February update: the latest bug fixes, product improvements, and more for Server and Data Center
G’day Atlassian Community!
Michael Andreacchio here. We’ve been working hard to continuously improve the Atlassian products you know and love. Today, I’m excited to share some of the most impactful bugs, suggestions, and product improvements we delivered over the last six months. And in case you missed it, I also want to highlight a couple of other recent updates: 1) our commitment to modern database support, and 2) two new public issue trackers for Confluence that will make it easy for you to see what we’re working on and what we’ve shipped.
At Atlassian, we’re all about teams and we consider you to be an important part of ours. In addition to giving you an update on these improvements, we hope this post shows you what a big role your feedback and involvement play into our work. Without further ado, let’s dive in!
Recently-shipped product improvements
Whether you’re reporting bugs, suggesting improvements, or commenting in Community Posts, we’ve been listening. We take your feedback seriously and have shipped hundreds of product improvements, largely influenced by you. Check out some of the latest feature additions and bug fixes for Jira Software, Bitbucket, Jira Service Desk, and Confluence below.
Over the last six months, we shipped over 314 bug fixes and 52 feature suggestions. We’ve been heavily investing in the quality of Jira and are pleased to share that we’ve more than DOUBLED the number of votes addressed between Enterprise releases by satisfying 10,988 customer votes between 7.13 and 8.5 (compared to 4,981 votes between 7.6 and 7.13). Here are some recent product improvements we’d like to highlight:
- Burnup charts: In 8.6, we brought burnup charts to Server to help keep your teams on track with a visual representation of a sprint’s scope and identify problems such as scope creep or a deviation from the planned project path. You can find your team's burnup chart in the Reports section together with other reports.
- Unique references for attachments of the same name: In 8.6, we fixed a bug that stemmed from attaching files with the same name. Now, if you mention an attachment in a comment, it should link to the right attachment, even if other attachments are uploaded with the same name. We’re not gonna lie- this one was bugging us too!
- UPM improvements: There were several issues that caused huge performance degradation in large Jira instances when installing or updating apps. In 8.2, we made changes to the UPM plugin that have reduced downtime significantly. For example, our internal tests show time decreases of 95% for UPM upgrades.
- External links open in a new tab (personal settings): As of 8.4, you do not need to right-click every time you want an external link that's added to a Jira issue to open in a new tab in your browser. We've made this option default for external links. However, if you like all links to open in the same tab, you can easily change this in YourUserProfile > Profile > Preferences > External links.
- Cluster monitoring (Data Center): In 8.6, we extended the capabilities of the Atlassian Cluster Monitoring plugin that was already bundled with Confluence and Crowd to monitor Jira clusters as well. To see the clustering information, go to Jira Administration > System > Clustering. To drill-down and see runtime and system information, click More for a specific node.
- Rate limiting (Data Center): As of 8.6, admins can control how many REST API requests automations and scripts can make, and how often they can make them. This means increased performance and team productivity (and hopefully for admins, more sleep too). Learn more.
Critical bug fixes will also be backported to the latest Enterprise release (8.5).
We shipped over 218 bug fixes and 42 feature suggestions as we continue to invest in the future of Confluence. We’d like to feature a few impactful product updates shipped over the last six months:
- File editing improvements: In 7.3, we overhauled Companion (the app that enables you to edit any file type in Confluence). Updates include support for Companion in more environments (such as session-based virtual desktops, proxies and secure infrastructure), a new task window that makes it easier to upload and view updated files, improvements to the installation flow (such as updated messaging) to make the installation process easier, and better compliance with internal security policies. For more information on how these and other updates will make it easier for you to work with files, check out this post.
- Automatic Synchrony data cleanup: If you have a particularly busy Confluence site, you may have noticed that your database has gained a bit of weight since the introduction of collaborative editing. As of Confluence 7.0, we provide two scheduled jobs for keeping Synchrony data under control: 1) an automatic soft data eviction to keep your database tables from growing too large over time, and 2) a hard data eviction job that you can use when you need to remove data more aggressively. See How to remove Synchrony data to learn more about how these new jobs work.
- Fix to CPU/Memory usage with PPTX files: Say goodbye to spiked CPU/memory usage when trying to convert large PowerPoint files! To reduce instances of high CPU/memory usage when converting PowerPoints, we upgraded Apose Slides InterruptMonitor in 7.0.1.
- Change history macro: Previously, this macro showed the entire page history. Now, as of 7.1.0, you have the option to limit the number of versions that display in the macro.
- Content by label macro: The content by label macro is used to show a list of pages that match a particular label and other search criteria. In 7.1.0, you can now choose to exclude the current page (the one the macro lives on) from the list, even if it matches your search.
- CDN support (Data Center): In 7.0, we introduced Content Delivery Network (CDN) support to ease load time frustration for distributed teams. Our new CDN for Data Center feature allows you to serve static assets (such as JavaScript, CSS, and fonts) from servers closer to your users, resulting in faster page load times. See Use a CDN with Atlassian Data Center applications for more info on how using a CDN might help your team.
These improvements are all included in the latest Enterprise release (7.4) and other critical bug fixes will be backported.
We’ve been hard at work to continuously improve the developer experience and provide a seamless code to deployment workflow. In the last six months, we shipped over 69 bug fixes and 31 feature suggestions. Here are some recent updates and functionality that are especially high-impact:
- Fix for Pull Requests refs on re-open: As of 6.8, Pull Request refs are now recreated on re-open. This means declining and reopening pull requests will no longer hold up your automation or pipelines.
- Improved file search: As of Bitbucket Server 6.7, we’ve updated our file search by introducing a new search modifier path: and updating how search results are prioritized. Learn more about it on Search for code in Bitbucket Server.
