Highlights of JIRA 4.3 Beta 1:

Thank you for your interest in JIRA 4.3 Beta 1
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Full LDAP integration

The way users and groups are stored and accessed in JIRA has been totally rewritten in Release 4.3. This provides a number of additional capabilities, mainly the ability to use an LDAP server for all user information. Key features are:

• Ability to connect to an LDAP server, including to Microsoft Active Directory, for user management. This includes:
  • Read-write access
  • Read-only access
  • Read-only access with local groups
  • Use LDAP for authentication only — Previous functionality
• Ability to connect to a Crowd server for user management — Previous functionality
• Ability to manage users fully within JIRA — Previous functionality
• Ability to use 2 or more LDAP and/ or Crowd servers simultaneously for user management.

Note when upgrading from EAP 3

If you are upgrading to Beta 1 from EAP 3, please note that there have been changes to Crowd that require extra data in the cwd_application table.

You will need to update the table and add 'CROWD' into the application_type column.

(This will not be necessary when upgrading to the final release of JIRA 4.3.)

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User Directory management via JIRA Admin UI

In JIRA 4.3, administrators can now manage external User Directories directly from the JIRA Administration screens. Gone are the days of manually editing XML files.

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New Plugin Management System

JIRA 4.3 includes the Universal Plugin Manager (UPM), which provides you with a simple way of adding and managing plugins:

• Auto-discovery of available plugins (see Featured Plugins in the screenshot below)
• Point-and-click installation — no more downloading JAR files

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AppLinks pre-installed and configurable from the JIRA Admin UI

JIRA 4.3 includes Unified Application Links (UAL), so you no longer need to install it separately.

Application Links (AppLinks) is a plugin that allows you to link your JIRA, Confluence, FishEye, Crucible, Bamboo and Subversion applications. You can even choose to associate individual entities (i.e. JIRA projects, Confluence spaces, FishEye repositories, FishEye projects, Crucible projects, Bamboo projects) with each other. Applications Links is bundled with Fisheye 2.4, Confluence 3.5, Jira 4.3, and all later versions of those applications. In addition, Bamboo 3.1 is compatible with AppLinks. You can configure Jira-to-Bamboo links via the Jira administration screens.

Linking two applications allows you to share information and access one application's functions from within the other. For example, if you linked a JIRA server and a Confluence server, you could view JIRA issues in a Confluence page via the Jira Issues Macro.

You also can associate entities of two linked applications. For example, you could associate a JIRA project with a Confluence space. This allows you to take advantage of additional integration features like link rendering, which lets you create links to issues or pages in the project or space using a simple textual reference, e.g. [JRA-1234], [myConfluenceSpace:Test Page].

• In JIRA 4.3 there is now a 'Managed Unified Application Links' option on the 'Manage Project' screen, enabling you to easily configure application links for a given project.

For more about configuring Application Links, please see the Application Links Administrator's Guide.

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Add another application's Gadgets to your JIRA Gadget Directory

JIRA 4.3 includes Atlassian Gadgets 2.0, allowing you to quickly add all gadgets from your Confluence, Bamboo, FishEye or Crucible instance — or from another JIRA instance — to your JIRA Gadget Directory, for easy addition to your JIRA dashboard:

In the JIRA Gadget Directory , you can now click 'Gadget Subscriptions'. There you can provide the URL for the other application (or other JIRA instance), and all the gadgets from that instance will be added to your JIRA Gadget Directory.

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Dashboard Performance Improvements (enhanced since EAP 5)

We are extremely pleased to announce that you should see a noticeable reduction in the time it takes to load a Dashboard.

• On average, dashboard performance has improved by 29%
• For large dashboards, the performance improvement is 35%

In Beta 1 we are also extremely pleased to announce that you should see a noticeable reduction in the time it takes to load the Gadget Directory (depending on how many external gadgets you have configured).

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Search the Change History with JQL 'WAS' Function (improved since EAP 5)

JIRA 4.3 introduces the ability to search the Change History of issues. There is much more functionality to follow, but in this release you can search for changes to the Status field.

For example, the following will return all issues that currently have, or previously had, a status of 'In Progress':

status WAS "In Progress"

In Beta 1, support for the NOT, IN and NOT IN operators has been added.

E.g. to find issues that have never had a status of 'In Progress':

status WAS NOT "In Progress"

To find issues that currently have, or previously had, a status of 'In Progress' or 'Resolved':

status WAS IN "In Progress,Resolved"

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Revamped User Avatars

JIRA 4.3 introduces the new-look Atlassian avatars:

• User avatars are displayed as the icon for your profile, and to illustrate your comments on an issue. See the documentation on Adding a User Avatar.

We were fond of the old avatars, but think you'll agree they were looking a little dated by comparison:

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Enhancements to Quick Search

When using Quick Search to find issues with a particular version, you can now use the wildcard symbol: "*". For example, "ff:3.2*" will match any issue whose Fix For Version is:

• 3.2
• 3.2-beta
• 3.2.1
• 3.2.x

You can also find issues reported by you, another user or with no reporter, using the prefix "r:" followed by a specific reporter term such as "me", a username or "none", such that:

• "r:me" — finds issues reported by you.
• "r:samuel" — finds issues reported by the user whose username is "samuel".
• "r:none" — finds issues with no reporter.

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Improvements to Issue Links (new since EAP 5)

The 'Linked Issues' section of the 'View Issue' screen has been streamlined to make it both more compact and quicker to use. You can now delete links directly from this screen:

JIRA 4.3: a linked issue

Previously, to delete a link you needed to click the 'cog' icon (which took you to a separate screen):

JIRA 4.2: a linked issue

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Remembered Assignees

JIRA now makes it easier to assign users to issues. The top of the assignee dropdown list shows the last five people you assigned issues to, as well as the reporter of the issue and all participants involved in the issue.

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Mail Server Configuration Improvements

In JIRA 4.3, administrators can now test their mail server configuration with the "Test Connection" button.

A 'Timeout' field has also been added.

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User Email Change is now Password Protected

For enhanced security, users will now be prompted to enter their password when changing their email address.

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Support for Chrome and Safari 5 Browsers

We are very pleased to announce that Chrome and Safari 5 are supported for use with JIRA 4.3.

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REST API improvements

We have improved discoverability of issues and projects through the REST API: there is now a search resource, which can be used to search for issues using JIRA Query Language (JQL). It is also possible to obtain a list of projects in a JIRA instance. Have a look at the reference documentation to see if the REST API offers the features that you want (let us know if not).

Clients that log in through the REST API can now determine when the login has been denied due to a CAPTCHA requirement: the HTTP header X-Authentication-Denied-Reason has all the necessary information.

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