Preparing for Jira 8.15

This documentation is intended for Jira developers who want to ensure that their existing apps are compatible with Jira 8.15. 

Summary of changes

In this section we'll provide an overview of the changes we intend to make in Jira 8.15, so you can start thinking how it might impact your apps. Once they're ready, we'll indicate when a change has been implemented, and in which milestone. 

Allowlist changes

Status: IMPLEMENTED (eap 03)

When you create an application link, the URL is automatically added to the Jira allowlist. From Jira 8.15, outbound requests from these URLs require users to be authenticated.  We've updated the allowlist screen to allow admins to specify which URLs allow anonymous users, and to set the default behavior for all new application links. 

In this EAP:

• Upgraded atlassian-gadgets from 4.4.12 to 6.0.0
• Upgraded Atlassian Whitelist from 4.3.1 to 5.0.3
  
  

Insight - Asset Management bundled with Jira Service Management (Data Center)

Status: IMPLEMENTED (eap 03)

Insight - Asset Management will be bundled with Jira Service Management Data Center, giving users access to its capabilities at no extra cost. It will also be available to download for free for Data Center users on earlier versions.

Advanced Roadmaps bundled with Jira Software (Data Center)

Status: IMPLEMENTED (eap 02)

Advanced Roadmaps is now part of Jira Software Data Center, giving users access to its capabilities at no extra cost. It will also be available to download for free for Data Center users on earlier versions.

jQuery update

Status: IMPLEMENTED (eap 02)

We applied some security patches to jQuery 2.2.4, which is bundled with Jira. This introduces a breaking change which affects any single tag HTML strings parsed via jQuery.

jQuery('<div/><span/>');

<div></div>
<span></span>

<div>
	<span></span>
</div>

jQuery('<div></div><span></span>');

Rich text editor on customer portal JIRA SERVICE MANAGEMENT

Status: IMPLEMENTED (eap 02)

We've added a rich text editor to Jira Service Management's customer portals to allow customers to raise requests and add comments using the markup language and having a visual feedback on what they type.

This rich text editor is different from the one used in Jira and only supports a subset of features (e.g. there are no user mentions or panels), mostly focusing on text formatting.

Here's the list of features it supports:

• font size
• font style (bold, italic, underline, etc.)
• lists (unordered, ordered)
• links
• code blocks
• block quotes
  
  

Voting on customer portal JIRA SERVICE MANAGEMENT

Status: IMPLEMENTED (eap 02)

Project admins of service projects can now enable voting through customer portal. This allows their customers to vote on requests they’d like to get done.

Here's how it looks from the request perspective:

Enabling this feature

Voting can be enabled for each project separately. You can do it in Project settings > Customer permissions. This feature requires that the global voting is enabled in your Jira instance.

Flexible Terminology 

Status: PARTIALLY IMPLEMENTED (eap 01)

We're bringing custom Agile terminology to Jira. This will allow Jira admins to change the names of the following items:

• Sprint / Sprints
• Epic / Epics

The updated names will be displayed both in Jira and Marketplace apps (here's where we need your help). This feature aims to meet the growing need for custom Agile terms, usually needed by organizations introducing Agile at Scale frameworks, like SAFe, where sprints are called iterations and epics—features.

In this EAP, you can test the APIs to manage terminology, as well as the mechanism used to update the terms in your app. For more info on what's exactly available and how to test it, see Flexible Terminology.

Drop-down menu on boards adjusted to AUI

Status: IMPLEMENTED (eap 01)

We've changed the custom drop-down menu on boards to the standard AUI drop-down. If you're adding any actions to this menu, make sure they work with this change. Here's how the new drop-down menu looks:

Help center with portals displayed as cards JIRA SERVICE MANAGEMENT

Status: IMPLEMENTED (eap 01)

We’re improving the look and feel of the help center. This is the first place customers go to to troubleshoot, submit requests, and get an idea of what help is on offer, and we strongly believe that first impressions count.

Here are some details about the new help center:

• All available portals are displayed at a glance, neatly presented as cards.

• You can sort them by popularity, or ascending or descending order.

• The recent requests are displayed below the portal cards.

• When searching, the portal cards will be hidden, and your results displayed instead.

Useful info for app developers:

In the previous versions, the help center included only a list of portal names, implemented using Backbone/Marionette as div elements containing anchor elements. The new portal cards contain description and logo, if configured, and are implemented using React.

As a result, the HTML hierarchy and CSS class names have changed for the HTML element of each portal item. This might break apps that customize or enhance the original list of portal names, depending on how this customization is achieved.

You should test and verify that your customizations still work with the EAP of Jira Service Management 4.15, and fix any issues.

New features for custom fields (Data Center)

Status: POSTPONED (Jira 8.16)

We've added two new columns that will give you more insight into your custom fields. You can view them by going to Administration > Custom fields.

New columns: Issues and Last value update

These columns should help you identify custom fields that aren't used in too many issues or that haven't been updated for a long time. Based on this information, you can decide whether some custom fields should be removed to clean up your instance a bit and improve performance.

Here's what they show exactly:

• Issues: The number of issues that have a value defined for a specific custom field. If your users actively chose a value for this field when creating an issue, the issue will be counted here. The number doesn't include issues that have a default value for a field, that is when users never actively changed it.
  
  
• Last value update: The last time a value for a field was added or updated in any issue.
  
  

Filtering out unused custom fields

We've also added a filter that lets you search custom field based on their last value update. This should help you identify custom field that haven't really be used for the past few years or months.