Jira Software 8.5 Long Term Support release change log

Jira Software 8.5.x upgrade notes

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Jira Software 8.5 is a Long Term Support release, and this change log aims to give you an overview of what's changed in the preceding versions. 

About Long Term Support releases
 We recommend upgrading Jira regularly, however if your organisation's process means you only upgrade about once a year, upgrading to a Long Term Support release may be a good option, as it provides continued access to critical security, stability, data integrity and performance issues until this version reaches end of life. 

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End of Life policy

Atlassian supports feature versions for two years after the first major iteration of that version was released. Once a version reaches End of Life, you won't be able to receive support for it. Here are the EOL dates for Jira Long Term Support releases.

7.6November 14, 2019

Learn more

7.13November 28, 2020
8.5October 21, 2021

Top features

Here's a summary of the great new features awaiting your users.  

All changes are divided according to versions in which they were released, but it doesn't mean you have to upgrade through each version separately. You can go straight from 7.6 or 7.13 to 8.5.

Versions 7.6 to 7.13
7.7
  • REST API for managing priority schemes
  • New language packs: Italian and Finnish
Release Notes
7.8
  • Quick search that shows instant results, and displays your recent work if you're not searching
  • New language pack: Dutch
Release Notes
7.9
  • Hiding completed issues on Kanban boards to improve performance
  • Searching through version fields with a wildcard
  • Development information available in Advanced Search (JQL)
  • Async cache replication (Jira Data Center)
  • Choosing delimiters when exporting issues to CSV
  • Disabling empty JQL queries to avoid problems with empty filters
  • New events in the audit log: boards and sprints
  • IPv6 for MySQL databases
Release Notes
7.10
  • Jira gets a fresh, new look
  • Archiving projects (Jira Data Center)
  • Improvements on the Projects admin page
  • Info about who started or completed a sprint on Sprint Report and Burndown Chart
  • Case-insensitive labels
Release Notes
7.11
  • IPv6 support
  • New columns on the Projects admin page: Last issue update and Issue count
  • Development information available in Basic Search
Release Notes
7.12
  • Custom fields optimizer (Jira Data Center)
  • New look and feel of the Custom fields page
  • Sharing edit rights for filters and dashboards
  • New compression method used when copying the index between the nodes (Jira Data Center)
  • Ability to disable the Days in column indicator on Kanban boards to improve performance
  • Moving uncompleted issues right into a brand new sprint
Release Notes
7.13
  • Support for AdoptOpenJDK 8
Release Notes
Versions 7.13 to 8.5
8.0
  • Look and feel: Scrum and Kanban
  • Better email notifications
  • Significant backlogs load faster
  • Dropping Linked pages count to boost performance
  • New priority icons
  • New options in advanced search
  • Massive performance improvements
  • Faster indexing
  • REST API for issue type schemes
Release Notes
8.1
  • Issue archiving (Jira Data Center)
  • Managing old components
  • Development info on issue cards
  • Flexible boards
  • More performance improvements
  • Jira Data Center on Microsoft Azure
  • New JMX metrics
Release Notes
8.2
  • Filters on the Export archived issues page
  • New colors of issue statuses
  • Support for Java 11
  • Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2017
  • Updating apps has never been easier
  • Exporting all the issues you need
Release Notes

8.3

  • Jira Server mobile app
  • Content Delivery Network (CDN) for Jira Data Center
  • AdoptOpenJDK bundled with JIRA
  • List of custom changes after upgrade
  • New filters to search for custom fields
  • Browsing projects is faster now
  • Improvements to batching emails
  • Cluster lock mechanism improved in Data Center
  • Re-indexing made better
Release Notes
8.4
  • Filters to browse archived issues in Jira Data Center
  • Support for Aurora PostgreSQL in Jira Data Center
  • CSV and JSON as the only formats for migrating to Jira
  • Time tracking in bulk edit
  • Accessibility improvements
  • AUI upgrade
  • Tomcat upgrade to version 8.5.42
  • Batching emails set as default
  • External links can open in a new tab
  • Filters in Multi User picker Custom field
Release Notes
8.5
  • No updates
Release Notes

Critical bug fixes

Every release contains a bunch of bug fixes. Here's all the ones that were deemed critical  severity and fixed since 7.6. 

Versions 7.6 to 7.13
7.7

Summary
Refresh

All 7.7 bug fixes
7.8

Summary
Refresh

All 7.8 bug fixes
7.9

Summary
Refresh

All 7.9 bug fixes
7.10

Summary
Refresh

All 7.10 bug fixes
7.11

Summary
Refresh

All 7.11 bug fixes
7.12

Summary
Refresh

All 7.12 bug fixes
7.13

Summary
Refresh

All 7.13 bug fixes



Versions 7.13 to 8.5
8.0

Summary
Refresh

All 8.0 bug fixes
8.1

Summary
Refresh

All 8.1 bug fixes
8.2

Summary
Refresh

All 8.2 bug fixes
8.3

Summary
Refresh

All 8.3 bug fixes
8.4

Summary
Refresh

All 8.4 bug fixes
8.5

Summary
Refresh

All 8.5 bug fixes

Supported platform changes

From time to time we will add or end support for a platform. Here's a summary of the changes since 7.6. 

