Upgraded from 6.3 to 7.2.7 impact change ?

Question

Hello,

We had some upgrade in the past that were done from 6.3.10 to 7.2.7 directly for Jira software without passing by 7.0 software.

Everywhere on atlassian they say to pass by 7.0 that we now do but we didn't see the 'task upgrade list' that were removed in 7.1 + so that we can fix our instance that were upgrade directly to 7.2.7.

Thanks

Martin

Martin Poirier · Answer

OK thanks for the explanation.  Good that we didn't upgrade our jira service desk yet.  We had already the lastest Jira Agile in Jira 6.3.10 so we haven't seen a problem in 7.2.7.

Andy Heinzer · Answer

Hi Martin,

Could you let me know where you found information that indicates to skip the 7.0.x upgrade?   I am interested to see if we have any such documentation.

Atlassian has documented in articles such as Skipping major versions when upgrading Jira that Jira server versions should plan to upgrade to a 7.0.x version when coming from any previous versions.

But that said, it is not 100% certain that an upgrade is impossible between the versions you mentioned.  Are you certain your version of Jira is actually broken in some way?  It is possible that there is no need to do anything else in your situation.   Only if you are seeing specific broken functionality is there cause to be concerned.

The problem tends to come in regards to the plugins/add-ons/apps that work with Jira might also need to update their data to specific versions.  This is true of both Jira Software and Jira Service Desk.

Jira Agile/Jira Software upgrade requirements:

So when you were running Jira 6.3.x, where you also running the Jira Agile plugin?   If you were also running Jira Agile (Jira Software) it depends what version of Jira Agile your plugin was at before this upgrade to Jira 7.2.x.  The Jira Agile versions do not perfectly correspond to the Jira Server versions, so it is possible you were running a newer version such as 6.6.80.  If you were running a version of Jira Agile before 6.4.x, then you cannot upgrade to a version of Jira Software 7.1.10 or higher in a single upgrade.  If you did, you would see an error in the logs as mentioned in the KB:  This version of JIRA Agile requires a minimum build number of #45 in order to proceed.  If that happens, that KB does have a work-around where you can continue without having to revert or downgrade.  However if you were running any newer Jira Agile version such as 6.6.xx.x or 6.7.xx, then you can actually upgrade to these 7.2.x versions successfully.  If you never had Jira Agile installed on that older instance, you can still upgrade without this specific problem.

Jira Service Desk upgrade requirements:

The problem is more complex for Jira Service Desk.   If you have ever installed Jira Service Desk (even as a trial) you need to make sure that you upgrade Jira first to a version including or between 7.0.0 and 7.1.10.  This is because you need to make sure that you can also install a compatible JSD version in between there that can upgrade that old Service Desk data correctly.   That would be any JSD version 3.0.0 up to and including 3.1.10.  This also requires you to make sure you have a valid license for JSD activated or else the upgrade tasks for that plugin do not work.  But you can use an eval license generated from https://my.atlassian.com .   If you skip these versions, then when trying to go to Jira/JSD versions 7.2.x/3.2.x or higher you can encounter a problem where Service Desk data cannot be upgraded.  In that case the KB After upgrading to JIRA Service Desk 3.2.x or greater, Service Desk project's navigation bar shows "Unable to render element due to an error"  would apply.  That KB explains that if you encounter this specific scenario you would have to either revert the upgrade or downgrade to a version such as 7.1.9/3.1.9 in order to make sure that you can upgrade that Service Desk data.

If you never have used Jira Service Desk though, you don't have to worry about this.

Atlassian has specifically recommended going to these 7.0.x versions and then making sure that you update all the plugins/add-ons that you need to use with Jira on this version.  This is because 7.0 was a major change to both Jira and the plugin architecture.   If you don't do this step, it is possible that one or more of your plugins won't be able to update the data that specifically pertains to that plugin.  This goes for both Atlassian and non-Atlassian plugins.