Back End Changes

This release features a completely rewritten back end, which gives us a foundation for great performance improvements and useful new features.

Now JIRA Client uses SQLite database for storing issues on your computer and unlike previous versions, it does not have to load its entire local database into memory. Thanks to this you can already enjoy faster JIRA Client startup and less memory consumption for many operations.

More changes are on the way. Our top priority task is to make JIRA Client work with large JIRA servers allowing you to download all issues to your local database without any performance penalty. Since the new architecture removes the limit on the number of issues stored locally, we are half way there.

"New Issue Here" and Other Features

We have resolved a long-standing request for quick issue creation: now you can right-click a query, select New Issue Here and the New Issue window will appear with field values preset to match the query constraints. Thus, once the issue is saved, it will be seen in the results of this query.

In 3.0 we are taking further one of the major advantages of a remote client — you can now continuously work on your issues and edit them without having to wait for the changes to upload. You can change priority of an issue, progress through workflow, link to other issues, and upload attachments — all without having to wait while this information reaches the server.

Routine operations are becoming faster. Now it takes just one click to assign an issue to yourself, because all Assignee editors have a "me" button. You can use it in the New Issue and Edit Issue windows, in the Assign To dialog, or in the workflow action dialog. Similar button appears in the Resolution editor and sets resolution to Fixed.

Attaching logs, dumps, or any other text to an issue has become easier too: copy your text to the Clipboard, click an Attach Text button on the issue toolbar, and a dialog containing your text will pop-up. Add your comments, click Attach, and JIRA Client will automatically save it to a file and attach the file to the issue.

Another added feature is a text search tool you can run in any text field (like description or comments) using Ctrl+F (Cmd+F): it will automatically search within the text field as you type, highlighting the matches.

There are other improvements and bug fixes too. You can see the complete list of resolved issues in our JIRA.

Compatibility with JIRA 5.0 and Earlier Versions

As mentioned above, this release is compatible with the latest JIRA 5.0 release candidates. This time, however, backward compatibility is reduced — we won't be able to support JIRA versions older than 4.2.

Licensing and the Early Access Program

We release only JIRA Client Pro this time, but you don't have to worry about licensing. Alpha 1 and its updates are shipped with a fully functional Early Access Program (EAP) license, valid until August 1, 2012.

Upgrade Instructions

You can skip this section if you haven't used JIRA Client before.

The old local database is not used by JIRA Client 3.0 (except on the first run — see below) and will be left intact; you will be able to safely return to your older version at any time. However, this also means that some information that is stored only locally will have to be migrated. Please perform all the steps below to ensure that your information is not lost.

1. Upload all your local changes from the old version of JIRA Client (Connection | Upload Changes).
2. Back up your workspace.
3. Install JIRA Client 3.0. You can install it over the older version.
4. Start JIRA Client 3.0. It will now pick up and reinitialize your connections and queries.
5. Run your top-level queries. The new database does not contain any issues yet, so this step is needed to fill it.
6. Some queries based on custom fields will not work in the new version. You can fix them by using Search | Edit Query. Normally, details of search conditions will be preserved, you will only need to re-select the fields.
7. Similarly, some custom field columns will be missing in issue table. You can add them back by clicking the button to the right of the table header or by pressing Ctrl+] (Cmd+]).
8. If you use local tags, they will need to be migrated from the old database. JIRA Client will automatically do it for you on the first run (the only time it will need the old database.) During this operation it will create a file named tags.txt in your workspace. If you see that tags are not imported, run Tools | Tag Importer for that file to get your tags.

Alpha Precautions

Note that this is an Alpha release, which means that we have some issues to resolve. All features announced here can already be used; in fact, we are using this release internally as the main issue tracking tool. We made it available to the public so that we could hear your feedback earlier, while we're still in the process of development. So don't hesitate to tell us what you think and add issues to our JIRA or write to our support!

Sincerely,
Igor Baltiyskiy,
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download JIRA Client 3.0 Alpha 1
• Release notes in JIRA

Structure 1.4 brings forward three new major features - Excel export, Structure History with Activity Streams and Editing Issues On-the-Grid. This release also contains other new features and improvements.

All details are available in the Structure 1.4 Release Notes.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works

Links:

• Structure at Plugin Exchange
• Release Notes

You can glance at all of the resolved issues in the release notes in our JIRA or in the change log.

Fixed Bugs

We have discovered and fixed a critical problem that is present in Deskzilla 3.0 to 3.0.2: queries that contain date constraints under NOT (e.g., "not modified during last month") display more bugs than expected.

We have also discovered other issues in the 3.0 series, in many cases thanks to you writing to our support and issue tracker. Among them are problems with downloading attachments containing non-ASCII symbols in the file name, issues with connecting to some popular Bugzilla instances, and duplicates of bug flags appearing after a flag conflict resolution. We have fixed status editors that allowed setting any value in the New Bug (for Bugzilla 4.0 and newer) and Edit Bug dialogs — now the dialogs display only those options that are valid as the initial status or the next status in the Bugzilla workflow, respectively. Finally, we have fixed the bug that prevented the user from dragging and dropping bugs on a query by QA Contact if the bugs didn't have QA Contact set.

Performance

Performance is one of our primary goals in the 3.x series. Deskzilla 3.0 was already an improvement as we effectively removed the limit on the number of bugs stored on your computer. Still, there is much to be done to make Deskzilla lightning fast. While we've been working on it, we kept hearing from you that Deskzilla 3.0.x was quite slow in certain circumstances — reported scenarios included opening Edit Bug in a table with many bugs, opening a table with many bugs, and mass editing many bugs at once. We looked at what could be done right away and managed to reduce the time that takes Deskzilla to do these operations; of course, there is still plenty of room for further optimizations, which will follow in the next major releases.

