Highlights of JIRA 4.0 RC1:

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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.

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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.

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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:

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'):

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Default Unit for Time Tracking

You can now specify your preferred Default Unit (minutes/hours/days/weeks) for your JIRA system. This will be applied whenever users log work on an issue without specifying a unit.

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"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.

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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.)

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Plus over 900 other fixes and improvements

Click here for full list.