Editor’s note: Please note the total coolness of these Confluence 4.1 features, *in addition to what’s listed below*: pimping your images, autoconvert of content from the likes of YouTube, Google Maps, Vimeo, Flickr (paste a URL, Confluence will turn into content automagically), and find and replace. This is awesome stuff – so make sure you’re sitting down and holding onto something!
Who doesn’t like a big Christmas stocking packed with goodies? It’s the season of giving and, this week, you’ll be able to rip open Confluence 4.1 and get your paws on all the new features packed into this big release. Atlassian’s Ryan already peeled back the covers on Image Effects – in this post Atlassian gives you a sneak peek at 5 more improvements coming your way in Confluence 4.1. Like every Confluence release, there’s something for everyone.
1. Use Any Character in Page Titles
Satisfying many of your votes, Confluence 4.1 removes the restrictions on characters in page and blog titles. This allows more descriptive page names and generally removes restrictions when creating page titles and naming your content.
Click to view full image2. Set a Global PDF Stylesheet
Fulfilling 90 more of your votes, Confluence 4.1 let’s you set a custom PDF stylesheet at the global level, just like custom layouts. When a PDF Space export is requested, it will fall back to this global stylesheet if there is no specific individual Space stylesheet defined. This means users won’t have to re-apply the same stylesheet to all their individual spaces, if they primarily want one look and feel – perfect for enforcing company-wide styling guidelines.
3. Follow Your Network On the Dashboard
Think about how you work – usually you work closely with a handful of people everyday – people in your immediate team, direct reports, and stakeholders in other teams. Just like Twitter, you can follow these people in Confluence to build you own ‘Network‘. In Confluence 4.1 it’s easy to stay-up-to-date on what your Network’s been up to with a new tab on the Dashboard.
Click to view full image4. View and Filter Attached Files in a Space
When you want to display all the attachments of a Page on a Page, you can use the regular Attachments macro. A new Space Attachments macro in Confluence 4.1 lets you display all of the files attached to the Pages in a Space, in a table view and filter them by file type. Perhaps you have a bunch of training files attached to Pages in a Space. No you can list them all on one Page to aid discovery.
Click to view full image5. Translations Made Easier
For those customers working on translating the user interface, Confluence 4.1 has a new feature to make your job easier. After visiting the Confluence Dashboard, just add this text to the end of your Confluence URL and press ‘Enter’.
|
1
|
?i18nMode=lightning
|
This will then cause each element of the user interface to display its special key name while Confluence is still in an interactive mode. This makes it easier to find the essential context for each key, which can then be searched on http://translations.atlassian.com where you can enter an appropriate translation for your custom language pack.
The key names are displayed with a “lightning bolt” graphic between elements of the names. For example, the Browse button will show up like so:
The key system.space.menu can be found on http://translations.atlassian.com, allowing you to write a better translation for the term Browse, being able to see the full context of where the UI element belongs and what it means to the user.
When you’re finished translating, just add the following text to the end of your Confluence URL and press ‘Enter’.
|
1
|
?i18nMode=normal
|
Helping You Transition to the Confluence 4.x Generation
Thinking of upgrading to Confluence 4.x? How could you resist? Atlassian’s created a set of resources to help you manage the transition. Tutorial videos, Quick Reference and Upgrade Guides – you can find it all here.
Filed under: Atlassian, Confluence | Leave a Comment
Tags: 4, 4.1, Atlassian, autocorrect, character, Confluence, content, effects, feature, features, flickr, global, google maps, image, improvement, network, page titles, pdf, release, stylesheet, transition, vimeo, youtube
GreenHopper 5.8‘s now available, delivering a huge win for everyone: the new Rapid Board.
A major innovation for GreenHopper, the Rapid Board’s a flexible new board for managing and reporting on work in progress. The Rapid Board also provides multiple project support, which alone satisfies a whopping 255 votes - the most requested feature in GreenHopper’s history!
What’s the Rapid Board?
The Rapid Board provides a new way to view issues in GreenHopper by creating Rapid Views. Creating new Rapid Views is simple:
- Save a JIRA search
- Layout status columns
- Set Swimlanes & Quick Filters
This brilliant simplicity calls upon the most powerful search in issue tracking: JIRA’s Query Language (JQL). The power of JIRA’s advanced search is behind every aspect of the new GreenHopper Rapid Board. The Rapid View, horizontal Swimlanes, and button Quick Filters are all based on JQL search parameters:
This means large teams can collaborate on a single Rapid View, while individuals can use Swimlanes and Quick Filters to see just the issues that matter most to them.
