Data Center Love Month: Data Center Digest Q3 2024

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Hi there, Data Center community! Welcome to the Q3 2024 edition of the Data Center Digest.

Before we discuss what’s new and what’s coming in the Data Center products, let’s talk about Data Center swag! As part of Data Center Love Month, this post is eligible for swag.

To enter for your chance to win Data Center exclusive swag, tell us 1 of the following in the comments:

1. Are you planning your next Data Center upgrade now that some product Platform releases are available? Or are you waiting for more details on your products' next Long Term Support release?

2. Do you prefer to use dark theme or light theme?

3. What recently shipped or roadmap feature are you most excited to use?

4. Freestyle! Share any comments or feedback with us.

At this time, swag can only be sent within the US.

With that, let's get into this quarter's digest! 

Platform releases

Platform releases allow us to incorporate multiple significant changes (often called “breaking changes”) that are not compatible with previous versions. These changes establish a strong foundation for more extensive development in future releases. We’ve highlighted the biggest launches, but you can see the full details in the release notes.

Coming soon

Platform releases in the following products will be coming very soon:

• Jira Software 10.0

• Jira Service Management 10.0

• Bamboo 10.0

Shipped

Check out the release notes, hyperlinked below, to learn about the new platform benefits available in the following Data Center products:

• Bitbucket 9.0

• Confluence 9.0

• Crowd 6.0

Long Term Support (LTS) releases

As many of you know, upgrading to an LTS release provides you with all the new features shipped since the last LTS, as well as continued access to critical security, stability, data integrity, and performance fixes for the two-year support window. We encourage you to upgrade to the LTS when it becomes available to stay secure and protect yourself from vulnerabilities.

The Confluence 9.2 LTS is coming soon! Powered by the upgraded platform, Confluence 9.2 is packed with benefits to strengthen security for growing enterprises. You’ll also find powerful features that accelerate team productivity and improvements to the admin experience, including dark theme! Learn more about Confluence 9.2 here.

*The support window for Confluence 7.19 LTS has been extended from October 31st 2024 to December 13 2024. Learn more about Atlassian’s support policies here.

Recently shipped and upcoming features for admins and end-users to enjoy

These are some of the top requested recently shipped and upcoming features in the Data Center products. For a full list of recently shipped features, check the release notes for each of your Data Center products and to see a full list of features that are coming soon, visit the Data Center roadmap.

Product	Shipped	Coming soon
Jira Software	Websudo allowlist: Configure and enable your own IP address/subnet allowlist for Jira. Learn more. Oauth 2.0 Clients credentials grant flow: A new outgoing OAuth2 integration type for email authorization - the Client Credential Grant Flow (CCGF). Learn more. Amazon S3 XML Backup Storage: This feature allows for strong XML Backups (manually created or scheduled) in Amazon S3 Storage. Additionally, we added a Health check, which checks if there is any backup locally. Learn more.	Dark theme in Jira - Beta: Choose between Dark theme or Light theme. Removal of critical severity accessibility defects: Ease of use for low-vision, keyboard-only, and assistive technology users (including screen readers) has improved.”
Jira Service Management	Enhancements to Assets archiving: You can now easily restore archived objects from the Archived objects page and take advantage of the new Archive object action in Assets automation. Learn more. Optimized workload reports: Workload reports in large Jira Service Management instances either took a long time to load or resulted in timeouts as the report fetched the workload of all agents by default. To improve performance, we added filters to display only agents with assigned issues by default. Learn more.	Request Type as a setup field: Streamline the experience of submitting requests for agents and overall service delivery by utilizing the Request Type field which is now available as a Setup Field in the Global Issue Create (GIC) screen. Change Calendar: Plan changes to critical systems and minimize service disruptions with Change Calendar where you can view and schedule updates across all of your service projects.
Confluence	Estimated page read time: Easily judge how long it will take to read a page using the estimated read time displayed underneath the title of a page or blog post. Learn more. OpenSearch: Experience quicker search results and improved instance performance at scale with externalised index-management. Learn more.	Security monitoring and alerts: Admins can proactively detect potentially suspicious activity using a new alert system of emails and a central tracking hub. URL support for languages and special characters: Page titles that include non-latin or special characters generate pretty URLs in page title format. Page URLs now also include the pageId.
Bitbucket	Secure Administrator Sessions (websudo): Strengthen security with Secure Administrator Sessions (websudo), which requires administrators to re-authenticate before performing sensitive operations or accessing the Global Administration settings page. Learn more. User directory password encryption: New encryption secures plaintext external user directory passwords, such as LDAP passwords, in the database. Learn more.	Multi-line comments: Add comments, tasks, and code suggestions to specific line ranges.
Bamboo	The Bamboo 10.0 platform release will be coming soon with great new capabilities for you to enjoy!	Secure administrator sessions (websudo): Protect sensitive actions by requiring a secure administration session (websudo) in order to use administration screens. Modify build number: Modify your Bamboo build number to another number to preserve continuity of build numbers when migrating from other continuous integration systems.

