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.

Note: This article has been republished. This method is used to provide notification emails to users subscribed to release notes updates. This article has been updated to include mention of the New values added to Type fields and Removal of Zendesk connector enhancements. 

The Atlassian Jira Align team is pleased to announce Jira Align v.10.124. 

• Enhancements and features
• Defect fixes

Enhancements and features

These features for 10.124 were released to environments on the continuous release track on September 1, 2023, in version 10.124.0. The features will then be released to environments on the bundled release track on September 15, 2023, in version 10.124.2:

Additional fields on the Regions and Cities API

The Regions API now has two additional fields: flag and code.

The Cities API now has an additional field: image.

Value score available in Epics and Capabilities API

Calls to the Epics and Capabilities API with the GET method now have the Value Score from the Value tab included in the response. This includes the breakdown of cost, profit potential, time to market, and development risks, as well as the total overall score.

Jira connector OAuth error messaging
As part of resolving JIRAALIGN-4509, we introduced a new error message to communicate issues during OAuth setup. This is aimed at simplifying setting up the connectivity and providing a more transparent connector experience.

Increase in custom text field length

The feature custom text field length has been increased to 255 characters, matching the length of the Jira Software short text custom field type.

Fix Feature estimation points bug

JIRAALIGN-4808 for the feature points not syncing correctly has been fixed so that only the selection of the estimation type will be synced with Jira Software.

New navigation improvements and fixes

• The program board can now be filtered by program(s) and team(s) from the Extra Configs menu.
• The Strategy menu in the top navigation bar is now connected to the Enterprise navigation menu platform terminology.
• The Starred pages section of the new homepage now supports key accessibility features, including skip links and keyboard navigation.
• Portfolio-level reports that were accessed from the reports landing page are now linked from the Reports section of the portfolio sidebar menu:
  
  ▾ Portfolio-level reports added (select to expand)

  • Assessment Report

  • Assessment Results

  • Blocked Card Trend

  • Card Movement

  • Complete State Trend

  • Cumulative Counts

  • Cumulative Effort

  • In-Progress Trend

  • Investment by Jira Epic

  • Not Started Trend

  • Organizational Hierarchy

  • Override Events

  • Program Predictability Report

  • Rate of New Cards Added

  • Release (Fix Version) Roadmap

  • ScrumBan Report

  • Spend per Point Report

  • Status by Column

  • Strategic Driver Allocation

  • Value Engineering Report

  • WIP by State

  • WIP by Step

  • WIP by Step Board

  • WIP Limit Infractions

  • Work in Progress by State

• Work item page links were added to the sidebar, allowing users to quickly access items without having to navigate up or down the team hierarchy or to the global grids.

  • Portfolio sidebar 

    • Capabilities (if turned on for the portfolio)

    • Features

    • Stories

• • Solution sidebar
    • Themes
    • Epics
    • Features
    • Stories
  • Program sidebar
    • Theme
    • Epics
    • Capabilities (if turned on for the portfolio)
    • Features
    • Stories
  • Team sidebar
    • Features

• We added the Program Increment filter on the custom room sidebar menu, allowing custom room pages to be filtered by PIs.

Upcoming removal of 25 reports

In version 10.127.1, we’ll be removing 25 legacy reports from Jira Align.

After reviewing recent usage data, it became clear that this functionality was not providing significant value. Some of these reports were not fully developed or were made inaccessible during our transition from Jira Align version 9X to 10X. By removing these reports and streamlining our codebase, we’ll have more capacity to address defect fixes across the product. These changes will also reduce our testing overhead, which will allow us to build and ship enhancements more rapidly.

Reports that will be removed:

• Actioneering report
• Analyze allocation & burn rates
• Blocked card trend
• Card distribution
• Complete state trend
• Constraints
• Defect status
• Dev availability
• Epic scheduling
• Hours by program
• Load by sprint (a.k.a. Individual task load by sprint)
• Meeting attendance
• Meeting health (a.k.a. Standup attendance by sprint)
• Not started trend
• People chart
• Portfolio funding status
• Program quality
• Retrospective roll-up report
• Retrospective surveys
• Splits and drops
• Status by column
• Story health
• Success criteria status
• Task burn down (also known as task burndown report)
• Yesterday’s results

System role permission toggles related to these pages will also be removed.

