Highlights of JIRA 4.4 EAP 6:

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Visual Workflow Designer For Administrators

JIRA 4.4 provides a visual representation of your workflow, making it easy to map out your business processes.

Simply go to 'Workflows' in JIRA administration as usual, and click the 'Design' link for the workflow you wish to edit. If you hover your mouse over an individual Step or Transition, a 'cog' icon appears, which you can click to access more functions.

In EAP 5, the layout of a workflow is now preserved whenever you 'Copy' or 'Create a Draft' of an existing workflow. We have also implemented a few improvements to the status editor.

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Workflow Viewer on the 'View Issue' Screen

You can also see a read-only view of the workflow from the 'View Issue' page — just select 'View Workflow' from the 'More Actions' menu. We've made it simple for everyone to use, without requiring Flash to be installed.

The workflow viewer also highlights the current status of your issue in the workflow.

A new permission called 'View Read-Only Workflow' is required to access the workflow viewer feature from the 'View Issue' page.

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User Time Zones (improved since EAP 5)

We are very pleased to announce progress on JRA-9, one of the most highly-voted requests for JIRA: times will be displayed to a user in their local time zone, rather than the server's time zone.

You can set a default user time zone at an administration level, and individual users have the ability to choose their own time zone. In EAP 6, each user's time zone is displayed in their hover profile.

Time zone support has been implemented for quick searching, simple searching and advanced searching, chart and report gadgets, date/time-based custom fields, as well as issue histories, work logs and source code check-ins (via the JIRA FishEye Plugin).

Note: Date fields, which have no time component, such as due dates, release dates (associated with versions) and custom date fields, solely record date information (and no time zone-related information).

JIRA administrators can change the default time zone by going to 'Administration' => 'General Configuration' (under 'Global Settings'), and editing the 'Default user time zone'.

Users can also change their individual time zone setting via their user profile:

Note to developers: If you develop JIRA plugins that handle dates and times, please be aware of the Formatting and Parsing Dates Using the Appropriate Time Zone section of the Plugin Developer Notes for JIRA 4.4.

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Editable Options for Custom Fields

We are also pleased to announce progress on JRA-2983. You can now edit the options for custom fields of the following field types:

• Select List
• Multi Select
• Cascading Select
• Radio Buttons
• Multi Checkboxes

Because your custom fields may change over time, JIRA now gives you the ability to:

• edit a field's options — that is, change the text of an option.
• disable an option — that is, hide an option so that it is no longer available for selection. Options that have been used cannot be removed (to preserve data integrity), but due to changing business requirements, they may become invalid over time and so you may wish to make them unavailable for new issues.

Note to developers: If you develop JIRA plugins that handle single- and multi-select custom fields, please be aware of the Single- and Multi-Select Custom Field Changes section of the Plugin Developer Notes for JIRA 4.4.

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Issue Linking when Resolving an Issue

When resolving an issue, you can create links to other issues on an issue resolution screen. This is handy when you want to resolve an issue as a 'duplicate' of another and at the same time link to the duplicate issue.

For convenience, your last 10 issue links and resolutions are readily accessible from the 'Linked Issues' fields (in the screenshot below). The 'Linked Issues' fields can also be added to any JIRA screen via the new 'Issue Linking' field in JIRA 4.4. See Defining a Screen for more information.

If you are upgrading from an earlier version of JIRA, you need to configure this feature manually through JIRA's administration area. Please refer to the Upgrade Notes for details.

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Multiple File Selection and Upload from the 'File Upload' Dialog Box

When using JIRA's 'Attach Files' dialog box, you can now select multiple files in the 'File Upload' dialog box that appears after clicking the 'Browse' button.

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New-Look Administration Area (new since EAP 5)

JIRA 4.4 brings you a dedicated 'administration mode', which replaces the left-hand column of the JIRA's administration console with a series of drop-down menus across the top navigation bar.

To leave JIRA's 'administration mode', click the 'Exit Administration' link at the top-right of the screen to return JIRA to its standard user mode.

We are still refining this, but here's the first version:

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Improved Setup Wizard

Our trusty wizard has had a makeover:

The new Setup Wizard

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Database Configuration Now Part of the Setup Wizard

In JIRA 4.4, configuring a connection to an external database is now part of the standard setup wizard. Upon completing the setup wizard, JIRA will create a direct JDBC connection (whose entire configuration is stored within your JIRA home directory).

