Jira Service Management 5.7.x release notes

20 March 2023

We're excited to present Jira Service Management 5.7.

Highlights

• Enhance your approvals with comments
• Guardrails for Jira Service Management

• New settings for Groovy scripts in Assets

• Performance improvements in Assets

• Accessibility improvements for low-vision and keyboard-only users
• Assets REST API docs moving to a new location
• View Assets objects in the Jira Data Center and Server mobile app
• Configuring contexts for custom fields: new design, enhanced functionality
• Resolved issues

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Read the Jira Service Management 5.7.x 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 9.7.x release notes
• Jira Software 9.7.x upgrade notes

Enhance your approvals with comments DATA CENTER

We’re refreshing approvals in Jira Service Management and adding a new feature. Approvers will now see a transition screen after they select Approve or Decline on a request. They’ll be able to leave a comment explaining their decision on the new screen. In this release, the transition screen will appear when approving requests in the customer portal and the agent view.

Commenting on approvals comes with an extra perk—making the comments required. Jira admins will have access to new settings when editing or adding approval steps in workflows. By selecting the Comment required when approving and Comment required when declining checkboxes, you’re guaranteed to get some important input from approvers.

Whether it’s an explanation on why a request is declined or additional evidence needed to support an approval that you need to keep track of, comments from approvers will improve the approval processes in your organization.

Learn more about configuring approvals in Jira Service Management

Guardrails for Jira Service Management DATA CENTER

In an effort to give you more information about getting the best performance out of your Jira Service Management instance, we’ve recently published our Jira Service Management guardrails. Read the document to learn more about our recommendations, which are designed to help you identify potential risks and aid you in making decisions about the next steps in your instance optimization journey. We’ll guide you through assessing the current state your instance is in, and we’ll show you how to reduce the risk of potential problems.

We tested these guardrails with our latest Long Term Support release, Jira Service Management 5.4. We’ll update the document for each LTS release.

The data we provided is focused on entities that are unique to Jira Service Management. If you’re looking for guardrails that are shared with Jira, check out Jira Software guardrails.

Learn more about Jira Service Management guardrails

New settings for Groovy scripts in Assets

With our updates to the Groovy script settings, Jira system admins can now choose who has access to the Assets script console. You can limit access to Jira system admins only, or to both system admins and Jira admins. The new settings will let you have more control over who can execute the scripts in your instance.

To use the updated settings (and previously existing ones, too), go to Administration > Manage apps > Assets script configuration.

Learn more about Groovy scripts in Assets

Performance improvements in Assets

We’re constantly striving to enhance the performance and reliability of Assets. In this release, we tackled the first subset of a series of improvements we’re planning to ship. The main focus of these improvements is Assets imports. Here’s an overview of the updates we’re making in this release:

• We’ve fixed how missing objects are calculated during an import. With this change, we're now considering objects to be missing from an import only if they’ve ever been created or updated as part of that particular import.
• We’ve ensured that the UI doesn’t time out when waiting for bulk deletions.
• We’ve changed the import configuration process and disabled automatic synchronization by default, letting you make informed decisions about your import jobs.
• We’ve improved the performance of importing objects with unique attributes.
• We’ve improved the performance of the Force view of object graphs.

Accessibility improvements for low-vision and keyboard-only users

This release contains more accessibility fixes for our screen reader and keyboard-only cohort to improve their experience and ability to perform basic tasks in Jira Service Management. We’ve highlighted some fixes you can expect:

• We’ve added attributes like roles, names, and href values to buttons and links, making them accessible for keyboard-only and screen reader users.

• We’ve fixed the focus indicator as well as its color contrast ratio for several elements like buttons and expandable icons.

• We’ve updated the Create another checkbox in the Create new object modal dialog by adding the role and state attributes.

Check out the full list of fixed issues

Assets REST API docs moving to a new location

We’re moving our Assets REST API reference documentation to docs.atlassian.com, where it’ll join our Jira Service Management REST API docs. We’re planning on deprecating the previous location soon, so don’t forget to update your bookmarks !

Check out our Assets API docs

View Assets objects in the Jira Data Center and Server mobile app DATA CENTER

We’re working on incorporating Assets into the Jira Data Center and Server app and we recently tackled Assets custom fields. In the latest version of the application, you’ll be able to view Assets custom fields in your issues. To view the objects that are mentioned in the fields, you need to have Object schema user permissions for the relevant object schema.

Our journey with bringing all your favorite Assets features to your mobile devices is just beginning. We have some UI improvements in the works, so stay tuned for more updates on our progress.

Learn more about the Jira Data Center and Server app

Configuring contexts for custom fields: new design, enhanced functionality

Your feedback has always fueled Jira improvements, helping us to work on things that really matter and bring value to your everyday work. This time around, we’re pleased to announce improvements long-awaited by Jira admins—we’ve revamped the whole experience of configuring custom field contexts.

We’ve been working hard to ensure you’re getting a quick, efficient, and predictable interaction with the feature, achieving more in less time. Our brand-new design and enhanced functionality is now ready, so let’s get it uncovered!

• Use search to quickly find what you’re looking for. No more scrolling through long lists of issue types and projects, even if it’s just one item you need to select.
• Easily add or remove items from a context by dragging and dropping them between lists. Or simply use the Add or Remove buttons.
• Avoid repetitive manual steps with the multi-select functionality. Select while holding the Shift key to choose multiple items in one go.
• Stop worrying about misclicks. Once you add items to a list, clicking outside that list won’t clear the selection.
• Validate your changes in the blink of an eye as all newly added items now appear in a separate Just added section. No matter how many items you’ve added to the context, all new selections will stand out.
• Is it “context” or “Custom field configuration scheme”? No more guesses as we make the terminology consistent throughout the app and documentation. We want to keep things simple and clear, so Context it is.

Take a look at this demo to get familiar with the updates, and try the feature out yourself when you upgrade to this release.

Learn more about custom field contexts

Resolved issues