new (and bad) cross project release creation in Porfolio 3.1

[tùng ơi]

i'm trying Portfolio 3.1 on Jira 8.0.2

as per instruction here How to create a cross-project release here for Portfolio 3.1 on Jira Server:

1. Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
2. Click the  Releases tab to display the releases section below the timeline.
3. Click + Create release.
4. Give the cross-project release a name.
5. Select Cross-project release for the release type.
6. Click the project menu, then select the projects that will be sharing the release.

"When you create a cross-project release and commit it to Jira, the release will be transformed into a regular release in each of the Jira projects that are part of the cross-project release." - as instructed in the link above."

I check with my Portfolio 3.1 on Jira 8 and it's totally different (in the bad way) and there's nothing like instruction above. then I check with Portfolio 2.23.0 on Jira 7 and it turns out that the instruction above (for Portfolio 3.1) actually the same feature as Portfolio 2.23.0 on Jira 7. it means that the instruction above just works for Portfolio 2.23.0 , not for Portfolio 3.1.

I find that funtion as intruction and works with Portfolio 2.23 is perfect, and the real function of Portfolio 3.1 is terrible as detailed below:

- there is a straight link to Cross-project releases. not the general link to create release and then you have the option to choose the Cross-project releases type (as guided)

- the most terrible thing (not as instructed, not as Portfolio 2.23) is "When you create a cross-project release and commit it to Jira, the release will be transformed into a regular release in each of the Jira projects that are part of the cross-project release." - as instructed in the link above". Thing in 3.1 is different. You cannot create CPR on its own. you have to create release in each specific projects in advance, and then you have choose each project-specific release to the CPR you are creating. even you cannot creat CPR :(  if you don't have project-specific release in advance.

the good logic of CPR is exacly like instructed "When you create a cross-project release and commit it to Jira, the release will be transformed into a regular release in each of the Jira projects that are part of the cross-project release." 

but thing in 3.1 is opposite - up side down - (in the bad way - ): you have to manually create project specific releases (for example 100 times for 100 projects) and then you go to creating CPR and manually add 100 project specific releases to that RPC. that's terrible.

is there anything that i'm wrong here?

could any one please help me with information on this?

regards,

[samrobertsofficial]

Hi @tùng ơi I can definitely see your passion about this topic. We definitely want to make it easier to create multiple releases at once (like it was before). Portfolio for Jira should help you do all your planning at scale, and in this case our solution wasn't perfect. When you create CPR's in your Portfolio plan do you want to create 1 for every single project that is included in the plan, or only some of them? I'll make sure I capture this feedback and add it to our backlog.

I know this is not an ideal solution but: in the meantime one workaround you can do is disable the new experience, create the cprs the old way, then turn it on again, and use it this way. 

[tùng ơi]

hi @samrobertsofficial 

thank for your prompt reply. i'm quite frustrated with this "dowgraded feature" in new version of Portfolio 3.0. new feature should be better, not worse. in this topic, the feature of the old version is much better.

our user case is like this:

- we are not a software company so actually we do not have "software version/ release". but your design of Jira Software is flexible enough (i like it alot) and we can re-purpose so many software feature for business operation purposes in my company. in this case, we use version and release to manage monthly plan & reports - version as plan at the beginning of the month, and release as a report at the end of the month.

- for monthly plans and reports, we just have fixed 12 months of the year, for all the departments, all the projects, all the Portfolio plan. that why we need to create 12 CPRs to represent 12 months of the year. and they will be applied to all projects in Jira. and in the old Portfolio version, it's supposed that it will automatically create project-specific plans and they are aligned/ included in the corresponding monthly CPR.

about your work around

i don't know how to disable the new CPR. where to disable/ enable it?

or what you means is that disabling the whole new portfolio improved planning interface (switch to old-and-frustrated automatic scheduling)? and it will bring back the old CPR feature?

and then add CPR the old ways. and then switch back to improved planning interface?

[samrobertsofficial]

I understand the old way of doing it is more useful for you. We need to make it easy to create new releases in bulk, not just add existing ones to a plan. 

Yes the workaround is the second thing you suggested.  Disable new planning experience in the plan, create the CPR in the old interface, then enable it again.

