I’m excited to announce the general availability of Jira 4.3. Combined with today’s release of Confluence 3.5, it’s never been easier to connect Jira with your enterprise wiki. 

Jira 4.3 is packed with search and usability improvements, plus loads of features guaranteed to make every Jira administrator smile.

GreenHopper 5.5 is also available today with compatibility to Jira 4.3, as well as several usability improvements and a sexy new task board gadget.

Integrating Jira and Confluence

Jira 4.3 and Confluence 3.5 both include several new user management and application linking features to greatly simplify your experience when using both products.

• Insert issues into Confluence pages – A new button in the Confluence editor allows you to quickly display key issue details – including, ‘Key’, ‘Type’, ‘Summary’, and ‘Status’ – in pages and blog posts.

  The new “Insert Jira Issue” dialog allows you to:

• Create new issues –  Create new issues in Jira without ever leaving the Confluence editor. 
  
• Populate tables using search – Use a simple text search or sophisticated JQL query to dynamically load issues into a table. 
• Manage all users in one place – The new User Directory manager in both Jira & Confluence allows you to connect your Confluence instance to Jira for users and groups information. This means your users have just one username and password for both systems. You can also use the same groups to secure projects, pages, issues and spaces across both applications.
• View all Confluence gadgets in Jira – Subscribe to all Confluence gadgets from your Jira Gadget Directory. Any new gadgets added to Confluence will automatically show up in Jira. Try this with gadgets from Bamboo, Fisheye, Crucible, or another Jira instance too.

What’s new in Jira 4.3 & GreenHopper 5.5? 

We have added several great search improvements and a new GreenHopper gadget. 

• Search status history – Ever wonder how many issues your team re-opened after thinking they were done? The new “WAS” operator for JQL let’s you do historical searches for issues that have made it through a specific step in your workflow.

  For example, use the following JQL to answer the question above:

  Project = "ABC" and status was Reopened.

• New JQL functions – New functions have been added to Jira Query Language allowing you to create date- and version-relative queries.

  For example, to find all of the issues in your upcoming release, use the following JQL:

  Project = "ABC" and fixVersion = earliestUnreleasedVersion("ABC")

• Quick Search improvements – We have enhanced Quick Search smart querying to support wildcards (‘*’) when searching versions and introduced a new search term(“r:”) for reporters.

  For example, retrieve all issues that you have reported with the following:

  r:me

• Task Board gadget – The new GreenHopper Task Board gadget is compatible with the Jira Wallboards plugin in order to display a full-size, high-contrast task board on your team’s information radiator.

  

• And loads more – Usability improvements for both Jira and GreenHopper, new avatars, support for Chrome and Safari 5, dashboard performance improvements and more. 

Admin Luv

Jira 4.3 also contains tons of big improvements for our beloved Jira administrators. In addition to the integration features already mentioned above, this release also includes:

• Connect to LDAP and Active Directory – With the new User Directory manager, Jira administrators can connect directly to LDAP and Active Directory to synchronize users and groups, and authenticate logins.

  

• Support for nested user groups – Simplify user management with hierarchical user groups.
   
• Manage plugins with ease – We have bundled the Universal Plugin Manager (UPM) to make it easy for admins to manage existing plugins, check plugin compatibility before upgrades, install and upgrade plugins with a single click, and monitor audit logs. 
• In-place database upgrades – Upgrading Jira is even easier now with no need to export or import your data.
• Tons more – We have also add improved importers, bundled Support Tools, security enhancements, and more. 

Free Visual Workflow Designer

And don’t forget, with the recent acquisition of the Jira Workflow Designer, you can now visualize your workflow and make edits using a graphical workflow designer.

Stay tuned to the Jira Product Blog in the coming weeks as we’ll dive deep into all of the new features in Jira 4.3.

Try it today

In all, this Jira release satisfies over 1000 votes on our issue tracker!

GreenHopper 5.5, the Jira Workflow Designer, and the Jira Wallboards plugin are available directly from the Universal Plugin Manager within Jira 4.3. 

Current Jira Hosted customers can upgrade to Jira 4.3 for free by filing a support request under the ‘Enterprise Hosted’ project.