The Jira Align support guide provides an overview of the various help resources available for Jira Align, as well as guidelines for creating and monitoring support tickets, feature requests, and test instance refresh requests. We recommend reading this guide to assist you in creating better cases and getting issues resolved as quickly as possible.

Check it out in the Atlassian Community here.

The Atlassian Jira Align team is pleased to announce Jira Align v.11.20. 

• Enhancements and features
• Bug fixes

Enhancements and features

These features for 11.20 were released to environments on the continuous release track on January 5, 2026, in version 11.20.0. The features will be released to environments on the bundled release track on January 16, 2026, in version 11.20.1.

Assign multiple features to a dependency
You can now connect additional features to a single epic, capability, or feature level dependency, giving you and teams a clearer picture of all the work in flight to unblock critical delivery. This makes it easier to see who’s doing what, understand risk, and coordinate across teams when dependencies threaten timelines.

When you open the details panel for an existing dependency, you’ll notice a new* Assigned items section. Here, you can search for or create new features to assign to the dependency.

*Note: For feature-level dependencies, the existing Assigned stories section has been renamed to Assigned items. You can also continue to assign stories in the section.

From the details panel of a feature, you can now see both impacted and assigned dependency relationships. 

In Jira Align, impacted items and assigned items describe two different relationships to a dependency:

• Impacted items are the work items that are affected by the dependency. If the dependency is not resolved on time, these items are the ones whose delivery will be delayed or put at risk. You set a feature, capability, or epic as the impacted item during the initial creation of dependency (or when making an edit), at the top of the details panel.
  
  • To clarify this relationship, we’ve renamed the Feature field in the panel to Impacted feature.
• Assigned items are the work items that are responsible for resolving the dependency. These are the stories and features where teams are doing the work needed to remove a blocker. As you plan or adjust delivery, you can use the Assigned items section of a dependency’s details panel to add features that are contributing to unblocking the dependency.
  

You can also view the list of impacted and assigned dependency relationships from other locations in Jira Align:

• The quick view slide-out for a feature, accessed from the program board.
• The quick view slide-out for a dependency, accessed from the program board.
• The quick view slide-out for a dependency, accessed from the dependency matrix report.

Note: To support the two types of dependency-to-feature relationships, we've removed the + Add button from the Dependencies section of feature details panels. Navigate to a dependency's details panel, or create a new dependency to associate impacted or assigned features. 

In future versions, we’ll look to expand this enhancement to allow multiple assignments of related capabilities and epics to dependencies.

Roadmaps: store and retrieve your customizations with saved views

We’re excited to introduce the ability to save views on the roadmaps page. A view saves your filters, sorting, and display options so you can quickly return to a curated roadmap between sessions.

Capture your current filters, layout, and settings by clicking the Save view option at the top of the page.

You can create multiple saved views. Each view is unique to you, allowing you to create shortcuts for your most-used configurations. Find your saved views in the new Views menu, where you can open a view, edit a view name, or delete a view.

After accessing a view and making changes to the filters or other display settings, you’ll see an option to update the view, or save a new copy.

Roadmaps: new fields and filters

We’ve further expanded the new roadmaps experience to help you find and organize work more easily. In this version, we’ve added the following fields to view as columns, along with more filtering options:

New columns

• Target Start Sprint for features
• Target Completion Sprint for features
• Investment Type for epics
• Program Increment for all work item types

New filters

• Filter by Theme on themes and epics
• Filter by Epic on epics, capabilities, and features
• Filter by Capability on capabilities and features
• Filter by Feature on features
• Filter by Active status on themes

Roadmaps: expand/collapse all

We’ve added the ability to quickly expand or collapse all first level children for themes, epics, capabilities and objectives. This enhancement lets you quickly expand or collapse all items in your current view, making it easier to manage even the largest portfolios.

Roadmaps: column reordering

Column reordering lets users quickly rearrange columns in their view so the most important information appears first. This makes it easier to tailor views to different workflows and roles without changing the underlying data.

To change the order of your columns, drag and drop vertically inside the Columns menu. Use the Reset columns option to set the order back to the default and reset the display of all columns to off.

Column order is stored as a query parameter in URLs, so you can share a roadmap deeplink with others, containing the same order.

Roadmaps: Sort features by program increment

Need to view roadmap features by their associated program increment? From the View settings menu, select the new Program increment option in the Sort by dropdown. Features will be sorted by PI name, and features with no associated program increment will display at the top.

Roadmaps: naming enhancements

We’ve made the following naming changes to roadmaps:

Color by health
We’ve updated the names of each health value to match values displayed on status reports. Both the roadmaps legend and health menus on bars now show the correct terminology.

Execution team group by
We’ve renamed the Execution team group by option to Team, to better reflect the grouping by agile and kanban teams.

Beta epics grid: usability enhancements

We’ve refined the beta epics grid to make large sets of epics easier to scan and work with:

• Clearer columns and tooltips: Improved column widths, wrapping, and full‑value tooltips so key details are visible without opening an epic’s details panel.
• Better multi‑value display: Cleaner presentation and tooltips for fields with multiple values like tags or teams.
• Faster, smoother loading: More responsive loading and scrolling for large portfolios, with better behavior on slower networks.
• More precise filtering: Additional filter operators for selected fields, like partial match and does not contain, so you can narrow results more accurately.
• Custom hierarchy support: New column and filter for custom hierarchies so you can view and slice epics by your organization’s unique structure.

