alongside. The old text-based view of each workflow is still available as well, if you prefer.

Configuring project workflows is also much easier. Want to preview changes as a draft before publishing? Want to browse through diagrams of the workflows in the system when adding a workflow? Want to assign multiple issue types to a workflow in a single step? You can now do all of these tasks and more.

Read the documentation...

The screen designer has been overhauled in this release. Screens are as customisable as ever, however the user interface is faster and much simpler to use. You won't have to wrestle with controls when reordering — just drag and drop to move a field or tab. Autocomplete is now used when adding fields, making this process quicker and easier as well.

Read the documentation...

 

 

For new installations, you now have the option of creating a demonstration project. This demonstration project contains a number of sample issues that explain some JIRA basics: searching for issues, keyboard shortcuts, and editing issues.

JIRA also has inline help tips to guide new users in getting the most out of JIRA, such as a handy message instructing users to create issues. Others include administrator-only tips for tasks like creating users and editing workflows.

There are plenty more features and improvements in this release, including;

  • a streamlined Browse Project user interface to help you focus on the task at hand without distractions,
  • the JIRA admin helper which helps you to troubleshoot notifications or find out why a users can/cannot view issues or custom fields,
  • copying and editing of issue collectors,
  • the universal plugin manager 2.7 including the request plugin feature,
  • column ordering for standard JIRA gadgets,
  • compatibility with Confluence Workbox Notifications, and
  • platform improvements, including support for Java 7 and Tomcat 7.
Learn more...

Streamlined user interfaces for projects

We've been working hard to improve the user interface when you are browsing a project, so that you can concentrate on the task at hand without any distractions. The list of improvements are in the table below:

UI FeatureNotesScreenshot of new UI
New Create New Project button on the Browse Projects > All Projects pageN/A
Browse Project > Summary tab redesigned:
  • Administer Project button now available on the Browse Project page itself
  • Activity Stream only shows activity on JIRA issues and JIRA plugins
  • Issues: Updated recently section removed 
  • Issue: Unresolved section removed
  • Versions: Unreleased section moved to different position on tab
    • Show/hide toggle for additional versions removed
    • "Eyeball" toggle replaced with smart switcher at bottom of list
  • Administer Project button used to be on Browse Project > Summary tab (now removed)
  • Issues: Updated recently and Issue: Unresolved sections superseded by Activity Stream.
Standard issue filters directly available on Browse Project > Issues pageUsed to be in Filters dropdown on Browse Project > Summary tab
(now removed)
Standard issue filters directly available on Browse Version > Issues pageUsed to be in Filters dropdown on Browse Version > Summary tab
(now removed)
Standard issue filters directly available on Browse Component > Issues pageUsed to be in Filters dropdown on Browse Component > Summary tab
(now removed)
People section in Project Summary and page renamed to RolesN/A
Project > Popular Issues page redesignedN/A
Project > Labels page redesignedN/A

JIRA admin helper

We've bundled the popular JIRA admin helper plugin in this release. This tool helps JIRA administrators to diagnose and fix any of the following problems:

  • A custom field not showing on the View Issue, Edit Issue or Create Issue screens.
  • A user being able to see an issue when they are not supposed to, or being unable to see an issue when they are supposed to.
  • A user receiving a notification when they shouldn't have, or not receiving a notification when they should have.
Simply navigate to the issue and select the Where is my field?, Permission Helper or Notification Helper option from the More Actions menu. You can also access this via administration console (JIRA tab > Admin Helper).

Copying and editing issue collectors

 

 

 

Faster and more reliable mentions

We added mentions in JIRA 5.0, which gave JIRA users an easy way to share an issue with other users via email. This release includes a significant performance improvement to this feature. You'll notice that user names are suggested much more quickly, when you start typing after an '@' character. The suggested results are also more accurate and reliable.

Universal plugin manager 2.7

JIRA 5.2 now bundles the Atlassian Universal Plugin Manager 2.7.6 (we previously bundled UPM 2.1.5 in JIRA 5.1.8). This version of UPM includes the Request Plugin feature as well as user interface improvements. The Request Plugin feature provides users with a view of the Atlassian Plugin Marketplace in JIRA, allowing them to send requests for plugins to the JIRA system administrator. To find and request a plugin, click your user profile picture > Atlassian Marketplace in the JIRA header.

Column ordering for standard JIRA gadgets

Any customers who have followed this issue  JRA-19083 - Getting issue details... STATUS or this issue AOD-4711 - Getting issue details... STATUS will be happy to know that our most recent Atlassian ShipIt has delivered column ordering for standard JIRA gadgets. In JIRA 5.2, you'll be able to re-order columns for gadgets like the filter results gadget, by simply dragging and dropping.

Compatibility with Confluence Workbox Notifications

JIRA 5.2 is compatible with Confluence Workbox Notifications (introduced in Confluence 4.3). Read more in the Confluence 4.3 release notes.

Platform changes

We have made a number of platform changes in this release, including upgrading JIRA to run on Tomcat 7 and support for Java 7. Some of these changes affect the installation and upgrade process for JIRA. 

Please read the upgrade guide for details.

Last modified on Mar 4, 2013

Was this helpful?

Yes
No
Provide feedback about this article
Powered by Confluence and Scroll Viewport.