As I have mentioned in previous posts, Atlassian‘s JIRA is a great tool. It was originally developed to be a software development issue tracking tool. However, it has grown to be much more than that. It can be a full-fledged project management tool.
This week, Atlassian released the long-anticipated update to the software, JIRA 5.0. One of the major features (in my software development mindset) of this version is now a completely, stable API including a number of REST resources. Until now, the full JIRA API was available to everyone, but the structure of it was lacking (as well as a lot of documentation) and needed some additional focus. Even so, hundreds of developers have used that API and build hundreds of plugins that have extended the use of JIRA. A few of them (GreenHopper, in particular) have transformed the way that the tool can be used. Well, with the new version of JIRA, much of that has been greatly improved upon.
Among the changes that users will see, the most obvious is the addition of the @mentions functionality. When you are making comments, just type in the username or email address of someone else and immediately bring them into the issue’s conversation. A very powerful feature for teams that may be distributed or even working in the same room!
Additionally, JIRA 5 adds the ability to automatically connect a number of applications to JIRA, an updated JQL (JIRA Query Language) and the ability to quickly create a number of issues. Check out the What’s New Video and see for yourself!
If you are interested in learning more about JIRA or if you are considering using JIRA within your organization and need consultation or training, please contact me. Freedom Information Systems is an Atlassian Expert and will work hard to make sure that your implementation of JIRA is right for you. Contact me today!
Barry Britnell has over 20 years of software development experience with special emphasis in web-based applications. He is currently writing software using Java, ColdFusion and PHP as well as conducting training classes in the Atlassian software applications. You can follow Barry on Twitter at @britnellfreedom.
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