4th of April, 2017

Structure 3.6 is another step towards integration with third-party add-ons. Now Structure supports grouping by Account field from Tempo Timesheets. Apart from that, the release contains a number of fixes and smaller improvements.

Important for Structure 2.x users! If you currently use Structure 2.11.2 or an earlier version, it is very important that you read Structure 3.0 Release Notes before upgrading.

Download the latest Structure and Extensions
Structure 3 Demo Server 
Structure 3 Quick Start Guide

 

Version Highlights

  • Grouping by Account field from Tempo Timesheets
  • Support for Portfolio 2.2.3 and 2.2.4

Changes in Detail

Grouping by Account

When building your structures you can now easily track progress and see distribution of time spent, remaining estimates and other values by Accounts that you have set up in Tempo Timesheets. To do that, simply add a Group Generator for Tempo Account, select if you want to see closed and archived accounts and if you want to be able to move issues between accounts in structure. You can use this grouping both in Automation (when building a structure) and in Transformations.

Structure supports Tempo 8.2.4/Tempo Account 3.0.7.

Support for Portfolio 2.2.3 and 2.2.4

The previous version introduced support for Portfolio Parent links (both Group and Extend). This version adds compatibility with the latest versions of Portfolio.

Notable Fixes and Improvements

The following issues have been addressed in Structure 3.6:

  • Fixed: Structure Gadget in Confluence becomes blank and cannot be configured.
  • Fixed: Groups are grayed out, when applying Filter transformations.
  • Fixed: Changes made to generators parameters are sometimes not applied.
  • When cloning a structure with Automation, statistics is shown for the number of static items and items added dynamically.

The new version also contains other bug fixes and improvements.

Supported Versions

Structure 3.6 and all extensions support JIRA versions from 7.1 to 7.3.x. All editions of JIRA (JIRA Core, JIRA Software, JIRA Service Desk) are supported. JIRA Data Center is supported.

This release is backwards-compatible with Structure 3.5, so all Structure extensions – Structure.Pages, Structure.Testy, as well as Colors plugin and other plugins that integrate with Structure 3.5 – should work with the new version.

Installation and Upgrade

Installing Structure

If your JIRA server does not have Structure yet, the installation is simple:

  1. Download and install Structure add-on, either from Atlassian Marketplace or from Download page. Pick the correct version based on your JIRA version!
  2. When Add-on Manager reports about successful installation, click Get Started to visit a page with important guidance for the JIRA administrator. You may want to also check out the user's Get Started page, available under "Structure" top-level menu.
  3. Monitor catalina.out or jira-application.log for log messages from Structure.

Upgrading Structure

Upgrade procedure from versions 3.x is simple:

  1. Consider backing up JIRA data. Use Administration | System | Backup System. Starting from version 3.0.0 Structure data can be backed up together with JIRA data. (If you have a large instance and have proper backup strategy in place, you may skip this step.)
  2. Back up Structure data. Use Administration | Structure | Backup Structure menu item. If you have a lot of structures and a large JIRA, consider turning off "Backup History" option to avoid long backup process.
  3. Install the new version of the plugin.

  4. Upgrade Structure.Testy and Structure.Pages add-ons if you're using them.
  5. Monitor catalina.out or jira-application.log for warnings or errors.

Enterprise Deployment Notes

Structure 3.6 has a few changes in the core parts that could potentially affect performance and stability of the system. The changes are part of the ongoing improvement to optimize memory and database footprint by having a procedure of removing unused "rows" from Structure. This optimization itself is not yet turned on in Structure 3.6.

Rigorous testing has been carried out on the release candidate. The suggestions below provide further means to assure seamless deployment.

Backup

Please create Structure backup before upgrading. Turn off Backup History option unless you really need it.

Testing on Staging Environment

You can try load testing and stress testing Structure 3.6 and JIRA on a staging environment before upgrading.

It makes sense to test the following parts:

  • Loading JIRA's issue page for many issues by many users at once. (Use issues from projects that are enabled for Structure.)
  • Loading different structures and queries on the Structure Board by many users at once.
  • Creating structures, populating them with generators and then deleting them.
  • Creating a structure, adding considerable amount of issues (for example, 10,000 issues) and removing them from the structure.

The usual load and stress testing can also be applied.

Should you have any questions on Enterprise Deployment, let us know at support@almworks.com.