JIRA 4.0 Beta 5 Release Notes

Still need help?

The Atlassian Community is here for you.

Ask the community

September 15, 2009

JIRA 4.0 Beta 5 is a public development release leading up to JIRA 4.0. 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.
It is not possible to upgrade JIRA 4.0 Beta 1, 2, 3 or 4 data to Beta 5. The data needs to come from an already released JIRA version (for example, JIRA 3.13.5).
The only plugin that is compatible with JIRA 4.0 Beta is the latest JIRA Toolkit. Do not install any other plugins.

The Atlassian JIRA team is delighted to present a brand new version of one of the world's favourite issue-trackers.

Highlights of JIRA 4.0 Beta 5:

Thank you for your interest in JIRA 4.0 Beta 5
Download Beta

Installing/Upgrading to JIRA 4.0

JIRA 4.0 Beta 5 can be downloaded here. Before upgrading, please refer to the JIRA 4.0 Upgrade Guide. You will also need to go to my.atlassian.com and generate a "JIRA 4 Evaluation" license, if you haven't done so previously, as any existing 3.x license files will not work with 4.0 Beta 5.

Highlights of JIRA 4.0 Beta 5

Advanced Searching

The new advanced search (JQL) provides support for logical operations, including AND, OR, NOT, NULL, EMPTY --- even on custom fields:

For more on the new JQL search syntax, please see the documentation.

^Top

Dashboard Gadgets

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 'legacy gadget'. And if you are a plugin developer and have created your own portlets, see the instructions for converting your portlets to gadgets.

The following gadgets are available in Beta 4:

  • 'Activity Stream' gadget (see below)
  • 'Admin' gadget
  • 'Bamboo Plan Summary' gadget*
  • 'Bamboo Status' gadget*
  • 'Crucible Charting' gadget
  • 'Create Issue' gadget
  • 'Favourite Filters' gadget
  • 'Filter Results' gadget
  • 'FishEye Charting' gadget
  • 'Introduction' gadget
  • 'Issue Completed This Iteration' gadget
  • 'Login' gadget
  • 'Quicklinks' gadget
  • 'Voted Issues' gadget

* Requires Bamboo 2.3.2 Beta 1 or later.

^Top

Activity Stream

The new 'Activity Stream' gadget displays a summary of the latest activity in JIRA projects (and/or by particular people) in which you are interested.

The 'Activity Stream' gadget also provides an RSS feed, allowing you to create very specific RSS feeds of only the information that is most relevant to you.

See the documentation for more details.

^Top

Issue Actions in the Issue Navigator

By popular request, issues can now be actioned directly from the Issue Navigator:

The "Actions" menu is also available for the list of sub-tasks within an issue.
^Top

Charting Now Comes Standard

The following reports and gadgets from the Charting plugin have now been integrated into JIRA:

Also, the "Resolved" field from the Charting plugin is now part of JIRA, so every issue now automatically has its resolution date recorded.

^Top

New-look "Browse Project"

JIRA 4.0 provides a cleaner, more interactive view into a project:

See the documentation for more about browsing projects, versions and components.
^Top

Project Icons

You can now give your project a visual identity, thanks to the introduction of project icons ('avatars'):

^Top

New-look Header

The new-look JIRA header gives you quick access to all the most commonly-used functions. Creating an issue just got super-fast!

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.
^Top

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.


^Top

"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.

^Top

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.)

^Top

Plus over 800 other fixes and improvements

Click here for full list.

key type summary priority status

Data cannot be retrieved due to an unexpected error.

View these issues in Jira
^Top

Last modified on Sep 15, 2010

Was this helpful?

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