Jira Service Desk 4.3.x release notes

22 July 2019

We're excited to present Jira Service Desk 4.3.

Highlights

• Search just got smarter
• Limited threads to boost performance 
• New filters to search for custom fields
• Custom changes after upgrade
• Browsing projects is faster
• AdoptOpenJDK bundled with Jira
• Cluster lock mechanism improvements
• Reindexing made easier
• Content Deliver Network (CDN) for Jira Data Center
• Resolved issues
• Get ready to upgrade

Get the latest version

More

Read the upgrade notes for important details 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 8.3 release notes
• Jira Core 8.3 release notes

Sneak peek into Jira's roadmap

If you want to know when our next Enterprise release is coming, check out this Community post. 

Search just got smarter 

We’ve made searching by request type easier by adding similarity search to the help center.

Previously, if you searched for Onboard employee, you wouldn’t see the Onboard new employee request type in search results. The reason it works this way is because Jira Service Desk search uses smart graph machine learning. Great when there’s lots of data, but when there’s less data it looks for exact matches only.

For search aficionados out there, we're using the Jaccard similarity algorithm to achieve this. Learn more

Limiting threads to boost performance 

Until now, Jira Service Desk used an unbounded thread pool to process SLA events asynchronously. This approach was database and CPU intensive and the higher the load, the greater the risk of performance problems like  JSDSERVER-5736 - Getting issue details... STATUS

In this release, we've bounded the number of threads in the pool to control the impact that high traffic has on your experience. This is one of many changes we'll be making to ensure Jira Service Desk is a lean, mean, and stable ITSM machine.

New filters to search for custom fields

Find a custom field even if you don't know its exact name by using one, or a collection, of the three new multi-select filters. You can also search through your custom fields by:

• projects using custom fields
• custom field types
• screens connected to a custom field.

Head to Jira administration > Issues > Custom fields to try this out.

List of custom changes after upgrade

Previously, when you upgraded your Jira instance we couldn't tell you which files you'd modified. Well now we can. This change is part of a bigger project to help you plan and speed up your upgrade.

When you start Jira after your upgrade, you'll see a list of files that have been modified so you can easily transfer the changes.

Browsing projects is faster

We've upgraded the Browse projects page to the latest version of Marionette (version 1.4.1), giving it a significant performance boost.

AdoptOpenJDK bundled with Jira

Oracle stopped providing public updates for Oracle JDK 8 which means that only Oracle customers with a paid subscription are eligible for updates. To give you the option of a free JDK, we first added support for OpenJDK in Jira 7.13, and now it’s time to make OpenJDK even more accessible!

Jira is now bundled with AdoptOpenJDK JRE 8 instead of Oracle JDK. This only applies to Jira installers, as the archives don’t include any Java. If you’re an Oracle fan, Oracle JDK is still supported so feel free to use it.

Cluster lock mechanism improvements for Jira Data Center

We've improved the cluster lock mechanism in Jira Data Center by introducing lock timeouts. Previously, if a node lost a cluster lock you had to restart that node to recover. Now, when a node loses a cluster lock it can be recovered automatically so your Jira admin doesn't have to do anything.

Read the backstory at  JRASERVER-66597 - Getting issue details... STATUS

Reindexing made easier

In this release, we've been improving the reindexing user experience by surfacing valuable information. Here's some of the highlights:

• more context about the reindexing options so you can be confident with your choice
• confirmation modals with additional warnings to prevent you from reindexing by mistake
• a new field that shows you the node that will be used for reindexing.

When your reindex is underway, you will also see your current node and the reindexing node, so you know what’s going on in your Data Center cluster. Learn more at Search indexing.

Content Delivery Network (CDN) for Jira Data Center

Geographical distance has a measurable impact on page load times, so it's essential to reduce this overhead as much as possible when you have teams in multiple timezones. Don't let geography slow your team down. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can help ease the frustration for distributed teams.

Our new CDN for Data Center feature allows you to serve static assets (such as JavaScript, CSS, and fonts) from servers closer to your users, resulting in faster page load times. For example, if your Jira Data Center server (known as the origin) is located in Germany, a CDN can improve page load speeds for users located in Rio de Janeiro, as static assets will be served from an edge server in Brazil.

It's very straight forward to set up:

1. Use our template to spin up an AWS CloudFront distribution, or create an account with the CDN vendor of your choice.
2. Update your load balancer and firewall to allow the CDN to reach your site.
3. In your Jira application, provide the CDN URL and enable CDN support.

Only static assets are cached. Issues, attached files, and personal data like avatars, are still served form your origin server.

Don't want to open your site to the public internet? No problem, you can deploy your own caching servers, instead of using a third-party CDN.

Check out Use a CDN with Atlassian Data Center applications for more information on how using a CDN might help your team.

Resolved issues

Get ready to upgrade

Before you upgrade, check out the upgrade notes for important changes in this release, then follow the usual upgrade instructions to upgrade your site.