The Nice Little Improvement

Deskzilla now displays comment numbers in the bug view.

Upgrade

Upgrade is recommended for all users. To upgrade from Deskzilla 3.0 or newer:

1. Backup your workspace.
2. Install Deskzilla 3.0.3 over the previous version.
3. On the first launch, please wait until background synchronization finishes.

If you are upgrading from an older version, see the instructions to upgrade from Deskzilla 1.x or 2.x.

This version may be used in a free 30-day trial mode or with any Deskzilla license key with active maintenance subscription. Deskzilla Lite may be used freely with any Bugzilla server having up to 2,000 bugs in the projects accessed from Deskzilla, or with a Bugzilla server that hosts a sponsored open-source project.

If you have any questions or suggestions, you are welcome to write to our support or our issue tracker.

With best regards,
Igor Baltiyskiy
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download Deskzilla 3.0.3
• Release notes in JIRA
• Full change log

Structure API is the biggest thing we've worked on during last six months, and it's now made public and documented. The API lets other plugin authors to integrate their plugins with the structures - the hierarchical issue lists provided by the Structure plugin; it allows developers who customize JIRA for a specific customer's needs to include Structure into the solution and make it work with other parts of the system; it also makes it possible for remote applications and automated scripts to access structures through the REST API.

All details are available in the Structure 1.3 Release Notes. If you think you might use Structure API, plugin documentation now contains Structure Developer's Guide to get you started with the API.

Upgrade Note: Before upgrading, please read the release notes! Backup is highly recommended.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works

Links:

• Structure at Plugin Exchange
• Release Notes

Compatibility with JIRA 4.4

Previous versions of JIRA Client and JIRA Client Lite do not work properly with JIRA 4.4 and later, because the format of JIRA's communication with remote clients has been partly changed. It causes problems with displaying, searching, editing, and uploading values for some custom fields. The fix of this problem allowed us to support custom field that comes from the Database Values plugin. We have also fixed some additional integration problems with non-English instances of JIRA 4.4.

There is one more issue fixed in this release that manifests with JIRA 4.2 and later: one cannot create and upload an issue from JIRA Client if Labels field is configured as mandatory.

Other JIRA integration issues

JIRA Client 2.3.5 is able to work with JIRA instances that transmit information in non-UTF charsets.

You will find the full list of issues resolved in this release in the change log and in our JIRA.

Upgrading to JIRA Client 2.3.5

Upgrade is recommended to all users. To upgrade from a previous version:

1. Backup your workspace.
2. Install the new version over the old one and start JIRA Client.
3. If you have been experiencing problems with the Database Values plugin in the previous versions of JIRA Client, right-click the most generic query (like All Issues) and select Reload Query from Server.
4. Reload JIRA configuration using Connection | Reload JIRA Configuration.

This version may be used in a free 30-day trial mode or with any JIRA Client license key with active maintenance subscription. JIRA Client Lite may be used freely with any JIRA server running on a Starter license, or with a JIRA server that hosts a sponsored open-source project.

As always, we are keen to hear your feedback! Raise an issue in our JIRA or write to support if you are having any problems.

Igor Baltiyskiy
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download JIRA Client or JIRA Client Lite
• Full change log

• Structure Gadget lets you view and edit structures on a JIRA dashboard or a Confluence page.
• Status Rollup synchronizer allows you to make issue status change automatically when the statuses of its sub-issues change. For example, it can mark an issue as Resolved when all of its sub-issues become Resolved.
• A new JQL function lets you search for issues within structures.

There are other improvements and fixes as well. Please refer to the release notes for more information and upgrade instructions. Enjoy!

Pavel Zvyagin
ALM Works

Full details about the changes and upgrade notes are available in the Release Notes for Structure 1.1.1.

Kind regards,
Igor
ALM Works

• Structure Panel on the Issue Page by default displays only the viewed issue, its parents and sub-issues, but not other issues from the hierarchy.
• JIRA Administrator is now able to select which users can use Structure and create new structures.
• Preliminary version for JIRA 4.4 is available.

Full details about the changes and upgrade notes are available in the Release Notes for Structure 1.1.

Kind regards,
Igor
ALM Works

Upgrading to Deskzilla 3.0.2

If you are a Deskzilla 3.0 or 3.0.1 user, please do the following:

1. Back up your workspace.
2. Install Deskzilla 3.0.2 over the previous version.
3. On the first launch, please wait until background synchronization finishes.

If you are upgrading from an older version, see the instructions to upgrade from Deskzilla 1.x or 2.x.

This version may be used in a free 30-day trial mode or with any Deskzilla license key with active maintenance subscription. Deskzilla Lite may be used freely with any Bugzilla server having up to 2,000 bugs in the projects accessed from Deskzilla, or with a Bugzilla server that hosts a sponsored open-source project.

Feel free to write us if you have any questions or remarks. Also, if you are experiencing a problem or need a feature, please raise an issue in our issue tracker.

Igor Baltiyskiy
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download Deskzilla 3.0.2
• Full change log

For the final release, we have created a thorough documentation set and added several improvements and bug-fixes to the previous version 1.0-rc1. Details are available in the Release Notes.

This concludes more than a year of initial product development and we are happy to already have customers eager for more features to come.

I would like to extend my personal thanks to everyone who have supported or criticized Structure and the ideas behind it, and of course to everyone who have tried to use it, successfully or not — your existence and all of your feedback let us stay on course and deliver. We'll grow our project team and continue developing the product further to bring as much additional value to JIRA as we can.

Cheers!
Igor
ALM Works