If you have used this functionality in the past and would like to make a record of your entries, please visit the reports prior to version 10.127.0 to archive your data. You can use screenshots and Save options from your browser to capture the contents of an accessible report.

Quality module: Confirmed and upcoming object removals

In version 10.121.3, we removed the summary pages within the Quality module, while references to some objects remained. In this release, we’ve cleaned up the codebase and removed all references and links to:

• Build streams
• Hot fixes
• Test environments
• Test folders
• Test suites

In version 10.125.0, we plan to fully remove references and links to:

• Sprint plans
• Test sets

New values added to Type fields

We’ve added three new values to the Type field on epics, capabilities, and features. You can use these new options to further categorize the purpose of larger work items. Values added:

• Debt
• Defect
• Risk

Removal of Zendesk connector

As previously announced, we've removed the settings page and functionality that made up the Zendesk connector. Any previously synced items remain available in both Jira Align and Zendesk.

Defect fixes

The list of defect fixes will be updated to reflect changes in weekly maintenance releases. You can see the contents of individual maintenance releases in the Supplemental Release Notes section.

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

By default, production environments are set to use the bundled release track, while sandbox environments (previously known as test instances) 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 .2 maintenance release. 

You may change the release track from bundled to continuous in your production environment by submitting a request to our Support Team. Note that we do not guarantee a timeframe to make a release track change, but will strive to complete the request as quickly as possible. 

The 10.124.3 maintenance release was deployed to environments on the continuous release track and environments on the bundled release track on September 22, 2023. Maintenance releases contain high-priority defect fixes and fixes for any features deployed in version 10.124.X.

Defect fixes

Note: Due to a previously unreported feature, this article has been deleted and then republished. This method is used to provide notification emails to users subscribed to Release Notes updates. For more information about the additional feature, check out Inconsistent results for Sprint Team Member views within current vs. export schema.

Jira Align's Enterprise Insights (EI) was updated and deployed to 10.124.X instances on the continuous track on September 1, 2023, and will be deployed to instances on the bundled track on September 15, 2023. The following enhancements were made:

• Release highlights
• Announcements
• New tables
• Updated tables

Release highlights

• New content/suggestions

  • Character limit of the Sprint Short Name field in the Sprint table expanded from NVARCHAR(20) to NVARCHAR(50) to accommodate the expansion of the Short Name field in the Sprint details panel beyond 20 characters in Jira Align.

  • Character limits of the Custom Text 1 and Custom Text 2 fields in the Feature and Feature History tables respectively were expanded from NVARCHAR(250) to NVARCHAR(255) to accommodate the expansion of the custom text input fields for features to 255 characters in Jira Align.

  • Defect fixes

    • Inconsistent results for Sprint Team Member views within current vs. export schema:

      • We resolved an issue with inconsistent deleted users in the Sprint Team Member views. In this issue, even when users are not deleted, they appear to be deleted within the current_dw views and don’t display in export_dw views.

    • JIRAALIGN-5158: Approvers field and values are not stored in the Epic Benefits view.

    • JIRAALIGN-5129: Capability Attachment view is not storing updates made to the attachments on capabilities.

Announcements

• In version 10.125, the following change will be made:
  • The Test Suite Name column in the Test Case views (current_dw and export_dw schemas) will be removed.
    • The removal is a result of the deprecation work of the Quality module in Jira Align. In preparation for these upcoming changes please make updates to your reports and dependencies (i.e. ETL) that use this field to accommodate for the change.
• In version 10.127, the following change will be made:
  • The Feature Type column in the Epic views (current_dw and export_dw schemas) will be removed.
    • The column name is inconsistent with the Epic History view where the column name is Epic Type.
    • Please update your reports and integrations to use the new Epic Type column in the Epic views (current_dw and export_dw schemas) available in release 10.123.

New tables

Updated tables

Check out the latest news on new Jira Align features and development efforts we’re working on. Our Q4 2023 Product Roadmap presentation is now available.

Note that you will need to be logged into our Help Center site to be able to access the recording. If you don’t already have a login, select the Sign up link to create a new one. This account is not tied to your Jira Align user credentials.

