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.10.110. 

• Enhancements and Features
• Defect Fixes

Enhancements and Features

These features for 10.110 were released to environments on the continuous release track on July 29, 2022, in version 10.110.0. The features will then be released to environments on the bundled release track on August 12, 2022, in version 10.110.2:

Jira Connector: Product mapping settings

To improve the performance of the Manage Custom Fields menu accessed from Admin > Jira Settings > Manage Projects, we've created a new settings window specifically for mapping products. The new settings window can be accessed by selecting the Configure link next to the Feature Product field listed at Admin > Jira Settings > Jira Setup > Custom Fields.

In version 10.110.1, we added further enhancements to the Jira Product mappings window to support large sets of mappings. You may now search for a specific mapping using the Search product mappings field, as well as use the pagination controls at the bottom of the window to quickly scan through pages of 10 entries at a time. 

For environments on the bundled release track, this enhanced version was delivered via a hotfix in version 10.109.3.13. 

Jira Connector: Limit ability to move multi-program features between programs in Jira Align
In order to prevent any possible sync issues that may occur when moving synced features between programs or Jira Software projects in Jira Align, users are no longer allowed to change the program assignment of a multi-program feature. If users need to change the program assignment, they may update the project assignment in Jira, and changes will sync to Jira Align. This limitation already exists on single program features. 

Functionality now enabled by default

The following list of functionality previously required enablement by our support or services teams during the initial configuration of Jira Align. This functionality is now permanently enabled and no longer requires manual changes.

1. Map process flow steps to states: Allows you to map process steps to states, so as users update steps, states will automatically update.
2. Quickly add stories to a feature: On a feature's Details panel, under the Stories section, users may quickly search for a story and add it to the feature without leaving the panel.
3. Multi-program work items: Allows epics and capabilities to be assigned to multiple programs. You can also allow features to be assigned to multiple programs by switching on the Approach field from Admin > Details Panels Settings.
4. Release Vehicle Roadmap: This report helps you assign features to release vehicles in the form of an interactive grid.
5. Filter the Work in Progress report by multiple PIs: Rather than requiring a single program increment, the Work in Progress report now supports filtering by multiple PIs.
6. Kanban teams: A long, long time ago, Jira Align only supported scrum teams. Kanban teams are now supported.
7. Clean up view for dependencies: On the Dependencies page, users can select the Clean Up view from the top to see all dependencies assigned to the program increment that do not match the PI of the dependency's associated work item. This situation usually indicates a need to update the requested date or committed date.
8. Recycle bin for tasks and defects: As with other work items, tasks and defects now have a recycle bin. Previously, they would be permanently removed when selecting the Delete link from the item's Details panel.
9. Folios: Use a folio to automatically create a document of all user stories or other work items you need, for example, to create a requirements specification document.

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 10.110.1 maintenance release was deployed to environments on the continuous release track on August 5, 2022. Maintenance releases contain high-priority defect fixes and fixes for any features deployed in version 10.110.0. 

Enhancements and Features

Security vulnerability fixes

• Resolved an authorization-related vulnerability affecting the Enhancement Request Management page.
• Resolved authorization-related vulnerabilities affecting test environment creation and deletion.

Due to the nature of continuous software development, some changes are applied to environments outside of our normal release schedule. In order to urgently remedy a reported issue, the following changes will be added to version 10.109.3.13 via a hotfix, which will be deployed to environments on the bundled release track on the evening of Monday, August 1st. These changes will then be deployed to environments on the continuous release track on Friday, August 5th, in version 10.110.1.

Enhancements and features

Jira Connector: Product mapping settings

To improve the performance of the Manage Custom Fields menu accessed from Admin > Jira Settings > Manage Projects, we've created a new settings window specifically for mapping products. The new settings window can be accessed by selecting the Configure link next to the Feature Product field listed at Admin > Jira Settings > Jira Setup > Custom Fields. This change was delivered to environments on the continuous release track in version 10.110.0. 

In version 10.109.3.13, we added further enhancements to the Jira Product mappings window to support large sets of mappings. You may now search for a specific mapping using the Search product mappings field, as well as use the pagination controls at the bottom of the window to quickly scan through pages of 10 entries at a time. 

Jira Align's Enterprise Insights (EI) was updated and deployed to 10.109.X instances on the continuous track on August 2, 2022, and will be deployed to instances on the bundled track on August 6, 2022. The following enhancements were made:

• Release highlights
• New tables
• Updated tables

Release highlights

• New content:

  • Capability Roadmap Notes

  • Updated Man Week Budget for epic and capability history to properly expose value as a FLOAT.

  • Added Hierarchy Health (Custom Room Health).

  • Added Affected Country Mapping for epics and capabilities.

  • Added Executive Status Dials for organizations, portfolios, programs, program increments, and themes.

• Defect fixes: 

  • Attachment Binary incremental load logic and object type mappings corrected.

  • Updated logic to handle long Program object name in Team Type column.

  • Updated object load sequencing to improve data consistency.

  • Time Sheets Note deletion logic corrected.

New tables

Updated tables

Since our acquisition, the folks at Jira Align have been taking steps to better integrate our styles and standards with the entire suite of Atlassian products. As part of these efforts, on Friday, August 12, we’ll be making some fresh changes to the Jira Align Help Center to change its look and better match the Atlassian style.