Filter by Jira enforced project status

You can now filter projects by their enforced Jira project status inside of the Manage projects tab of the Jira settings page. Select the top of the enforced project header to turn on filtering.

We’ve also updated validations to better support enforced Jira projects, for situations such as editing features and cloning epics.

API: Recycle Bin and Delete endpoints

In this version, we’ve introduced of a set of work item APIs that support both the recycle bin and deletion. In the coming weeks, we plan to provide a community article or knowledge base resource on best practices. If you have any questions or encounter issues using these APIs, please reach out to our support team.

Bug fixes

This list of resolved bugs will be updated weekly to reflect changes from maintenance and bug fix releases.

We’ve corrected the following bugs that were discovered while investigating related issues, building new enhancements, and performing maintenance:

11.20.0

• In the API, users could configure work item custom fields without the proper access.
• Audit logs would not capture parent epic assignment records after creating a capability.
• The API would return an inaccurate error message when attempting to create a process flow without process steps.
• On roadmaps, themes a user didn’t have permission to could display after accessing a deeplink.
• On backlogs, navigating to the prioritize menu and back loses program context.
• On checklists, some users could not save edits.
• Identified and resolved a vulnerability related to .NET denial of service.
• Identified and resolved a vulnerability related to creating program increments.

Below is our upcoming release schedule. Sandbox and production environments will be unavailable during our maintenance window, which starts at 11:00PM EST on the day listed below and ends at 2:00AM EST on the following day.

Release tracks

Production environments are set to use the bundled release track, while sandbox environments use the continuous track. We recommend using this default setup for your environments, as it allows you to test new features released in a .0 feature release for two weeks in your sandbox environment. Those changes will then deploy to your production environment in a .1 maintenance release. 

Jira Align's Enterprise Insights (EI) version 11.20 was deployed to environments on the continuous release track on January 5, 2026. It will then be deployed to environments on the bundled release track on January 16, 2026.

This release aligns Enterprise Insights with Jira Align version 11.20 and includes the latest tested build, but does not introduce changes to existing data, views, or behavior.

The Enterprise Insights schema has been updated to version 11.20 with no changes to tables, columns, or data types.

Below is our upcoming release schedule for Enterprise Insights (EI). Sandbox and production environments will be unavailable during our maintenance window, which starts at 11:00PM EST on the day listed below and ends at 2:00AM EST on the following day.

See the Release calendar article for the schedule of releases for the Jira Align platform. 

To improve compatibility with data platforms that treat fixed-width character padding as significant, Enterprise Insights (EI) will change several column data types from NCHAR to NVARCHAR. This update prevents trailing and padding spaces from propagating into customer data warehouses and analytics tools, causing configuration and processing issues.

We plan to make this change to the Enterprise Insights schema in version 11.19, which first ships to environments on the continuous release track on December 5, 2025.

Please review this announcement to understand what’s changing, how it may impact your integrations, and what actions you need to take to prepare.

Why we’re making this change

We are changing the data type of several columns in EI to assure:

• Downstream compatibility: Some systems (such as Snowflake) treat trailing spaces as meaningful characters, which can break joins, filters, and equality checks.
• Data quality and consistency: NVARCHAR avoids automatic right-padding that occurs with NCHAR, reducing unexpected whitespace and the need for post-load trimming.
• Operational simplicity: Reduces edge cases in ETL/ELT logic, improves report accuracy, and simplifies cross-system mappings.

Impacts of this change

As a result of these data type changes, the next Enterprise Insights schema will include differences that may interfere with existing integrations, models, and tests if they assume fixed-width (padded) values.

How to prepare

To prepare for the data type changes, you can take the following actions:

• Review your downstream data models and dashboards for any explicit assumptions about fixed-width padding or trailing spaces.
• Remove redundant TRIM, RTRIM, or LTRIM steps that were previously used to compensate for NCHAR padding where they are no longer needed.
• Validate critical joins and equality predicates in Snowflake or other data warehouses to ensure they do not depend on padded values.
• If your schema enforcement or testing frameworks pin data types, update expectations from NCHAR to NVARCHAR for impacted columns.

Columns affected

Use the table below to review the columns that will change from NCHAR to NVARCHAR.

You can subscribe to three Help Center sections to receive notifications the instant release note articles are published:

• Main Release Notes: These articles contain compiled information on a Jira Align version, initially published for the 10.X.0 feature release and updated each additional release through 10.X.3.
• Supplemental Release Notes: These articles contain information on individual supplemental releases, published each release from 10.X.1 through 10.X.3.
• Enterprise Insights Release Notes: These articles contain release notes specific to Jira Align Enterprise Insights (EI).

We recommend subscribing to both the Main and Supplemental Release Notes sections to get weekly notifications on the latest Jira Align version.

What you need to do

To receive real-time release notes publication notifications, you'll need to create a Help Center account and follow the section or sections you want to receive notifications about. Please note, this will most likely be a different username and password than your Jira Align and Atlassian username and password. 

 To create an account (or reset your password if an account already exists), click the SIGN IN button on the Help Center (see the pink arrow).

Next, click the Sign up link, enter your name and email, and then click the Sign up button. You'll receive an email to finish setting up your account. If you receive a message that says a user has already signed up with the given email, click the Forgot my password link to reset your password.

Once logged in, from the Help Center home page, click the WHAT'S NEW section (bell icon).

Then click the header for the section you want to follow. Finally, click the FOLLOW button and then the New articles link.

That's it! As soon as we publish new release notes, you'll receive an email notification with a link!