Upgrade from 0.3 to 0.5

[Mike]

When upgrading from 0.3 to 0.5 we noticed that all of our previous sub-
issues on existing issues had vanished. After some digging it appears
that they didn't actually disappear, but they are all within the very
large "Global Structure" structure.

I'm assuming that this has to do with the new named structure feature
that was introduced in 0.4.

Is there any way to go back to having functionality similar to that of
0.3 where there was a "structure" for each parent issue? Having a
structure that would contain multiple parents is nice, it's not really
how we would like to use structure. We are mainly interested in using
it similar to sub-tasks, but allowing for these to exist across
projects.

Example:

Epic > User Stories > Features > Tasks

In this scenario we would only have one Epic, and the Features and
Tasks would exist in "sub-projects" that correspond to suites within
our software.

Also, some updated documentation in the Wiki would be nice :)

Thanks,
Mike

[Igor Sereda]

Hello Mike,

First, sorry for the inconvenience caused by the upgrade. We'll have
detailed release notes for versions released after 1.0.

You are right, the named structures have replaced the initial,
implicit single structure. We did an overhaul of the whole idea in 0.4
release. I was worried a bit about exactly the case you describe, but
multiple structures gave a lot more possible uses for the plugin, and,
more importantly, solved some conceptual problems - for example, the
order of the top-level issues in 0.3 was not retained (due to the fact
that there was no total order on all the issues).

It is not possible to have exactly the same functionality as we had in
0.3, however, it should be possible to work with the latest version in
a similar fashion, if maybe with some differences in the UI. Some of
the functionality that makes it possible is already there, some is
coming in the future versions.

Already implemented:
1. "Global Structure" - automatically created by system, intended
specifically to serve as a replacement for the prior implicit
structure. Once the user selects Global Structure as his current
structure (this is remembered in a browser cookie), structure widget
on all pages will show that structure by default.
2. "Filter Sync" - you can install a synchronizer into a structure
that will add all issues that satisfy a filter to that structure. Just
be careful and don't create structures that are more than several tens
of thousands of issues - that's practical limit for now.

What's coming:
1. Automatic switch to "Global Structure" - for the new users
2. Permissions for new structure creation, so the admin can enforce
that there's only one structure, for example.
3. Narrowed view of the structure - display only the selected issue,
its parents up to the top and all the sub-tree of the sub-issues under
that issue.

Would that make the new Structure better for you? Do you have any
additional feature requests based on that that we can consider?

And sorry about the documentation! We'll bring it up to date soon.

Kind regards,
Igor

[Mike]

Hi Igor,

Thanks for the quick reply.

I think having the ability to narrow the Global Structure view down to
the individual structure branches based on the parent issue being
viewed, coupled with the auto switch to Global should get us back to
how we were using Structure before the upgrade.

This page probably best describes what we are trying to do in terms of
relationships between issues (under the Types of Projects heading):

http://www.idalko.com/display/WIC/Separation+of+specifications+and+tasks

Using sub-tasks to accomplish this worked before our company upgraded
JIRA from 3.1 to 4.2, when apparently a bug in JIRA which allowed for
sub-tasks to exist across projects was corrected. We eventually landed
on using the Structure plugin to replace this, and have been using
this for the past couple of months under beta until a purchase of the
plugin can be approved.

For the time being I have asked our administrators to roll back to
0.3.

Also looking forward to how you will be integrating into GreenHopper,
as we use this exclusively during our sprints. One feedback item that
we have received from developers is the inability to easily determine
the parent issue (which might be in a different project) in structure
while looking at the GreenHopper dashboard.

Thanks,
Mike

[Mike]

Igor,

Is there anything we should be concerned about before we downgrade
from 0.5 to 0.3?

Thanks,
Mike

[Igor Sereda]

Mike,

Did you make structure backup before upgrading? To downgrade, you will
need to completely delete "structure" sub-directory under your JIRA
home (or better move it someplace until everything's fine), and then
after you have replaced the plugin with version 0.3, run "Restore
Hierarchy" menu in the administator interface.

I do hope you have made a backup, because otherwise the downgrade is
not possible. If you have a backup of the JIRA home directory, you can
also manually restore "structure" sub-directory instead of restoring
structure through web interface.

Kind regards,
Igor

[Mike]

Unfortunately our administrators neglected to take a backup before the
upgrade, so this is not good news.

i do have our developers using the main structure widget to create new
relationships and update old ones, but this is not ideal for them
given the massive amount of information that is displayed.

Any estimate on when the enhancements described above will be
available? :)

[Igor Sereda]

Hi Mike,

Sorry to hear that... I guess we should have made the need for backup
more explicit. Do you know if your administrators did the upgrade
through Plugins Manager in JIRA, or downloaded the plugin manually?

Estimates: (1) Auto-switch to Global Structure is coming in version
1.0, really soon; (2) Permissions for creating new structures is also
coming soon, but perhaps not in 1.0; (3) Narrowing-down the structure
does not have an estimate yet. We have that feature requested by other
customers, so it's quite popular - good chance we'll have it delivered
in a couple of months.

What else can help: you can use the new filtering feature introduced
in 0.4. Click "Search", un-select "JQL" button, enter the key of the
issue you'd like to focus on, and select "Filter" button. The issue
will be displayed with all its parent issues. The sub-issues won't be
displayed, unless you use a more complicated JQL query that selects
the sub-issues.

Kind regards,
Igor

[Mike]

I believe that they used the Plugin Manager.

Thanks for the recommendation on narrowing down the results, however
sub-issues appearing is definitely something that is needed so we may
have to go a different route.

Thanks,
Mike

[Mike]

Igor,

Any idea when #3 will be delivered? We are really starting to see
issues with the number of items that are being added to our Global
Structure.

3. Narrowed view of the structure - display only the selected issue,
its parents up to the top and all the sub-tree of the sub-issues under
that issue.

Thanks,
Mike

On May 31, 1:12 pm, Igor Sereda <ser...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Igor Sereda]

Mike,

This is one of the few features planned for the next release. I hope
we'll have it within several weeks.

Kind regards,
Igor