The document discusses the new features and improvements in versions 8.0 through 8.5 of Jira Software. Key highlights include a new Lucene search engine making Jira 20x faster, improved email notifications, priority icon updates, and the introduction of a mobile app. Upgrades from 7.0 to 8.0 include a customized pre-upgrade planning page. Feature releases like 8.1 add support for Java 11 and SQL Server 2017. The Jira 8.5 enterprise release will target Q4 2019 and include backported security updates.
7. Jira Software 8.0
Jira Software Server & Data Center
8.0 is the next chapter of Jira for
enterprise teams, harnessing a
speedy new engine built for scale.
8. Productivity
updates help keep
teams on top of
their work
Benefits of Jira Software 8.0
A more modern Jira
that’s easier for
administrators to
maintain
The fastest,
strongest Jira
Software yet
27. See important
information
Supported databases,
licenses, & modified files
PRE-UPGRADE PLANNING PAGE
Tailored upgrade
plan
Custom recommendations
8.0 (recommended)
8.0
(rec
om
men
ded
)
Follow the steps
With up-to-date information
and links to documentation
29. Released: April 4
Key features:
• Boards are even faster, more flexible, and now give
insight into build and deployment information
• Issue archiving (Data-Center only)
• The ability to retire components that are no longer
relevant
Plus:
• Improved reference templates for deploying Jira Data
Center on Microsoft Azure
• New JMX metrics for more insights into Jira
performance
Jira
Software
Server &
Data 8.1
Feature
Release
Highlights
30. Released: May 21
Key features:
•Support for Java 11 & Microsoft SQL Server 2017
•For issue archiving, we've added filters to help limit the
export file (Data Center-only)
Performance Improvements:
• Fixed several issues that caused performance
degradation in large Jira instances when installing or
updating the Marketplace apps, so updating apps is
much easier now.
• Reduced the amount of memory needed to export
issues so customers can increase the limit and export
more issues in one go.
Jira
Software
Server &
Data 8.2
Feature
Release
Highlights
31. Released: July 22
Key features:
•The mobile app is here! (available for iOS and Android)
•Better email notifications are even better - delay batched emails
for 2 minutes up to 1 hour to fit your teams’ needs
•Accelerate the experience for distributed teams by integrating
with a content delivery network (CDN). Available for Data Center.
Jira
Software
Server &
Data 8.3
Feature
Release
Highlights
32. Released: Sept 9
Key features:
• Browse archives - Easily find archived issues (available for Data
Center)
• Accessibility improvements
• Plus highly voted requests:
• Filters in Multi User picker Custom field
• External links open in new tab
• Add time tracking info to issues when editing in bulk
Jira
Software
Server &
Data 8.4
Feature
Release
Highlights
35. Backported security
updates & critical bug
fixes
From later feature releases
Remain on the release
longer
2 year support window
Additional Documentation
Combined change log & performance and
scale benchmarks relative to the prior
Enterprise release (7.13/4.13)
Why
upgrade to
an
Enterprise
release?
36. Advance Notice
Early communication so you
can plan accordingly
Certified from the
start
No more waiting for a
designated bug fix version
What’s changed?
38. Q: What is the name of Jira
Index?
A: Lucene Index
39. Which is the latest version of Jira
available?
A: 8.4
40. Q: When was the first version of
Jira 8 officially released?
A: April 4, 2019
41. Q: What is the support window of
enterprise version?
A: 2 Years
42. Q: What is the duration of
batched emails?
A: 2 minutes to 1 hour
Notas del editor
During this session, I’ll share with you the key benefits of Jira Software 8.0.
Next, we’ll discuss what you need to know in order to upgrade to the 8.x series.
Then, I’ll share what’s been delivered in the latest releases.
And finally, I’ll share updates regarding the 8.5 enterprise release.
We hope you are as excited as we are that Jira Software 8.0 is here! This is the next chapter of Jira for enterprise teams, harnessing a speedy new engine built for scale. In Jira 8.0, we’ve implemented foundational changes that pave a path for our customers to continue depending on Jira for years to come. In 8.0, you'll see noticeably faster performance that will help your teams work together, faster, and with fewer administrative roadblocks.
3 distinct value props for JSW 8.0 (Call outs above), so let’s dive in.
(and for more detail please reference release notes https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftware/jira-software-8-0-x-release-notes-957981626.html and check out our blog: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/introducing-jira-software-8-0)
Before sharing the performance results, we want to pull back the curtain on the changes that have made Jira so much faster in the 8.0 release - and that was the decision to upgrade Lucene.
To keep up with the growth of our largest customers and effectively scale Jira, we knew that we needed to upgrade Lucene.
Lucene is the search-based subsystem within Jira, which handles JQL queries. It powers not only the JQL search that you use to find relevant issues, but what is also architecturally used by Jira to power features like boards, dashboards, search, reports, and sidebar. Even though some users may have never heard of Lucene, it powers many of the key functions that they use every day.
On top of upgrading Lucene, we’ve also optimized boards and backlogs for faster performance. All of these architectural changes amount to the following performance improvements in Jira Software 8.0:
Sometimes, Jira can get in the way of teams working as quickly as they want to. JQL searches can be slow, dashboard gadgets take a while to load, and loading a large backlog requires might require extra time before a team’s standup kicks off.
As a result of the 8.0 changes, search results are 31% faster on average when compared to 7.6. The biggest contributor is date range searches, which are 70% faster.
For teams who rely on agile boards and backlogs, we've shaved seconds and minutes off the amount of time it takes to load them (kanban, scrum and kanplan). Agile boards load 2x faster on average, and the largest boards load 20x faster.
