Jira Service Management 5.7.x upgrade notes

Below are some important notes on upgrading to Jira Service Management 5.7.x. For details on the new features and improvements in this release, see:

• Jira Service Management 5.7.x release notes

 Upgrade notes

Enhance your approvals with comments DATA CENTER

We’re refreshing approvals in Jira Service Management and adding a new feature. Approvers will now see a transition screen after they select Approve or Decline on a request. They’ll be able to leave a comment explaining their decision on the new screen. In this release, the transition screen will appear when approving requests in the customer portal and the agent view.

Commenting on approvals comes with an extra perk—making the comments required. Jira admins will have access to new settings when editing or adding approval steps in workflows.

To accommodate the changes we’re making to approvals, we’re also updating our REST API and Java API.

• The Answer approval endpoint (POST /rest/servicedeskapi/request/<issue-key>/approval/<approval ID>) is getting two new optional fields, comment and commentPublic (a boolean), to approve a request with a scope-specified comment.

• We're adding a new endpoint to get approval configuration by approval ID (GET /rest/servicedeskapi/request/<issue-key>/approval/<approval ID>/config), which you can use to get information about the comment configuration for an approval.

Java API change:

• We're extending ApprovalService with two new methods to answer an approval with comment and retrieve the configuration of the approval request.

New settings for Groovy scripts in Assets

With our updates to the Groovy script settings, Jira system admins can now choose who has access to the Assets script console. You can limit access to Jira system admins only, or to both system admins and Jira admins. The new settings will let you have more control over who can execute the scripts in your instance.

To use the updated settings (and previously existing ones, too), go to Administration > Manage apps > Assets script configuration.

Configuring contexts for custom fields: new design, enhanced functionality

Your feedback has always fueled Jira improvements, helping us to work on things that really matter and bring value to your everyday work. This time around, we’re pleased to announce improvements long-awaited by Jira admins—we’ve revamped the whole experience of configuring custom field contexts.

We’ve been working hard to ensure you’re getting a quick, efficient, and predictable interaction with the feature, achieving more in less time. Our brand-new design and enhanced functionality is now ready, so let’s get it uncovered!

• Use search to quickly find what you’re looking for. No more scrolling through long lists of issue types and projects, even if it’s just one item you need to select.
• Easily add or remove items from a context by dragging and dropping them between lists. Or simply use the Add or Remove buttons.
• Avoid repetitive manual steps with the multi-select functionality. Select while holding the Shift key to choose multiple items in one go.
• Stop worrying about misclicks. Once you add items to a list, clicking outside that list won’t clear the selection.
• Validate your changes in the blink of an eye as all newly added items now appear in a separate Just added section. No matter how many items you’ve added to the context, all new selections will stand out.
• Is it “context” or “Custom field configuration scheme”? No more guesses as we make the terminology consistent throughout the app and documentation. We want to keep things simple and clear, so Context it is.

Learn more about custom field contexts

 End of support announcements

SQL Server 2016

In Jira 9.7, we’re permanently removing support for SQL Server 2016. End of support means that we won’t fix bugs related to this platform in Jira 9.7 and later.

We're still supporting SQL Server 2017 and SQL Server 2019.

Java 8

We’re planning to stop supporting Java 8 in upcoming releases. You can use it with Jira 9.7 until we announce the deprecation of Java 8.

For the list of supported platforms, see Supported platforms.

 App developers

See Preparing for Jira 9.7 for any important changes regarding apps.

 Upgrade procedure

To help you upgrade to the latest and greatest:

• See Upgrading Jira applications for complete upgrade procedures, including all available upgrade methods and pre-upgrade steps.
• For a more tailored upgrade, go to Jira administration > Applications > Plan your upgrade. We’ll recommend a version to upgrade to, run pre-upgrade checks, and provide you with a custom upgrade guide with step-by-step instructions.