The database configuration step of the setup wizard will change before the final 4.4 release, but here is how it looks so far:

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Improved JIRA Standalone Linux Installer with Uninstall and Upgrade Capabilities (improved since EAP 5)

Console Installer

A simple console (command line) wizard is now available for Linux operating systems. The console wizard:

• Installs JIRA under a dedicated user account 'jira' with restricted write access to your JIRA installation directory.
• Can install JIRA as a service, so that JIRA automatically re-starts whenever your Linux operating system must be rebooted.

To install JIRA, simply download the Linux .bin installer file and at a shell prompt, execute this file and follow the remaining prompts!

The console wizard can install JIRA as either the 'root' user or a non-root user. However, to install JIRA as a service, the console wizard must be executed as the 'root' user.

See Installing JIRA on Linux for details.

Unattended Installation

After installing JIRA on Linux using the .bin installer file above, a configuration file called response.varfile is generated in the .install4j subdirectory of your JIRA Installation Directory.

See Performing an Unattended Installation (on Linux) for details.

Uninstaller

After installing JIRA on Linux using the .bin installer file above, an executable file called uninstall (located in your JIRA Installation Directory) is available to conveniently uninstall JIRA.

See Uninstalling JIRA from Linux for details.

Upgrade Feature (new in EAP 6)

The console wizard includes an option that allows you to upgrade an existing JIRA Standalone installation from version 4.3.x or later.

While the upgrade feature installs a new version of JIRA, it automates the following tasks for you:

1. Backs up your existing JIRA installation and home directories.
2. Migrates database configurations used in JIRA 4.3.x and earlier to the new database configuration used in JIRA 4.4.
3. Migrates port values in your existing JIRA installation's server.xml file to your new version of JIRA.
4. Migrates custom values in your existing JIRA installation's jira-application.properties and setenv.sh files to your new version of JIRA.
   In the setenv.sh file, only the following values are migrated:
   • JVM_SUPPORT_RECOMMENDED_ARGS
   • JVM_MINIMUM_MEMORY
   • JVM_MAXIMUM_MEMORY
   • JIRA_MAX_PERM_SIZE

Please Note:

• The upgrade process requests that you conduct a backup of your database using your database's backup utilities. If your database does not support online backups, you can stop the upgrade process, shut down JIRA, perform your database backup and then restart the upgrade process to continue on.
• If you have made customisations to your seraph-config.xml file or any other files in your JIRA installation directory, these must be migrated manually.
• If your attachments and index files are located outside your JIRA home directory, then backups of these directories must be performed manually.

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Improved JIRA Standalone Windows Installer with Upgrade Capabilities (improved since EAP 5)

The installation wizard for Windows now works smoothly for Windows 7 and Vista.

The process for installing JIRA as a Windows service has also improved and the wizard now allows you to specify the port numbers used to run and access JIRA.

See Installing JIRA on Windows for details.

Unattended Installation

When you execute the installer file at the Windows command prompt and complete your installation of JIRA, a file called response.varfile is generated in the .install4j subdirectory of your JIRA Installation Directory.

See Performing an Unattended Installation (on Windows) for details.

Upgrade Feature (new in EAP 6)

The installation wizard includes an option that allows you to upgrade an existing JIRA Standalone installation from version 4.3.x or later.

While the upgrade feature installs a new version of JIRA, it automates the following tasks for you:

1. Backs up your existing JIRA installation and home directories.
2. Migrates database configurations used in JIRA 4.3.x and earlier to the new database configuration used in JIRA 4.4.
3. Migrates port values in your existing JIRA installation's server.xml file to your new version of JIRA.
4. Migrates custom values in your existing JIRA installation's jira-application.properties and setenv.bat files to your new version of JIRA.
   In the setenv.bat file, only the following values are migrated:
   • JVM_SUPPORT_RECOMMENDED_ARGS
   • JVM_MINIMUM_MEMORY
   • JVM_MAXIMUM_MEMORY
   • JIRA_MAX_PERM_SIZE

Please Note:

• The upgrade process requests that you conduct a backup of your database using your database's backup utilities. If your database does not support online backups, you can stop the upgrade process, shut down JIRA, perform your database backup and then restart the upgrade process to continue on.
• If you have made customisations to your seraph-config.xml file or any other files in your JIRA installation directory, these must be migrated manually.
• If your attachments and index files are located outside your JIRA home directory, then backups of these directories must be performed manually.

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REST API improvements

There are new REST APIs for

• Listing and managing Project Components.
• Listing and managing Project Versions.
• Listing and managing Project Roles.

Have a look at the reference documentation.

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