In Jira 8.0, even the largest boards, counting 10k issues or more, will now load under 4 seconds.
Let me show you. (Click to start the video animation)
Here is the same dashboard loading before and after these improvements.
AMAZING right!!!
In 8.0, Jira is not only faster; it looks better too. We've addressed some of our users top requests to make time spent in Jira more enjoyable and productive. In 7.10 later, you've noticed there's a modern look and feel. We're continuing that with some of the new screens you'll see in 8.0, like agile boards
We are also focusing on improving the ability for teams to clearly communicate priorities of their issues with new priority icons. Now, each of Jira’s 10 priority levels has a unique icon shape, enabling those that are colorblind to more easily distinguish priorities when viewing a group of issues.
In 8.0, we dug into how users communicate with Jira, with the goal of making email notifications less chatty. Admins can now enable batched email notifications, so users don't miss essential updates.
We know our email inboxes are already out of control.
Jira now helps users cut through the clutter of hundreds of email notifications a day, by grouping issue updates, comments, and edits into a single email.
That’s right, with the launch of JSW 8.0, we also released the beta of our native mobile apps for Jira Software Server!
With the mobile apps for Jira, users can stay connected with their work, get updates on important tickets, and of course search for important information.
As of 8.3, mobile apps are now generally available (& require an upgrade to 8.3+).
While making end-users happy and productive in Jira is always priority #1, we know that a lot goes on behind the scenes with Jira administration to ensure that Jira is performant, stable, and well-managed across an organization.
That’s why we’re thrilled to share that the 8.0 platform investments, particularly in upgrading and optimizing Lucene, have translated into significant time-savers and headache-relievers for our Jira administrators:
Many of our enterprise customers are reindexing frequently due to search performance degradation, adding a new custom field, or cluster inconsistency. We've heard how much time this takes, especially for larger enterprises - anywhere from 5 to 20 hours.
In Jira 8.0, reindex duration is 71% faster. (In our tests, a 3h reindex dropped to 53 minutes.)
As Jira customers continue to scale in size and complexity, so too does their index. When you have a large index size, copying the index between nodes can take a long time. For some of our largest customers, this can take up to 5 hours. Oftentimes, customers need additional hardware to support their index size, which is expensive.
With 8.0, index size has shrunk by 48%! (In our tests, the index size dropped from 19GB to 9.9GB.) This means a faster, much more stable Jira, that is easier to maintain and troubleshoot.
Jira is also more stable as there is no more degradation of the Jira index over time. Jira performance stays consistent and does not degrade after indexing as it did before. Now, memory issues for intensive search functions are a thing of the past.
For those around for the Jira Software 7.0 platform release, we introduced big licensing changes and complex architectural changes breaking the core product into platform+apps (like JSD), which was very complex for customers to navigate around. There are no licensing changes in 8.0, and architectural changes are far less complex, which makes upgrading a much less complex decision for customers.
In 7.0 there were also a lot of breaking changes – most of our APIs changed, which meant that all plugins and third party integrations had to be updated and large portions of plugins' code bases were affected. In 8.0, we kept API breaking changes to a minimum, focusing mostly on what's needed for the Lucene upgrade and future Java 11 compatibility, which means far fewer plugins and third party integrations will be affected to the same degree as 7.0.
To help make our customers’ next upgrade more straightforward, we've introduced a pre-upgrade planning page that will give admins a tailored upgrade plan with recommendations for their instance. This page surfaces important information that admins previously had to manually check, like supported databases, license validity, and modified files.
With up-to-date information and links to documentation, admins have a clear path to follow, and can be confident in their upgrade decisions.
The pre-upgrade planning page is available, in product, for Jira 7.4.3 and later.
8.1 delivers a variety of great new features such as Issue archiving (Data center only), component management, flexible boards and more.
Issue archiving is a simple but powerful way to remove out-of-date information from Jira for easier searching and faster performance. This feature is the newest addition to our archiving solution, expanding the capabilities of archiving as a whole.
Please visit the release notes for more information: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftware/jira-software-8-1-x-release-notes-966669112.html
There are some exciting new features and performance improvements. 8.2 has support for Java 11 & Microsoft SQL Server 2017 while performance updates have been made for large Jira instances when installing or updating the marketplace apps. We have also reduced the amount of memory needed to export issues so customers can increase the limit and export more issues in one go.
Since launching the Jira Software 8.0 and Jira Service Desk 4.0 platform releases in February, many of you have been asking when the next Enterprise release will be so that you can take advantage of the massive performance improvements, batched email notifications, the Jira mobile beta, and more.
While 8.0 is our most stable platform release to date, we recognize that it is critical for our enterprise customers to have access to an enterprise release in the 8.x series. That is why we’re giving you advance notice that our next Enterprise release will be 8.5, and we are targeting early q4 in the calendar year.
If you work with a Technical Account Manager or Priority Support, consult your contact for a recommendation based on your environment and upgrade cadence.
Enterprise releases receive additional backported bug fixes and security updates from later feature releases throughout its two-year support window. If you manage a large, complex deployment of Jira and require significant effort to upgrade, an Enterprise release ensures you can remain on the release for longer if you prefer.
You can also expect to receive additional support and documentation from the Atlassian team, including a combined change log and performance benchmarks from the prior Enterprise release. Our latest Enterprise release is 7.13, and we recommend always upgrading to the latest bug fix version to ensure you have the latest fixes and security updates.
We’ve also made a couple big changes to our enterprise release process based on your feedback. We know that you need advance notice to plan for upgrades, so we’re sharing the targeted 8.5 enterprise release now.
And 8.5 will be certified from the start, so you won’t need to wait for us to declare a 8.5.x bug fix version to confidently upgrade to this release.