JIRA 4.2 Beta 2 Release Notes
15 September 2010
JIRA 4.2 Beta 2 is a public development release leading up to JIRA 4.2. For all production use and testing of JIRA, please use the latest official release.
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.
The Atlassian team is proud to bring you the JIRA 4.2 Beta 2 release. As always, we would love to hear your feedback and comments about this release. To keep the discussion centralised, please provide your feedback as a comment on JRA-22093.
JIRA 4.2 gives you a few extra minutes of precious time every day, by providing the ability to triage issues directly from the Issue Navigator without you having to open each issue. For the mouse-averse, the new 'Operations Dialog' box provides access to all menu options via the keyboard.
To help speed up your ability to work on issues, we've also made common actions and workflow operations accessible from convenient dialog boxes.
Time-tracking has become much more flexible: you can now edit the Original Estimate and set the Remaining Estimate to zero when resolving an issue. You can also log work via workflow 'transition' (or any other) screens — now accessible via speedy dialog boxes.
The 'Labels' plugin is now a permanent part of JIRA, simplifying system management for GreenHopper users and administrators — and everyone else who likes to label their JIRA issues.
GreenHopper 5.3 Beta 2 is also available for download, and is compatible with JIRA 4.2 Beta 2.
Differences between JIRA 4.2 Beta 1 and Beta 2:
- JIRA 4.2 Beta 2 includes a number of bug fixes, including an issue with the dialog boxes and mod_proxy.
- The JIRA 4.2 documentation is being released with Beta 2. We would be very grateful for your feedback — please leave comments on individual pages.
Note to developers: JIRA 4.2 includes the Atlassian Plugin Framework version 2.5, and an alpha release of the JIRA REST API. We are very keen to hear your feedback on the REST API — please try it out and add your comments to JRA-22139.
Upgrading to JIRA 4.2 Beta 2
JIRA Beta releases are available here. Before upgrading, please refer to the JIRA 4.2 Upgrade Guide.
Highlights of JIRA 4.2
Dialogs for Common Actions and Workflow Operations
For faster edits to an issue, pop-up dialogs have replaced screen changes for common actions and workflow operations.
You can now perform an action on an issue, via a dialog, directly from the Issue Navigator — without opening the issue first. The issue marker shows which issue you have selected (via your keyboard) in the result list.
Keyboard Shortcuts and 'Operations Dialog'
JIRA users can now do more without a mouse — perfect for power users:
Hints also appear at the bottom of a dialog, helping you to learn keyboard shortcuts on the fly:
The new 'Operations Dialog' lets you perform actions via the keyboard (instead of the mouse), using the full-stop ('dot') key to access the 'Actions' and 'Workflow' menus. The Operations Dialog works from the Issue Navigator and also when viewing an individual issue.
See Using Keyboard Shortcuts for more information.
Issue Labelling
The functionality from the Labels plugin is now included in JIRA out-of-the-box. The labels dialog has a great new UI, and issue notifications are now optional when updating labels for an issue.
See Labeling an Issue for more information.
Improvements to the 'View Issue' Screen
We have improved the look and feel of the 'View Issue' screen even more. Some improvements include:
- Tighter spacing between lines to reduce space between elements
- Stronger section headings
- The 'Description' field separated into its own section
- Horizontal division lines between each custom field
- Votes and Watchers fields on the same line
- Labels represented as bubbles
Individual blocks can now be collapsed to streamline your issue view. The view state (i.e. which blocks are expanded/collapsed) will also be remembered across issues. After much feedback on the 4.1 updates to the 'View Issue' screen, you can now also add a comment at the bottom of the 'Comments' section.
Auto-complete for Versions and Components
Editing the Component, Affects Version(s) and Fix Version(s) is now quicker and easier. Upon typing into one of these fields, a dropdown menu appears with a list of options matching the first few characters you typed.
For convenience, the version lists are divided into Released and Unreleased categories.
Attachment Sorting by Date or Name
Attachments can now be sorted by date or by name, in ascending or descending order.
See Attaching a File for more information.
Viewable Files in Zipped Attachments
You can expand an attached zip file to see its contents. The first 30 files will be shown for larger zip files.
See Accessing ZIP-format File Contents for more information.
'Log Work' Improvements
You can now log work when you resolve an issue, saving you a step. You can also set the Remaining Estimate to 0 upon resolving an issue.
You now have the ability to edit the Original Estimate, even if work has been logged on an issue (not shown here).
We've also included the ability to add work log descriptions in wiki-markup (not shown here).
Lastly you can add the 'Log Work' field to any screen in JIRA (not shown here).
See Logging Work on an Issue for more information.
Improvements to the Issue Navigator
The Issue Navigator has been updated to match the look and feel of an issue.
We've also added: an issue marker and colour highlight for keyboard navigation (blue); colour highlight for mouse selection (grey); toggle to collapse the search form.
When a change is made via a dialog, JIRA will give you feedback on that change as confirmation.
'Filter' Gadget creation via the Issue Navigator
When viewing search results, you can quickly add a 'Filter Results' gadget to your dashboard via the 'Views' menu.
User Avatars and Hover Profile
JIRA users can now add an avatar to their profile. You can then mouse-hover over a user's name to show information about that user — this is available when viewing an issue, using the Issue Navigator, browsing a project, viewing activity, viewing a user profile and performing some administration tasks.
See Adding a User Avatar and Using Hover Profile for more information.
New JQL Functions
Additional JQL functions for projectsLeadBy and componentsLeadBy — useful for finding all issues where a particular user is the lead of a component, or a project.
See Advanced Searching for more information.
Other Enhancements and Fixes
- If you use Firefox or IE, you can now search JIRA issues from the convenience of your browser's search box. Just add your JIRA site as a search engine/provider, via the dropdown menu next to the browser's search box. This is because JIRA now supports the autodiscovery part of the OpenSearch standard.
- Click here for the full list of issues resolved in 4.2.