Other Highlights:

•  REST API Improvements
•  Java API Improvements
•  Performance Improvements
•  New Troubleshooting and Debugging Tools
•  New Email Handler Wizard
•  Remote Issue Copying

Thank you for your interest in JIRA 5.0 Beta 1
Download Beta

Customisable Dialog Box for Creating and Editing Issues (new in Beta 1)

JIRA 5.0 provides a convenient and customisable dialog box for creating and editing JIRA issues, replacing the Create and Edit Issue forms.

The Create/Edit Issue dialog boxes provide a standard set of default fields. However, you can quickly add or remove fields via the 'Configure Fields' button at the top-right of the dialog box. 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.

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

Type '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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Remote Links (improved in Beta 1)

The Remote Issue Linking feature provides a powerful way to link JIRA issues to items external to your JIRA installation or external applications. Along with a Java and REST API to add these links, end users can also add links from a JIRA issue to:

• another JIRA issue on a different JIRA installation or site using application links with trusted applications authentication.
  OAuth-based application links will also work but currently possess some minor UI bugs to be fixed.
• any web page URL, such as a page of documentation, a technical note, or any other page on another web site.

For more information about this feature, see JIRA Remote Issue Links.

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More Enhancements to JQL — New "CHANGED" Operator and "WAS" Improvements

Enhancements were introduced in JIRA 4.4 that allowed you to search the history of an issue's Assignee and Reporter fields.

In JIRA 5.0, JQL supports the new "CHANGED" operator, which can accept the optional predicates "FROM", "TO", "ON", "DURING", "BEFORE", "AFTER" and "BY".

For example, the following JQL query:

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

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

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

The "CHANGED" operator can be used on the Status, Assignee, Priority, Reporter, Resolution and Fix Version fields.

The "WAS" operator can now be used on the Fix Version field too. 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 External Content

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.

Screenshot: Activity stream gadget showing activity from other Atlassian applications

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

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

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Manage Other Users' Shared Filters and Dashboards

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.

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

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:

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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.

The form for adding a new user, accessed by clicking 'Add User' on the 'User Browser' page of JIRA's Administration area, is now a dialog box:

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REST API Improvements

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.
• Retrieve metadata for editing existing issues.
• Delete existing issues and their subtasks.
• Create remote issue links.

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'.

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.

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Java API Improvements

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.
• Removal of deprecated OSUser classes.
• Removal of deprecated portlets (replaced by gadgets in JIRA 4.0) and their related APIs.

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

Please also be aware that the JIRA's Java API is likely to undergo a rapid number of changes from one JIRA 5.0 EAP release to the next.

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Performance Improvements

Lucene 3.2 is now fully integrated into JIRA. Initial benchmarking shows performance improvements across a number of JIRA features.

The 'Activity' tabs on the 'View Issue' page are now loaded in the background when this page is first viewed, allowing the information on these tabs to be displayed 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 POP or IMAP mail servers with JIRA 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:

Please be aware that this feature is still undergoing development and as such, the final user experience may change.

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New Plugin to Try Out — Remote Issue Copying

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

Once you have an Application Link established between your JIRA site and another, a new issue action 'Remote Copy' will appear in the view issue page. You can limit this action to a particular user group, but by default everyone can use it.

You will be prompted to map field values by field names for JIRA's built-in (system) fields and/or to configure default values for required fields.
You will require the appropriate permissions to set the field value on the target site.

Custom fields are generally supported, although so far, we have only provided a mapper for the SelectCFType custom field type. Supporting more custom fields is a matter of writing more mappers (which we intend to make pluggable for the final JIRA 5.0 release).

The Remote Issue Copy feature is currently available as a plugin that needs to be installed on each JIRA server you wish to copy issues between. You also need to configure the following before you can copy issues between your JIRA sites:

1. An Application Link from the source JIRA site to the target JIRA site — see Adding an Application Link.
2. A Project Link from the source JIRA Project to the target JIRA Project — Adding Project Links between Applications.

The Remote Issue Copying plugin is not yet bundled with JIRA. However, you can download it from from the following link:

• https://maven.atlassian.com/content/groups/public/com/atlassian/cpji/cpji-jira-plugin/2.1-beta1/cpji-jira-plugin-2.1-beta1.jar

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