- Ability to link Jira and Bitbucket Server projects: We wanted to make it easier to link projects between Bitbucket Server and other Atlassian applications to save you time and prevent mistakes. So, in 6.6 we added the ability to link Jira and Bitbucket Server projects via Project Links.
- Announcement banner: In Bitbucket Server 6.6 we added an announcement banner feature that admins can use to communicate important information to users, like scheduled downtime, upcoming maintenance periods, etc.
- Smart Mirror updates (Data Center): In addition to fixing a bothersome bug in which any changes to the default master would block cloning repos, with Bitbucket Data Center 6.7, we have also enhanced Smart Mirroring to support Mirror farms (cluster/group of mirrors). This page walks you through how to install and configure a mirror farm, which allows you to set up a cluster of mirrors to cover the load in a local region.
- Rate limiting (Data Center): As of 6.6, admins can control how many HTTP requests (e.g. REST API requests) automations and scripts can make, and how often they can make them, meaning increased performance and team productivity (and hopefully for admins, more sleep too). See how to get started.
These improvements are all included in the Enterprise release (6.10) and other critical bug fixes will be backported.
We shipped over 94 bug fixes and 8 feature suggestions in the last six months. We’ve highlighted a few high impact updates here that will help agents deliver exceptional service experiences:
- Limiting threads to boost performance: Until 4.3, Jira Service Desk used an unbounded thread pool to process SLA events asynchronously. Now, we've bounded the number of threads in the pool to control the impact that high traffic has on your experience. This is one of many changes we'll be making to ensure Jira Service Desk is a lean, mean, and stable ITSM machine.
- Enhanced knowledge base reports: You can now drill down into the data to learn which articles were widely used and the types of requests they’ve helped solve. Information like this, available in 4.2, lets your agents know which troubleshooting guides to write more (or less) of. Read Setting up service desk reports to learn what reports are at your fingertips.
- Knowledge base fix with Confluence log-ins: As of 4.6, a Confluence log-in is no longer needed to view knowledge base articles.
- Keeping your requests private: As of 4.7, any new request created in the customer portal will be set to private by default (you can still easily share them by choosing your organization in the drop-down menu when raising a request). As for requests raised over email, we created a new option in the Jira Service Desk configuration to let you choose — keep them private or share away with your customers. Learn more.
- Default language fix: In 4.5, we squished a pesky bug that prevented you from creating an IT Service Desk project if the default language was set to Russian or German (Switzerland).
Critical bug fixes will also be backported to the latest Enterprise release (4.5).
We’re expanding our supported databases and versions
We’ve heard from you how important it is that we support newer database versions. To address this feedback, the Server and Data Center teams have focused on adding support for PostgreSQL 10 and PostgreSQL 11, as well as Oracle 19c. For some products, this support has already been announced, for others, it will be added in one of the upcoming releases. We’ve also prioritized adding support for MySQL 8 in Jira and Confluence Server and Data Center and you can expect it coming within the next six to nine months.
- For Jira Server & Data Center we recently added: Oracle 18c and Oracle 19c in 8.4, PostgreSQL 10 and PostgreSQL 11 in 8.6 and 8.7, as well as Amazon Aurora for Data Center. We’ll also be backporting PostgreSQL 10 to the 8.5 Enterprise release.
- For Confluence Server & Data Center we recently added: Java 11 support in 7.1, MySQL 8 in 7.2, and Oracle 19c and PostgreSQL 10 in 7.3.
- For Bitbucket Server & Data Center we recently added: Amazon Aurora (Data Center only), and Oracle 18c and 19c in 6.7.
For more details regarding changes to database support for Server and Data Center, check out this post.
Two new dashboards for Confluence Server and Data Center are here
Last year, we expanded our Server and Data Center public issue trackers beyond Jira Software by releasing new visibility dashboards for Jira Service Desk and Bitbucket. We were thrilled to hear your positive feedback and this year, we decided to share the dashboard love with Confluence.
1) The Confluence Server and Data Center: recently resolved issues dashboard
The Confluence Server and Data Center: recently resolved issues dashboard displays which bugs and feature suggestions have been resolved within the last six months, as well as which version of Confluence they were shipped in. The dashboard includes:
- Confluence bugs and feature suggestions resolved within the last six months
- Issues resolved in the last six months that you watched or voted for
- Issues resolved between the latest Enterprise releases
2) The Confluence Server and Data Center Bug Fix Board
The Confluence Server and Data Center Bug Fix Board includes the following key information to help you better manage your instance and plan upgrades:
- Bugs that have been prioritized and are currently being worked on
- Issues or feature suggestions that have been prioritized for development through a project/theme of work
- Version the fix will be shipped in so you can track when the update will be available.
To learn more about what’s on this dashboard, check out this Community post.
As a reminder, here are all the public dashboards you can follow along with recent and upcoming work:
Jira Software
- Jira Server and Data Center: current work and future plans
- Jira Server and Data Center: recently resolved issues
- Jira Server and Data Center Bug Fix Board
Confluence (as mentioned above)
- Confluence Server and Data Center: recently resolved issues
- Confluence Server and Data Center Bug Fix Board
Bitbucket
- Bitbucket Server and Data Center: recently resolved issues
- Bitbucket Server and Data Center bug fix kanban board
Jira Service Desk
- Jira Service Desk Server and Data Center: recently resolved issues
- Jira Service Desk Server and Data Center: bug fix kanban board
Pro-tip: You can add any of these dashboards to your favorites by clicking through to Popular Dashboards and marking the star next to the dashboard name.
Thank you for your continued feedback and passion for our products- we can’t do what we do without you! As always, we welcome your feedback- please share your thoughts, comments, and questions below.
Cheers!
Michael
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