Jira Software 8.20.x release notes
19 October 2021
We're pleased to present Jira Software 8.20.Highlights
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Read the upgrade notes for important info about this release and see the full list of issues resolved.
Compatible applications
If you're looking for compatible Jira applications, look no further:
Jira Software 8.20 is a Long Term Support release
This means we'll provide bug fix releases until 8.20 reaches end of life, to address critical security, stability, data integrity, and performance issues.
Ready to upgrade? Check out the Jira Software 8.20 Long Term Support release change log for a roll-up of changes since 8.13.
Advanced Roadmaps is now part of Jira Software Data Center
In Jira Software 8.15 we made Advanced Roadmaps available to all customers with a Data Center license. You can read more about it in the release notes.
We know many of you won’t upgrade before the next Long Term Support release, so we’ve made Advanced Roadmaps available to you now. If you have Jira Software Data Center you can install the latest version of the app. You won’t need an app license, we’ll recognise your Data Center license. We recommend you also upgrade the Universal Plugin Manager (UPM) to the latest version.
See our FAQ for all the details
If you’re a server customer and already have Advanced Roadmaps (formerly Jira Portfolio), you can continue to renew your license. If you don’t already have a license you’ll need to upgrade to Data Center to get the app.
Because of the addition of Advanced Roadmaps for Jira, you may notice that reindexing takes longer as compared to release 8.13.x without Advanced Roadmaps installed.
Additionally, if you're upgrading from Jira 8.5 LTS or 8.13 LTS and have installed Advanced Roadmaps from the Atlassian Marketplace, the Jira update check will mark the app as incompatible. You may need to disable the version of the app you installed from the Atlassian Marketplace before proceeding with the upgrade.
See the upgrade notes for more details.
Email notifications now require application access for better security
Up to release 8.18.x, Jira users could receive email notifications about issue updates without having proper application access. This posed a security risk in situations where an issue watcher had their application access revoked but would still receive email notifications.
Since release 8.19.0, Jira applications must be appropriately licensed and users need to have relevant application access to receive Jira notifications (both batched and non-batched).
Learn more about licensing and application access
Hungry for new features?
A lot has changed since we released Jira 8.13.x, which also was a Long Term Support release. We introduced email templates, flexible terminology, comment reactions, data pipeline, and did other spectacular things to make Jira better for you. See all the changes and fixes that happened between Jira 8.13 and 8.20 in our change log.
API change log
To help you get a full picture of what has changed since our last Long Term Support releases, we've prepared the REST API change log. Learn more
Long Term Support releases, performance-wise
For every Jira release, we run extensive performance tests to compare the latest version to the previous one. This is to see how the new features affect Jira, and to make sure we’re not introducing any performance regressions.
We’re also comparing performance between Jira Long Term Support releases. These are usually a few versions apart, so the improvements are much more visible than between smaller, feature releases.
You can see the results of our Jira 8.13 LTS Jira 8.20 LTS performance comparison in Performance and scale testing.
Always a good time to clean up Jira
If you feel your Jira is slowing down and users can no longer find what they want, we've got something for you. Check out our Jira cleanup guide for tips and tricks how to start a cleanup project and enhance team productivity. Learn more