Curious about what to expect? Here’s a sneak peek:

• New visual style: Updates to colors, images, and fonts for a more familiar Atlassian feel.
• Accessibility improvements: We’ve done thorough contrast testing to make sure the new theme is accessible for people with visual impairments. Additionally, we’ve increased link visibility.
• Updated article titles: Before the new theme goes live, we’ll be updating article titles over a few days, starting on Wednesday, August 10. Improvements include removing the “10X” from titles to remove confusion about versions, and changing our title capitalizations to sentence case, the standard other Atlassian products use.

How you can prepare

You don’t need to take any action to prepare—any existing links to Help Center resources will automatically redirect to the right article after changes go into effect. However, you may optionally wish to update your links by removing any text following the article number. The article number is the number in the URL immediately following /articles/.

For example, a link to:

https://help.jiraalign.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000172634-10X-Working-in-the-Program-Room

may be changed to:

https://help.jiraalign.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000172634

We’re excited to share these changes with you and hope you enjoy the upcoming refresh as much as we do!

As part of resolving a reported defect, we are updating the Jira Software connector’s behavior when syncing epic issue types with Jira Align features. These updates will be included with version 10.109.0, which will deploy to environments on the continuous release track on July 1, 2022. The updates will then be deployed in version 10.109.2 to environments on the bundled release track on July 15, 2022.

What we're resolving

As of version 10.104.0, estimate values can be unintentionally overwritten between Jira and Jira Align when teams use certain combinations of point and t-shirt size estimates. This is due to Jira Align’s new ability to automatically convert estimates between points, t-shirt sizes, and member/team weeks, as well as some settings in the Jira Connector. Consider the following two scenarios:

Changes to connector behavior

To prevent unintentional overwrites from occurring, we will change how the connector syncs feature estimates:

When Jira Align is set to use point estimates

• Jira Align will no longer sync a t-shirt size estimate to Jira Software, even if a custom field for t-shirt size is mapped in connector settings.
• If the connector is set to sync points to Align, a points field must be configured in Jira Software. If this is not present, syncs from Jira will write a 0 into the points field in Jira Align.

When Jira Align is set to use t-shirt size estimates

• Points synced from Jira will not be converted into a t-shirt size in Jira Align. Any t-shirt estimates entered in Align prior to a sync will be retained.
• Converted point values in Jira Align (hidden in the database, but converted from an entered t-shirt size) will not sync to Jira.
• T-shirt sizes entered in Jira Align will continue to sync to Jira.

We’ll continue working on additional changes to estimation sync behavior and connector settings to provide a better experience in the future.

To support SameSite cookies in Jira Align, we will be updating Jira Align’s .NET Framework version requirement for customers managing their own on-premise instance. The new version requirement is .NET Framework 4.8.

With this in mind, Jira Align version 10.110.0 and above will only function on .NET Framework 4.8. Before upgrading to Jira Align 10.110.0, you must ensure that the infrastructure that hosts Jira Align has .NET Framework 4.8 installed.

Versions of Jira Align 10.109.X and older will continue to run on .NET Framework 4.7.2.

Thanks in advance, and please don't hesitate to reach out to the Jira Align Support Team for further clarification if you have any other questions.

Jira Align will be updating our objective experience with a new and improved visualization of the Objectives Tree.

For a short period after the feature’s release, you’ll see the new Objectives Tree by default, but will be able to switch between the legacy (current) and new experience. Later, we will deprecate the current experience.

The new experience completely rethinks the visual representation for objectives and key results based on your actual goals and needs.

What else you'll find in the new Objectives Tree

• Simplified high-level reporting with quick filters helps portfolio managers focus on what’s most important, what needs attention, and how things are related. This helps organizations better visualize goals by providing a visual format that represents the status of objectives.
  
• Richer status reporting vocabulary provides greater nuance to in-progress objectives.
  This new view has enabled us to mimic the statuses of objectives tracked within Jira Align to the status options available in Team Central, which provides greater nuance than the previous statuses could. Instead of just a Not Started, In Progress, and Completed status, the new experience provides more options. These include Pending, Paused, On Track, At Risk, Off Track, and Completed. These statuses are displayed at the top of the page and the objectives can be easily sorted by status for further investigation into why something may be at risk or off track.
  
• Easier management-by-objective and course correction with at-a-glance portfolio views and drill-down capabilities including simpler reporting supported with visual controls, i.e., traffic-light indicators, progress bars, etc. The streamlined view puts the most important information on a single page and makes course correction conversations faster with a visual roll-up of the most pressing issues.
  • Portfolio objectives that drill into program level and team level objectives with the click of a button.
  • Track how much work still needs to occur to achieve the objective with Work progress bars.
    
  • Easily visualize how many key results are associated with each objective in the Key results column. Key results are tied to the specific work item as in, you will only see portfolio-level key results associated with the portfolio-level objective, not a roll-up of all key results associated with ALL program and team level objectives tied to the portfolio-level objective.
    
  • Easily see who is responsible for each objective in the Owner column.
    

Why are we making this change?

Enterprises at scale are transitioning towards thinking and aligning on business outcomes (or the desired result) as opposed to focusing on work output or outputs. Enterprises also want to unlock ambition and inspiration at every level, encouraging all teams to strive above and beyond without fear of failure culture.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are important in identifying the change organizations want to see in order to have an impact on the highest level needles or KPIs in the business.  More importantly, using them to develop hypotheses and measure impact, otherwise work will continue to be tracked by the traditional on time on budget with a focus on outputs as opposed to the impact it has on a business outcome or validating a hypothesis.

We are making this change for several reasons:

• To provide a better user experience through improved visual representations of OKRs
• To make high-level reporting more actionable by improving the nuance for in-progress OKRs
• To ensure better understanding and prioritization of the work surrounding OKRs to achieve objectives faster

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!