Thank you for reading this quarter’s Data Center Digest!

[Stacey Hamilton]

As a Confluence admin, I'm most excited to try OpenSearch. Thanks!

[Gustavo Chaves]

Good news all around!

We usually start to plan our upgrades when a new LTS is released. We tend to avoid the ".0" release out of irrational fear, though. ;)

I'm a "light theme" person. But I have a few "dark theme" friends too.

Reading the list of new features highlighted in the article I became excited about Confluence's URL support for languages and special characters. Since Portuguese is our native language, this will allow us to have pretty URLs for everything. Currently, half of our pages have accents in their titles...

Thanks!

[Ryan Goodwin]

1. Waiting for LTS for both Jira and Confluence before upgrading. 
2. Light theme, but the dark side is tempting :)
3. Websudo allow lists. 
4. I wish there was more talk about data center at TEAM 24. On-prem still matters!

[Kristin Lyons]

Are you planning your next Data Center upgrade now that some product Platform releases are available? Or are you waiting for more details on your products' next Long Term Support release?

We just upgraded to Jira 9.12.10, we will probably stay on this until we get closer to EoL for this version.  However, I am excited for dark mode when it's available to us!

[Tim Howard]

1. Waiting until the next LTS version for both Confluence and JIra before upgrading.
2. I'm a fan of the light, but use dark mode almost everywhere else.
3. S3 backup storage and S3 storage use in general.
4. I'm happy to see some Data center love, but wish more Assets and Automation features would make it from Cloud to DC.

[William Frank Merlock]

Accessibility improvements (including Dark Mode) are huge for us.  We have a significant user base that really requires these features and will be very happy for the improvements!

Security improvements are always extremely welcome, password encryption doubly so. 

It was explicitly listed above, but any changes to make the administration of the various applications more consistent with each other will be a big help to us.

We will be waiting for LTS before we upgrade.

[IHsuan Wu]

1. We just upgraded to the latest LTS, will wait until the next release. 
2. I love dark mode for everything!
3. OpenSearch, so we can quickly point the article to users.
4. I would like to see more focus on Jira Assets features from cloud become available for DC!

[Jeanne Howe]

1. We are waiting for the next LTS version for both Confluence and JIra before upgrading.

[Anca Cristescu]

Hello from a 99% noob here :-)

I'm doing as much as possible in a dark tone, now helping my team to move from server to Data Center.

I think Open Search will be their first on the list to test.

[Steve Thilker]

1. Currently sticking with LTS, but would like to move towards staying a bit more current

2. Starting to use dark mode more.

3. The JSM Change Calendar looks interesting.

4. Love seeing DC continuing to get attention.

[Opher Lichter]

Thanks for the love! We would love to see more features ported to DC from cloud - as well as some of the more long-lived Enterprise issues being addressed soon. 

[Stephen Garber]

Absolutely waiting for the LTS.
Atlassian has been doing an outstanding job ensuring bugs and vulnerabilities are properly addressed in the LTS app versions.

[Nicole Blinsmon]

Our team is reviewing the new features for the upgrade to be prepared for the next LTS release. There are so exciting advancement and infrastructure items we need to ensure we are prepared for. Hooray for moving forward and adding new features 🎉