In version 10.127.1, we’ll be finishing our rollout of Jira Align’s new navigation. The old navigation will be permanently replaced and will no longer be accessible. Additionally, old navigation information will be removed from our Help Center articles.

To prepare for the removal, we recommend switching to the new navigation and trying it out for yourself. You can also check out our articles about the new navigation and homepage to get familiar with the changes.

We also recommend updating any internal Jira Align documentation you may have with new navigation details by version 10.127.1. We’ve added new navigation information to our existing Help Center articles to help with this, as well as a PDF for a quick reference of all page locations in the new navigation.

Select the attachment below to download the PDF:

If you have an on-premise instance of Jira Align, please read the following and take action prior to installing version 10.123.3, which will be available for download on August 25, 2023.

What’s changing

Jira Align uses the SQL Server Native Client (SNAC) driver which is no longer recommended for use by Microsoft. Microsoft recommends switching to the Microsoft OLE DB Driver (MSOLEDBSQL) for SQL Server going forward.

We have tested and approved versions 18 of the OLE DB driver for use with Jira Align on-premise environments. 

Action required

Before installing Jira Align version 10.123.2, ensure that all web and connector servers in your environment are updated with the OLE DB Driver, version 18. The driver can be installed while any previous Jira Align version is running. You can download this version from the following link: OLE DB Driver for SQL Server v18

Jira Align is improving the way you navigate!

We’ve overhauled Jira Align’s navigation with faster, simpler paths to get to where you need to be. And, you’ll feel more at home with a new look that matches other Atlassian products.

With the release of version 10.122.0 on July 7, 2023, we’ll begin our rollout of the new navigation to sandbox environments on the continuous release track. Production environments on the bundled release track will receive the changes in version 10.122.2, which will be deployed on July 21, 2023.

You’ll be able to switch between the old navigation and the new navigation for a limited time after release.

Changes we're making

The new navigation includes:

• New information architecture oriented around what you already know - your teams.
• New top navigation bar to navigate hierarchies: the teams and functions you operate in daily.
• New sidebar to improve page discovery and accomplish top tasks. As you navigate across pages, your views will stay filtered by the selected team and scope.
• New homepage that provides quick access to your most important rooms and pages.

To learn more, check out the article in the Atlassian Community and release notes information.

Note: This article has been deleted and re-published to send a new notification, as the release timeframe for these changes has been updated.

For versions 10.100.1 and later, we'll be making some big changes to objective statuses that will also affect the API:

What’s coming in version 10.100.1

In this release, we will be adding three new statuses to objective tracking in Jira Align. These statuses will provide more nuance to the status of objectives than our current option (In Progress) allows. The new statuses will be:

• On Track: Indicates that an objective is likely to reach its desired outcomes.

• At Risk: Indicates that an objective has uncertainty around reaching its desired outcomes. For example, work needed to complete the objective may be behind schedule, or risks might pose a future threat to completion.

• Off Track: Indicates that an objective is unlikely to reach its desired outcomes if action is not taken.

In version 10.100.1, the new statuses will become available in the Jira Align UI, and will not change any existing status values. API users should also note that the status endpoint will include the new statuses, and no statuses will be removed or changed for this release.

We strongly recommend that you review your in-progress objectives and update any objectives that are at risk or off track, as the In Progress status on objectives will be migrated in a future release.

What’s coming later

In a future release, any remaining In Progress objectives will receive the On Track status. At this time, the API status value for In Progress will also be removed.

What this means for the API

Any objectives with the In Progress value will now return as On Track. There are also two new values: Off Track and At Risk. In any scenarios where the In Progress value is specified, there would need to be a change to specify On Track and depending on the use case, include the new status values as well. Otherwise, there is no action needed with this change.

Why are we making this change?
This change is in preparation for a new end-to-end objective experience including a new creation workflow, a cleaner Details panel, and a more powerful objective tree experience. As we continue to respond to feedback, it has been evident that we need the ability to provide better status updates around objectives.

For our customers utilizing OKRs, the objectives often appeared to be “at risk” when they had low scores, even if it was just too early in measuring. These new changes, along with the updates to the objective tree around the corner, will provide a much clearer picture of which objectives need attention (and which don’t) when reporting on status.

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!