[tùng ơi]

thanks @samrobertsofficial  for your details.

i've tried the work around you mentioned and it works. at least i can put in into action now for assessment of this feature.

i do hope that the coming version of Portfolio can bring back the old - good CPRs.

btw, can i ask something more? when we work around like that (swtich to old interface to create CPR and then switch back to new interface to work), are there any difference/ effects to CPRs and linked project-specific releases?

and one more thing, what will happen, what is relationship between CPR and linked project-specific releases. for example:

- if i release the CPR, what will happen with linked project-specific releases? and are there any conditions from linked project-specific releases so that i can release the CPR

- if i release one project-specific release that's linked to a CPR, what will happen to the CPR and are there any conditions from the CPR so that i can release one/ all of the linked project-specific releases

i spent a lot of time search for atlassian document about that one more thing, but found no information about the the connection between CPR and project-specific releases. could you please help me on this or give me a instruction link for this?

thank you

[samrobertsofficial]

@tùng ơi there shouldn't be any differences or effects to CPR using the workaround.

CPR's at the moment behave like folders that group related releases together. The intended use case was you might have different teams (e.g. web, android, ios) that all have shared milestones or releases, and you want to keep track of them together. In Jira a release can only belong to a specific project, so Portfolio for Jira tries to help manage this. 

The use case you have with creating a CPR for every month of the year, and associating it with every single project is new for us, and as I've mentioned - we have some work to do to make it work better at scale. There could be alternate ways of generating these reports you need, although I can't suggest anything in particular. 

Q1: At the moment there is no such thing as 'releasing' the CPR. If you need to release 100 releases at once, you probably will need to use the Jira api to do this. There is an older community post about this (5 years old, so there might be newer information) https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Questions/Bulk-Update-of-Versions-to-quot-Released-quot/qaq-p/270453 

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Bulk-Fix-Version-Release/qaq-p/366399

Q2: Nothing will happen to the CPR when you release a project-release. CPR's don't have any state of "Released" or "Unreleased", think of them more like folders. 

[tùng ơi]

hi @samrobertsofficial 

thank you for the information

now i know that CPR just acts like folder to group project releases.

it’d be wonderful if in the coming time atlassian can put more meaningful functionality to CPR with bi-direction effects and relationship between CPR and project release.

i think that my use case of a CPR to connect diffrerent projects from diffrerent departments (sale, marketing...) for one month plan is not different from your case of group different teams (ios, android, web) for one version.

when the logics and functionalities is natural enough, it can be used flexibly im many cases.

i’ve spending immense time to customize and apply jira logics to different business use cases and i find that jira’s logics is amazingly natural.

if you want to discuss more with me about this, i’d be more than happy to do so.

regards

[samrobertsofficial]

@tùng ơi thanks for the extra context. The best way to help is to submit a 'give feedback' button in the top right of your Portfolio plan. Then, if you want, you can choose to include your email address which will allow us to contact you at some point in the future about that topic. If you have any other feedback about Portfolio apart from the cross-project releases topic we have already discussed, please submit them. We read and review every piece that comes in, but we don't always have time to respond to every one of them. 

[tùng ơi]

"New cross-project release

Use cross-project releases to group multiple releases across different Jira projects. This helps you organize and align the dates of related releases."

for Portfolio 3.0, CPR is used only for grouping existing release already created manually from each project.

it's no long as useful as version 2.26 and before when you can create a CPR and it will automatically add releases to all projects that are included in that CPR.

[Rhys Christian]

Hey @tùng ơi ,

I'm a PM on Portfolio for Jira Server.

We've been designing a solution for implementing this feature to quickly create project releases when you create a CPR in Portfolio 3.0.

We'd be interested to have a quick call with you so we can validate whether our solution resolves your needs for this.
If you're interested in sharing your thoughts on our design can you please reach out to me at rchristian@atlassian.com?

Cheers,

[Jordan Janis]

Hi,

Just my two cents.... this is a MAJOR issue for us.  In the past I would use the CPR functionality to create a CPR, include all projects in the plan, and then commit those to Jira.  Our org has 50-odd teams over 30+ projects each with separate admins.  This mechanism was the perfect way to ensure the same fixVersion was created in each project.  Even if team were not using Portfolio for their planning (which is often the case, unfortunately).

With the new interface this it is no longer possible to include all projects in the CPR.  This implies that someone would need to create a release for each of the 30-something projects.  It essentially makes the feature useless for us since, if we're just going to create 30-odd releases, one in each project, we might as well do it directly in the project's Releases tab and not use Portfolio for this purpose at all.

I'd be happy to share my thoughts on this if you're interested.

Regards,

-jj

[munish_arora]

How is this solved? It doesn't show up in fix version and neither gets created as individual project release. earlier it used to happen by itself when committing.