7.7

No changes.

Supported platforms
7.8No changes.Supported platforms
7.9

Added support for:

  • Microsoft SQL Server 2016
Supported platforms
7.10No changes.Supported platforms
7.11

Added support for:

  • Apache Tomcat 8.5.29 (replacing 8.5.6)
Supported platforms
7.12

Added support for:

  • Apache Tomcat 8.5.32 (replacing 8.5.29). Added in Jira 7.12.3.
Supported platforms
7.13

Added support for:

  • AdoptOpenJDK 8
Supported platforms
8.0No changes.Supported platforms
8.1No changes.Supported platforms
8.2

Added support for:

  • Java 11
Supported platforms
8.3

Added support for:

  • Oracle 12c Release 2
Supported platforms
8.4

Added support for:

  • Aurora PostgreSQL for Jira Data Center
Supported platforms
8.5No changesSupported platforms

Technical upgrade notes

This table is a high-level summary of the upgrade notes, you should read the full upgrade notes before upgrading. 

7.7

Important notes:

  • Oracle JDBC driver is no longer shipped with Jira. You'll need to download it from the Oracle website, and copy to your Jira installation directory (/lib).

Known issues:

  • A fix for duplicated job IDs requires extra steps in some instances, just to be sure (checking the database if the index was created; restarting your Jira instance.)
Upgrade Notes
7.8

Important notes:

  • Oracle JDBC driver is no longer shipped with Jira. You'll need to download it from the Oracle website, and copy to your Jira installation directory (/lib).
Upgrade Notes
7.9

Important notes:

  • Jira Data Center changes cache replication to asynchronous. No immediate actions are required, but make sure you read about this change, and check whether you need to provide extra disk space in the local home directory on each node.
Upgrade Notes
7.10No important changes.Upgrade Notes
7.11

Important notes:

  • We've upgraded Apache Tomcat to 8.5.29. There might be some changes to Tomcat config files, so make sure you don't copy the old files to the new Jira version. See upgrade notes for details.
  • We support IPv6, but recommend that you use the mixed mode (IPv4 + IPv6). If your systems are IPv6 only, with IPv4 disabled, some Jira features won't work.
Upgrade Notes
7.12

Known issues:

  • The upgraded Apache Tomcat server is filtering out special characters in requests, making them fail. You'll need to add properties to the server.xml file that make Tomcat accept special characters. See upgrade notes for details on how to do this.
Upgrade Notes
7.13

Important notes:

  • We've added new parameters to the setenv.sh / .bat file. These can be used to configure the JVM code cache, however the default configuration should be optimal for most Jira instances, so no actions are required.
  • Application log output (atlassian-jira.log) is no longer mirrored in the Tomcat log file, catalina.out, to preserve the disk space.
Upgrade Notes
8.0

Important notes:

  • We've upgraded the Lucene library, which is responsible for the index in Jira. This change improves indexing (and searching), but it also makes your current index incompatible with the new version. That’s nothing to worry about, as you can rebuild the whole index by ‘reindexing’ Jira - an action you would probably run after a normal upgrade anyway. After reindexing, the index will be compatible with any later version.
  • You need to disable apps that are incompatible with Jira 8.0 or upgrade them to compatible versions, if these are available. Incompatible apps might block the upgrade and the Jira startup, because they're using elements that are no longer available or that have changed in the new version, like the Jira index, APIs, or some parts of the UI.
  • ZDU is not available as an upgrade method.
Upgrade Notes
8.1

Important notes:

  • We've added new columns to MySQL tables. This might result is Jira starting slower just after the upgrade.
Upgrade Notes
8.2

Important notes:

  • Java 11 is officially supported.
  • The 32-bit installers are no longer available to download.
  • You can now run Jira with Microsoft SQL Server 2017.
Upgrade Notes
8.3

Important notes:

  • AdoptOpenJDK 8 JRE is now bundled with Jira
  • We're now supporting Oracle 12c Release 2
  • You can now encrypt your database password that is stored in the dbconfig.xml file.
Upgrade Notes
8.4

Important notes:

  • We're now supporting Aurora PostgreSQL for Jira Data Center
  • Due to some security updates you need to review your filter and dashboard permissions.
  • Email notifications are batched by default.
  • Tomcat upgraded to version 8.5.42.
Upgrade Notes
8.5

Important notes:

  • ZDU is not available if you're upgrading from 7.x version.
Upgrade Notes

Upgrade procedure

Upgrading from a previous Long Term Support release?

See our dedicated upgrade guide. 

Upgrading from a Jira version 8.x.x? 

See Upgrading Jira applications for complete upgrade procedures, including all available upgrade methods and pre-upgrade steps.




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Last modified on Feb 23, 2021

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