Announcing the next Jira / JSM Long Term Support release

[#1]

We know that many of you have been awaiting the next LTS release for Jira Software / Jira Service Management.

To help you plan the upgrading in advance, we want to let you know that Jira Software 9.4 and Jira Service Management 5.4 will be our next LTS releases (planned for Q4 calendar year '22). If you plan to upgrade only once this year, we recommend moving to Jira Software 9.4 and Jira Service Management 5.4 when they become available.

What you should expect

Jira Software 9.4 and Jira Service Management 5.4 will be the first LTS releases on their new respective platforms allowing your teams to scale responsibly and benefit from an array of features including, but not limited to:

• Enhanced security (Jira Software & Jira Service Management)

  • Platform 6 in Jira Software 9.0 and Jira Service Management 5.0 upgrades our stack of third-party dependencies and resolves technical debts.

  • XSRF protection improvements keep your instance(s) secure.

  • Restricted anonymous access to REST endpoints ensures that you retain control over API endpoints.

• Optimized performance (Jira Software & Jira Service Management)

  • Safeguards for comments ensure that the number of comments on an issue doesn’t slow the page loading.

  • Deferred scripts ensure faster rendering of pages by allowing certain page assets to load after the page itself has loaded.

  • Issue view improvements enhance the issue view experience, the time needed to create comments, edit issues, how you view the dashboard, and more.

  • Guardrails — our product-based documentation and strategic recommendations — are designed to educate and help you avoid reaching a tipping point at which your instance might start to experience performance impacts.

• Automation for Jira integration (Jira Software & Jira Service Management)

  • Automation for Jira is a powerful app that lets you focus on the work that matters, removing the need to perform manual, repetitive tasks by allowing your teams to automate their processes and workflows. Using the simple rule builder, you can configure automation rules to handle even the most complex scenarios.

• Faster and more accurate SLAs calculation (Jira Service Management)

  • Issue history-based calculation

    • The issue history-based calculation will be used for newly created issues only at this stage. Old issues that have ongoing SLAs will continue to be handled by the old events-based calculation method.

  • SLA recalculation made easy

    • You can now recalculate your SLAs for an issue directly from the issue view. This way, when the data in your issue has changed or you want to make sure it’s correct, you can confirm it yourself without reaching out to support.

  • Multi-threaded processing

    • We’ve added a new SLA configuration setting that allows you to select the off-thread processing mode.

• Improved accessibility (Jira Service Management)

  • We’re continuing our improvements to the UI and accessibility of Insight Asset Management.

• Connect to cloud products with secure application tunnels (Jira Software & Jira Service Management)

  • Integrating Atlassian Cloud and self-managed (Data Center and Server) products through application links requires opening your network for incoming connections, which isn’t something everyone can do. To solve this problem, we’re now introducing application tunnels.

And there’s more! Check out our release notes to get the full list of features incoming:

• Jira Software 9.0.x release notes | Atlassian Support | Atlassian Documentation

• Jira Service Management 5.0.x release notes | Atlassian Support | Atlassian Documentation

Additionally, your teams can take advantage of all the features we've released since 9.0/5.0, as well as the hundreds of bug fixes and security improvements that will be shipped. Check out the Data Center roadmap | Atlassian to learn more about what’s coming.

As a reminder for those of you who are currently on Jira Software 8.13 or Jira Service Management 4.13, the end of life (EOL) for these versions is November 8th 2022.

If you work with a Technical Account Manager or Premier Support, consult your contact for a recommendation based on your environment and upgrade cadence. Learn more about our Long Term Support releases.

Best,

The Jira Team

[Vickey Palzor Lepcha]

For the following point, I have a query.

• Restricted anonymous access to REST endpoints ensures that you retain control over API endpoints.

Some days back I implemented rate limiting in JIRA . As soon as I implemented , it started blocking an anonymous call. I thought it was a good thing that it detected api and that I could block, but after some days I realized that my Confluence User Directory stopped synchronizing successfully.

My JIRA works as User Directory for my Confluence. Then when I removed data limiting for the anonymous api call, Confluence user sync restored.

Is the above enhancement with the new LTS Release something to worry about when my Confluence syncs users from JIRA ?

[Rachel Purpel]

I don't see OAuth 2.0 mentioned here, but according to the 8.22 release notes (https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftware/jira-software-8-22-x-release-notes-1115656979.html), it should be included.

Please clarify!

[Andrzej Kotas]

Hey @Vickey Palzor Lepcha

to clarify on the Restricted anonymous access to REST endpoints ensures that you retain control over API endpoints.

Jira 9.0 restricts anonymous access to the following REST API endpoints:

• /rest/api/2/issueLinkType

• /rest/api/2/priority

• /rest/api/2/projectCategory

• /rest/api/2/resolution

• /rest/api/2/status

• /rest/api/2/statuscategory

• /rest/api/2/projectvalidate/key?key=

• /rest/api/2/jql/autocompletedata/

• /rest/api/latest/avatar/project/system

• /rest/api/2/field

• /rest/api/2/screens

• /rest/api/1.0/issues/<issueId>/ActionsAndOperations

Anonymous users attempting to perform GET requests on the listed endpoints will receive a “401 Unauthorized” response code.

[Andrzej Kotas]

Hi @Rachel Purpel , the list above lists only few of functionalities that Jira 9.0 / JSM 5.0 brings, it's not all that is in the 9.0 / 5.0 or previous releases 8.21 or 8.22. 

As for functionalities from 8.22 -> OAuth 2.0, yes these will be part of Jira Software 9.4 and Jira Service Management 5.4. All of the functionalities released within and after 8.21 / 4.21 will be part of the next LTS. 

[Vickey Palzor Lepcha]

@Andrzej Kotas  Thank you.

[Ben Robbins]

Has the EoF date been changed recently for v8.13? Our server states:

The End of Life date for JIRA version 8.13 is 07-Oct-2022. To ensure you're still fully supported, you should upgrade before this date.

[DavidGrubeschitsch]

Hello, 

has the LTS release date already been announced? Is there a timeline when we can anticipate the new LTS for JSM?

Best Regards,

David

[Andrzej Kotas]

@DavidGrubeschitsch Both Jira Software 9.4 and Jira Service Management 5.4 will be our next LTS releases. They are coming this quarter. We've just released the 9.4 / 5.4 EAP last week, check out for more details -> https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/download-eap

[John Dunkelberg]

@Andrzej Kotas - heads up that the Release notes link for 9.4 on that page are 404s.

[Andrzej Kotas]

thanks for catching that @John Dunkelberg we'll get that fixed asap. 

In mean time 

https://community.developer.atlassian.com/t/jira-9-4-long-term-support-eap-released/62906/3 

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiracore/preparing-for-jira-9-4-1167748774.html 

[MadelineBarr]

Jira Software 8.13 or Jira Service Management 4.13, reached EOL on November 8th 2022. Is there any updates on when 9.4 and 5.4 are going to be released?

[Andrzej Kotas]

@MadelineBarr Hey, we're actively working on it atm, squashing some last minute finds. We've just released the RC  https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/download-eap and will release public version soon. 

[Filipi Lima]

Hi, folks! Jira Software 9.4.0 and Jira Service Management 5.4.0 have been released!

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftware/jira-software-9-4-x-release-notes-1178869757.html

Cheers!