Is Jira Cloud Being Actively Developed ?

[Marcus O_Brien]

Hi, 

I've worked with Jira before in several companies, and it did the job - although isn't liked by many people. Now my demands are different in this job, I need fields that are configurable (visible or not/mandatory if visible), it seems there is no way to do this basic feature, and no plug ins that support this on the cloud either (there was one but runs on server). 

I see an feature request raised 4 years ago - over 200 people want it - no action at all - not planned, in progress, in fact no comment from Atlassian. I ask for support and get told to watch this issue - probably not going to get done, but thats my only hope. So I will never be able to dynamically configure fields etc

I look at the release notes for the last few releases of jira server - cant see any for cloud, 20 bug fixes, some waffle on security, but no new features, oh I forgot you can now react with emojis to comments, Is anyone from Atlassian working on new features ? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Jira Cloud is probably the most actively developed product Atlassian has.  There's a new release around every 6 weeks (although the frequency is quite variable)

It has a lot of ways of making fields visible, hidden, optional or mandatory and even using different displays, in the company-managed (classic) projects, with team-managed projects having a more simple binary "is field here" option.

I can't speak much more on this though, you've said "fields are configurable", but not quite what you want from that (that Jira does not already do) and waved at a feature request without saying which one it is or what it is for.  This leaves me not knowing what you're actually looking for.

For release notes, they're not really that applicable to Cloud, given that it's a remote service rather than software you run for yourself, and you have no choice about what gets deployed.  Also any change takes a while to propogate across the estate, so your Cloud could well be weeks ahead or behind of mine.  But Atlassian does do updates - https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/blog is a place to watch for change.

[Marcus O_Brien]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. My need is to have fields visible or not based on the selection of another field on the same screen. For example on a create bug screen, the first top field would be  

Source of Bug 

  Customer

  Failed Test

So source of bug has 2 options. If someone selects customer, then on the same screen "Customer Name"  appears, otherwise for Failed Test, "Name of Failed Test" appears. Whatever appears would be mandatory to complete and fill in (so not mandatory in backend database - just mandatory for the UI to show the Accept/Open/Create/Ok button (whatever it is to actually create a bug report).

The plugin that did this was ScriptRunner, but it doesnt support that one feature on the cloud, only on server.

Also Proforma allows you to create UI, but its not on the actual Jira its a layer above - a front end to jira

The ticket that has been waiting for some feedback for 3 years is here

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-71000 

Also there is this one from 5 years ago

 https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDCLOUD-3457

Thanks

[Marcus O_Brien]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- - Actually another question - are you saying that on jira cloud there is no way to check what features your instance has ? Can you explain how that works, are they just adding new features without periodically "releasing", and then those features roll around getting published on production instances ?

Thanks

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, yes, you're absolutely right in your explanations of "My need is to have fields visible or not based on the selection of another field on the same screen" - Cloud doesn't do that, not even with apps like Scriptrunner (yet.  The products team are pushing Atlassian to build stuff that would allow them to do Behaviours for Cloud).  The acquisition of Thinktilt might have some effect too, but I don't want to guess out loud where that's going.

Anyway

>are you saying that on jira cloud there is no way to check what features your instance has ?

Not quite.  You can always check, by trying stuff.  Not ideal, I subscribe to the release bot stuff so I get an email to skim every couple of weeks instead.

>Can you explain how that works, are they just adding new features without periodically "releasing", and then those features roll around getting published on production instances ?

Pretty much.  Cloud developers write shiny thing or fix or update something, it gets through testing and approved, a new version of Cloud goes out and is gradually rolled out across all the Cloud sites over a couple of weeks.

Premium and Enterprise subscribers can ask for a hold on these, but it's only a couple more weeks leeway.  It's generally why I answer "what version of Cloud am I on" with "It doesn't matter, just put "latest" in the box" - it's going to be latest within at most 8 weeks.

[Marcus O_Brien]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- - That's great to know, thanks for you responses. It's also great to know I haven't missed anything with what I was trying to achieve in terms of dynamic displaying of fields, I was worried I'd missed a way to do it. I suppose the way to do it with the current tech, is to have different issue types you create, so I am leaning this way, customer issues would be a bug in a different project - so I can put what I want on those. For code inspection we always must fix before merging if its code that is in the diff/changed, but for other things noticed at that time (code that is not in the diff)- these things we would refactor and could be "improvements" not bugs - so again I could put what I want on those. That just leaves bugs from a failed test, and bugs from a bench run /normal usage - these can be made to look almost the same - so I can make the intersection set of fields mandatory. It's just a question of how you define a Bug in a project, and by tightening the definition, and then using other types or projects for other things one can design a better solution. One where more fields are relevant and therefore mandatory - leading to a better quality creation action on bug reporting.