ALM Works

It is a pleasure to announce the major release of JIRA Client 3.0 on behalf of the ALM Works team.

This release also marks the joining of JIRA Client in the ever expanding Atlassian Marketplace. JIRA Client 3.0 keeps up with it, simplifying the installation and license management.

With this release, we have addressed many of known customer issues from previous versions of JIRA Client. Some of the most important new features and improvements include better performance due to completely rewritten back-end, the "New Issue Here" feature for quick issue creation, the improved issue hierarchy, and the compatibility with JIRA 5.1. It is very exciting to note the enormous amount of useful feedback we have received from our customers. Thanks to your suggestions and inputs, JIRA Client 3.0 is much more stable and fast than the previous releases. It has received a bit of UI polishing as well, so it is also more pleasant to use.

JIRA Client Plugin on Atlassian Marketplace

Since its official launch on May 31, 2012, the Atlassian Marketplace has offered JIRA Client among other compatible add-ons. This allows the users to take advantage of the new experience in evaluating, purchasing, installing, and managing JIRA plugins.

With the launch of the Marketplace, evaluation, purchasing and maintenance of the Marketplace-enabled plugins has become very easy for JIRA administrators. In the same spirit, we have made the deployment process of JIRA Client much more streamlined, especially for large companies. You will not need to follow the cumbersome process of obtaining the license file, telling JIRA Client where it is located and repeating the operation with every single JIRA Client user in the company. Your JIRA administrator can simply go to Administration | Plugins | Install in the JIRA web interface, select JIRA Client from the list of available plugins and download it. Every user will then see a download link in their profile menu in the top right corner of the JIRA web page. After a user installs the client on their computer, they don't need to worry about license keys — the site-wide license is managed on the server, through the JIRA Client plugin.

Besides convenient license management and deployment, the important change brought to you by the Marketplace is a different licensing scheme and different prices for JIRA Client site licenses. JIRA Client site license should be bought for each instance of JIRA, and the license should match JIRA license in the number of users. For example, for a JIRA running 25-user license you should purchase a 25-user JIRA Client license as well, regardless of how many users would install JIRA Client initially. However, the prices for site licenses are lower than the prices for older team licenses, starting at $300 for a 25-user license.

Team licenses are still available for purchase from ALM Works, in case site license would not work for you or if Marketplace is not available in your country.

If you have an old-style JIRA Client license file, you'll still be able to use 3.0 just fine; make sure you download the regular version ("JIRA Client Pro", or "JIRA Client Lite" for open-source projects), not the Marketplace version ("JIRA Client Site").

New Features and Improvements in JIRA Client 3.0

Back-End Changes

The back-end was rewritten, which resulted in a boost of performance, especially on large JIRA installations. This 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 enjoy faster JIRA Client startup and less memory consumption for many operations.

"New Issue Here"

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.

Improved Issue Hierarchy in Issue Table

Before, if an issue had several "parents" in the selected hierarchy, it would be shown at the top level, as if it had no parents at all. In 3.0, these issues are shown in the hierarchy multiple times — under each of its parents.

Compatibility with JIRA 5.1

This version has been tailored to work with JIRA 5.1, so if your JIRA server is upgraded, we recommend you to upgrade your JIRA Client as well. However, backward compatibility is reduced — we won't be able to support JIRA versions older than 4.2.

Continuous Issue Editing

In 3.0, we are taking further one of the major advantages of JIRA Client — you can work with your issues and edit them while the uploading of any previous changes is still going on in the background. You do not need to wait until the uploading process is finished. For example, you can change the priority of an issue, progress through the workflow, link to other issues, and upload attachments — all without having to wait while this information reaches the server.

Quick Editing

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.

Attachment Improvements

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.

Also, the naming of new attachments was improved. Now the user can rename attachments before they are uploaded to the server, so that attachments are created with user-readable names without actually renaming the files on disk. Also, it's possible to specify the initial file name of a new screenshot while editing it.

Search in Text Editors

Another added feature is a text search tool you can run in any text field (like description or comments) in the Edit Issue, New Issue, workflow action, or Log Work dialogs, using Ctrl+F (Cmd+F). This will automatically search within the text field as you type, highlighting the matches.

Relevant Lists in Custom Fields

In the New Issue and Edit Issue dialog boxes, custom fields like "Version Picker" can now provide only relevant options to choose from, limiting the list of versions by the project that the issue belongs to.

This release also has many other features, improvements, and bug fixes. You can see the complete list of resolved issues in our JIRA.

Upgrade and Installation Instructions

If your JIRA has JIRA Client plugin installed, you'll need a Marketplace version which can be obtained via the download link in your user profile menu in the top right corner of any JIRA web page.

Non-marketplace license users can download JIRA Client or JIRA Client Lite on the main download page. You can use JIRA Client in a free 30-day trial mode or with any old-style team license with an 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.

Upgrade from JIRA Client 2.x or 1.x

Note: in JIRA Client 3.0 we have changed the way issues are stored locally. That means that there are some things to migrate from the old place where the issues were stored. Please read carefully to ensure that your information is not lost.

1. Upload all your local changes from the old version of JIRA Client (Connection | Upload Changes), publish and upload Time Tracker data.
2. Back up your workspace.
3. Install JIRA Client 3.0.
4. Start JIRA Client. 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.
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.

Upgrade from JIRA Client 3.0 pre-release version

If you have JIRA Client 3.0 Beta or RC 1 installed, there are no extra steps to take. If you have Alpha 4 or earlier, your local database will have to be cleared; please upload all your local changes before the upgrade.

As always, your feedback is welcome. Reach us by email at support@almworks.com or raise an issue in our JIRA. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Yury Asotov,
ALM Works Team

Links:

• JIRA Client on the Atlassian Marketplace
• Download JIRA Client or JIRA Client Lite (Non-Marketplace)
• Issues resolved in this release
• Release notes in JIRA
• Full change log