Jira 1.4 beta 1

That’s right – the first beta of Jira 1.4 is now available for your testing pleasure, and what a release it is! Read on for details.

There are a few 1.4 features that are not finished for this beta, but there is more than enough new stuff here to get excited about 😉
Just some of the major new features include:

Issue Linking – Define custom issue link types and link issues together. This is a very unique feature for Jira, it allows you great flexibility to track things like issue dependencies, blockers, referenced issues, related issues, parent/child issues etc.

Customisable Issue Types – Add your own issue types, each with their own icons

Customisable Priorities – Don’t like our choices? Add your own priorities and reorder them at will.

Customisable Resolutions – Add your own resolutions for issues.

File and POP Services – Add comments by email, or get CVS logs automatically added to Jira.

Internationalisation – Jira should now support and display all foreign character sets.

Configurable Look and Feel – Don’t like our colour scheme? Change it. Want to add your own logo or graphic? Add it. All using the web based administration interface of course!

Comments can now be added with every issue update (ie if you assign an issue to your colleague, tell him why!)

Import your data from the setup wizard! (No more creating a dummy setup just to import your data)
And that’s just the major stuff. There’s also many other minor fixes and improvements, see the changelog for details. The UI is also constantly improving, I’m sure you’ll notice a few of the new ‘niceties’ in the 1.4 interface.
There are a few more not-so-secret features we are trying to complete before the 1.4 final release next Friday – we’re hoping to get them all finished too.
Here’s some brief documentation that you might need for the new features:
Issue Linking
1. Activate it from the Issue Linking section of the admin interface
2. Add a new link type (for example “Blocker” or “Duplicate”)
3. Add the permission ‘Link Issues’ to any groups you want to be able to link issues
4. From the View Issue page, start linking!
Comments By Email
1. To check a POP box and add new mails as comments add a service with the class ‘com.atlassian.jira.services.service.pop.PopService’. Alternatively if you don’t like anonymous POP boxes, dump your mail into a directory and use the class ‘com.atlassian.jira.services.service.file.FileService’ instead.
2. On the edit service page, setup your directory or POP account details and then add a handler. There are two handlers for comments at the moment:

com.atlassian.jira.services.util.handler.FullCommentHandler will add the full body of the mail as a comment, or

com.atlassian.jira.services.util.handler.NonQuotedCommentHandler will add any non quoted sections of the mail body as a comment (this allows you to reply and not have to delete the original email)
3. Now any email sent to the address you are checking will be added as a comment to the issue key in the subject.
4. If you want to link this in with email notifications, it’s easy! Just make sure the email notifications are sent from the same address you are checking – then your users can simply reply to the notification email and their reply will be added as a comment.
CVS Commit Logs
If you want to add CVS commit logs as comments, follow the above instructions but use the handler com.atlassian.jira.services.util.handler.CVSLogHandler instead.
(You will also need to get your CVS server to email commit messages)
Internationalisation
You can configure your character set through the General Configuration section of the Admin interface. It should not require a restart. Please let us know your experiences if you try this feature.
There is no standalone version of 1.4 b1.
Enjoy!

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