In case you missed it: In July, we renamed Enterprise releases to Long Term Support releases and expanded our security bug fix policy. We will continue to backport critical security bug fixes and now when architecturally possible we will also backport all other security bug fixes to Long Term Support releases.
G’day Jira Community!
We’re pleased to inform you that the Jira Software 8.13 and Jira Service Desk 4.13 Long Term Support (LTS) releases are now available. As a refresher, LTS releases receive backported critical security and product bug fixes, and when architecturally possible, all other security bug fixes throughout their two-year standard support window. This long-term support makes LTS releases ideal for those of you with highly complex instances who can’t perform a major feature upgrade more than once a year.
Keep reading for highlights of what we’ve shipped since the last Jira LTS releases and resources to make your upgrade a success (including how to best make use of Zero Downtime Upgrades for those of you on Data Center).
What you’re getting
We know that many of you on Jira Software 8.5 and Jira Service Desk 4.5 (the previous Jira LTS release versions) have been eager to take advantage of all the goodness we’ve been rolling out. And we don’t think you’ll be disappointed-- here are some highlights of improvements and new features we’ve released since 8.5/4.5:
Enterprise enhancements for Data Center
Performance, reliability, and scale
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Rate limiting improves instance stability, performance, and helps instances self-protect
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Cluster monitoring improvements including the ability to view the custom fields that take the longest to index and the automatic removal of stale nodes
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Optimized custom fields reduce the number of called field indexers which can negatively impact performance and indexing time
- Document-Based Replication (DBR) makes your cluster more stable and provides reliable consistency of data across each node in the cluster; changes in the index are propagated faster and more reliably between nodes, streamlining collaboration for users
Compliance and user management
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Advanced auditing provides new capabilities and more comprehensive event tracking which gives you the visibility and security-relevant digital records needed to help demonstrate compliance, strengthen security, and improve workflow
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Anonymize users with just a few clicks to stay compliant with GDPR (also available on Server)
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OpenID Connect enables seamless integration with 3rd party identity providers
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Just-in-time user provisioning (JIT provisioning) allows users to be created and updated automatically when they log in through SAML SSO or OpenID Connect (OIDC) SSO
Features galore
Agile at scale (Jira Software)
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New sprint permissions allow for more granularity and enable you to assign tasks to specific users
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Assign dates for future sprints to help you improve your sprint planning over time
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Refreshed velocity chart that shows up to 120 sprints, lets you choose a pre-defined timeframe or custom date range, shows the average velocity of your team, and has a new look-and-feel with cool features like focus that lets you zoom in on the right sprint
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Burnup charts to keep teams on track with a visual representation of a sprint’s scope and identify problems such as scope creep
Improved queues and integrations (Jira Service Desk)
General improvements
Support for modern platforms and databases
Accessibility
Helpful resources & tips
Not sure where to begin? Here are a few resources to help you prepare for your upgrade:
Reminder: You’ll need to upgrade Jira Service Desk at the same time.
Pro-tip: move to 8.13/4.13 with zero downtime* (Data Center)
If you’re running Jira Data Center in a clustered environment, we recommend you take advantage of zero downtime upgrades so your team can upgrade during whatever timeframe that works best for them, without interrupting users. Check out this guide for step-by-step instructions on how to upgrade with zero downtime.
*Zero downtime upgrade is not available when upgrading from Jira 7.x to Jira 8.x.
We hope this post helped prepare you for your upgrade (and got you excited). Feel free to share any questions or comments in the Comments section below!
