BigPicture Plugin for JIRA 6.1.1

[Chris Melching]

Greetings!  We have yet to upgrade our on-site server to JIRA 7, but I'm very interested in trial testing the BigPicture Plugin immediately.  Should I be able to install an older version of BigPicture, and then upgrade it once we have upgraded our JIRA server to 7?  Our team is currently running 6.1.1

Thank you!
Chris Melching 

[Chris Melching · Accepted solution]

Hi @Matthew Jagiello,

Thanks so much for your answer and for the recommendations. Before I received your response, our team had already installed BigPicture build 2.15.2, which was successful and currently appears to be running without issue. I am not so much concerned with missing features (or known bugs) as we are only in Trial mode at the moment.

That said, I'm almost certain we will purchase a license in the near future, once we upgrade our local JIRA server to 7.  Do you still recommend uninstalling the BigPicture plugin before we proceed with the upgrade to 7?  My only concern is that you can confirm we would not lose any data as a result of uninstalling prior to the v7 upgrade, and then reinstalling the new version of BigPicture after we upgrade to v7.  If there is any risk at all of data loss, we'll limit our trial entries of project plans to testing only.

Thanks again!

Chris

[Matthew Jagiello]

Hi Chris,

You may try upgrading without uninstalling. Here's the thing: The plugin manager and Marketplace in general is a bit dumb when it comes to having different versions of the same plugin, and sometimes may simply not notify you there is one you are supposed to jump on, like when transitioning to JIRA 7. A few vendors are dealing with this problem now, as users tend to uninstall and complain about bugs, where the only problem is the fact that they were given the incorrect version by JIRA's plugin manager.

Assuming this will be your case, nothing wrong will happen - the plugin will just fail to enable.

Uninstalling the tool and installing it again, by design, should delete any of your data. It's even quite common among users to uninstall BigPicture when an update is not visible in the plugin manager (it has problems reading hotfix updates, like yesterday's one) just to install the most recent version immediately afterwards.

[Chris Melching]

Matthew - all of this is extremely helpful.  In your 3rd paragraph, I assume you meant should "not" delete data based on what I read afterwords.  I will check to see what happens after we upgrade to JIRA 7 and make a decision about uninstalling/reinstalling vs. upgrade based on what I see in the Add-on list.  Or, if you think uninstalling is the best path, can you confirm, as well as confirm if I should definitely do this PRIOR to the upgrade to 7?  Continued thanks!

[Matthew Jagiello]

Exactly, the data should NOT be deleted.

In your case I suggest simply trying to update the plugin after going JIRA 7, and when (if) it says that it cannot use a JIRA6 addon, then simply uninstall and install.

[Mukhil Achuthan]

Hi! Can someone please help me as well? I accidentally uninstalled the trial version. Is there a way to extend it?

[Chris Melching]

Hi @Matthew Jagiello,

Another question on this topic has come up.  First of all, thank you for all the help - we have been able to successfully install and trial the BigPicture Plugin in JIRA 6.1.1.

We are now curious if we want to trial the "BigGantt" Plugin, will the BigPicture data carry over to BigGantt, or will we have to setup all of our Programs again?

Chris

[Matthew Jagiello]

You can trial both at the same time, albeit don't really need to - BigGantt is just the Gantt module of BigPicture, so by just seeing the gantt module you know what BigGantt is. Either way, your tasks and some settings (like start and end dates or progress of tasks) can be carried over, some will have to be copied manually (artificial tasks, view options).

[Matthew Jagiello]

Hi,

BigPicture is distributed in 2 versions, for JIRA 7 and JIRA 6. Since uninstalling the plugin does not delete your data inside it, the best course of action with migrating to JIRA 7 would be to uninstall the JIRA 6 version of BigPicture, update JIRA and then install the new version of BigPicture.

The JIRA 6 version runs on 6.2.1 forward. Technically you can use a very old build (before 2.15.3) as they were compatible with 6.1, but it is not recommended, as you may encounter bugs and will miss many features.