See the details in the Structure 1.6 Release Notes.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works

Links:

• Structure at Plugin Exchange

Improvements:

• The backend was rewritten, which resulted in the boost of performance, especially on large JIRAs.
• If a hierarchy is displayed in the issues table and an issue has several "parents" in this hierarchy, that issue is shown under each of its parents.

New features:

• "New Issue Here" feature, which allows you to open the "New Issue" dialog with fields already set to fit the query you're working with (feature can be found in a right-click context menu of a query node).
• Ability to edit an issue while JIRA Client is uploading changes that you've done to this issue before.
• "Assign to Me" button in every place where you're invited to select an assignee.
• "Set Fixed" button in every place where you're invited to select a resolution.
• Easy text attachment creation with "Attach Text" button.
• Text search in any text field (invoked with Ctrl+F or Cmd+F on Mac).
• Tabular distribution now has an editable list of configurations, any of which can be selected as an active one.
• Ability to rename an attachment before it is uploaded to server without actually renaming a file on the disk.
• Ability to specify the name of a screenshot while editing it.

Sincerely,
Rustam Zayanov,
ALM Works Team

New features and improvements:

1. Improved issue hierarchy in the issue table. Before 3.0, 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. Now it is shown in the hierarchy multiple times — under each of its parents.
2. Improved naming of the new attachments. 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.
3. In the New Issue and Edit Issue dialogs, custom fields of the "Version Picker" type now have only relevant variants to choose from, showing only versions of the project that the issue belongs to.
4. More data is preserved after migrating from earlier JIRA Client versions. For example, if connection "Get changes in Background" setting was turned off, it will remain turned off.

You can also view a selection of resolved issues in our JIRA.

Sincerely,
Rustam Zayanov,
ALM Works Team

Sincerely,
Igor Baltiyskiy,
ALM Works Team

Compatibility with Bugzilla

Simply put, previous Deskzilla versions would not work with the latest Bugzilla, so upgrade is strongly recommended. We have discovered and fixed several compatibility issues, including those that prevent the user from creating connection and synchronizing with the server, downloading large queries, and downloading attachments.

We have added support for local bug IDs in the See Also field, so you can now enter bug ID instead of the whole URL in the New Bug and Edit Bug dialogs. Also, when you click "View related bugs" in the bug details view, header of the opened tab displays bug IDs instead of URLs.

Finally, to align with the new Bugzilla behavior, we don't change flag requester if only the requestee is changed. Deskzilla keeps the old behavior when working with earlier Bugzilla versions.

In this release we reduce backward compatibility — we won't be able to support Bugzilla versions older than 3.0. Note that Bugzilla developers announced End of Life for Bugzilla 3.4.x along with the release of 4.2, so users of Bugzilla 2.x should upgrade anyway.

Fixed bugs

We have fixed the bug introduced in Deskzilla 3.0 that prevented the user from seeing the new value for Hours Worked field if it was set by another user. Next, we have hashed out the details of handling user names: Deskzilla was creating duplicate entries for users which would litter Assigned To, QA Contact and CC List editors; some users were displayed by e-mail instead of the real name. Another bug: Deskzilla could not open attachments if their file name contained more than one consecutive space. Among other fixed problems were the failure to upload change of flag requestee and the disability to localize time-tracking fields.

We have also made a couple of improvements and fixes for the Mac: minimize button is now working properly, and you can toggle full screen view on OS X Lion.

You can also view a selection of resolved issues for this release in our bug tracker.

Upgrade

Upgrade is recommended to all users, and strongly recommended to anyone who is using or going to use Bugzilla 4.2. The upgrade procedure from Deskzilla 3.0 or newer is, as usually:

1. Back up the workspace.
2. Install Deskzilla 3.1 over the previous version.
3. On the first launch, wait until the background synchronization finishes.

If you are using an older version, use the instructions to upgrade from Deskzilla 1.x-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.

Many of these bugs were discovered with your help, so thanks for letting us know by writing to our support and creating issues in our bug tracker.

With best regards,
Igor Baltiyskiy
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download Deskzilla 3.1
• Release notes in our bug tracker
• Change log

Compatibility with JIRA 5

This version has been tailored to work with JIRA 5, so if your JIRA server is upgraded, we recommend you to upgrade your JIRA Client as well.

Bug Fixes

We have fixed several problems, some of which were discovered with your help:

• On Mac OS X, JIRA Client refused to minimize: clicking "minimize" button would make it minimize and immediately restore.
• Filters by Epic/Theme did not work properly. (Filters by other custom fields of type Labels were affected, too.)
• It was not possible to apply workflow action if Greenhopper Rank field was present on the transition screen.

Upgrading to JIRA Client 2.3.6

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. 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.

We are actively working on the next major version of JIRA Client, JIRA Client 3.0. EAP users should not worry: all fixes that were included into 2.3.6 will be made available in the following EAP releases. (Some of them have already been incorporated in Alpha 1 and Alpha 2.)

Igor Baltiyskiy
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download JIRA Client or JIRA Client Lite
• Release notes in our JIRA
• Full change log

Structure 1.5 is now compatible with JIRA versions 4.3 - 5.0 and GreenHopper versions up to 5.9. This version also contains a few bug fixes.

All details are available in the Structure 1.5 Release Notes.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works

Links:

• Structure at Plugin Exchange
• Release Notes

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