Work Smarter
The new Rapid Board has several smart features in the background. Atlassian’s focused this first release of the Rapid Board on Kanban-specific features, and will continue to work on features for Scrum and all types agile teams as the Rapid Board evolves.
- Kanban presets: an Expedite swimlane, 3 Quick Filters, default columns (To Do, In Progress, Done), and issues ordered by Global Rank.
- Permanent links mean ‘what you see is what they get’ when emailing or IM’ing URLs – and include not only you exact view, but also the selected issue or report.
- Keyboard shortcuts let you perform any issue operation, including selecting an issue and ranking actions, without touching a mouse.
- Drop zones indicate the available transitions when moving an issue:
- Column headers stay with the board when scrolling down the page, so there’s no need to scroll back up to find information or take action.
- Issue cards have gotten an uplift: avatars show up indicating the card assignee, and the number of days in current status are indicated by dots across the card.
- Columns can have both a min and a max constraint: limit the amount of work in progress (WIP) for each column to keep the team moving things along.
Keep Issues Moving Across the Board
We’ve added a new Control Chart to show the mean cycle time and trends. Control Charts, along with the “time in status” dots across issue cards, help teams spot outliers and understand which issues spend a long time in flight.
The Rapid Board views are also available as gadgets, so it’s easy to display this information on a JIRA dashboard or a Confluence page. GreenHopper 5.8 is a huge step forward in understanding your teams work andcommunicating priorities and progress to the rest of the org. If you aren’t yet using GreenHopper or you want to see the new features in action, check out the short overview video.
Upgrade JIRA & GreenHopper
GreenHopper 5.8 is available today, you’ll just need to upgrade to JIRA 4.4.3 to take advantage of all the great new stuff! After you upgrade JIRA, search your JIRA plugin manager for the latest GreenHopper release.
Filed under: Atlassian, JIRA | 3 Comments
Tags: 4.3.3, 5.8, Atlassian, control chart, drop zones, expedite, global rank, Greenhopper, in progress, JIRA, JQL, kanban, query language, quick filters, rapid board, rapid view, rapidboard, swimlanes, to do, upgrade, URL
Atlassian Launch Party in Austin
Be a part of Atlassian history in the making!
Atlassian’s hosting a very special party, Atlassian Launch Night, in honor of one of our most exciting product launches to date. The news will remain hush-hush until then, but Atlassian insists it’s worth the wait. Atlassian will be streaming the announcement live from San Francisco via webcast to celebrate right along with you and other Atlassian User Groups (including Austin) around the world, SNL-style.
From Silicon Valley to Uzbekistan, there are 38 launch parties registered – Stockholm and Zurich are even tuning in for the broadcast at midnight! Everyone who attends Atlassian Launch Night in their city will get limited-edition swag and participate in an exclusive virtual competition for prizes.
Join us for the official announcement at the Austin Atlassian User Group on Tuesday 25 October 2011 at 6PM Central from Hank’s Garage – RSVP here!
Filed under: Atlassian, Atlassian User Groups | 1 Comment
Tags: Atlassian, Austin, launch party
Bitbucket now supports Git!
You’ve been asking for it, the Bitbuket team has even joked about it – now it’s here (for real): for the one year anniversary of Bitbucket joining Atlassian, they’re announcing Git support.
All your source, all in one-place
Whether you are using Hg or Git, you can now keep all of your code in one place with your preferred DVCS format. If you have existing code you would like to migrate, you can easily import your Git, Mercurial or Subversion source code. Atlassian’s added a new importer for GitHub to our existing site importers which include SourceForge, Google Code and Codeplex.
Unlimited private and public repositories
A big advantage for Bitbucket users is the ability to have unlimited private repositories for free. This means you can store every line of code you’ve ever written in one place without paying a cent.
Notable Changes
UI improvements have been happening gradually over the past six months:
- Commit and file history browser
- Source viewer
- Issue tracker browser
- Project downloads
Today’s release includes a new UI for the repository and user administration pages. A never-ending goal is to make Bitbucket easier to navigate and use the operations you need fast.
Get your Git on
Pull requests, code commenting and key integrations with developer tools (JIRA, Flowdock, HipChat, Twitter, Bamboo, Jenkins and more) have made this a feature filled year. And now Atlassian adds Git…
If you haven’t checked us out lately, Bitbucket has had a year of record growth – more than tripling the number of accounts since the acquisition, adding over 350 improvements, bug fixes and new features. Sign up now (no credit card required) and get unlimited private repos for free!
Were do I find the latest updates about Bitbucket?
Visit the Bitbucket blog at http://blog.bitbucket.org.
Filed under: Atlassian, News | 1 Comment
Tags: admin, Atlassian, Bamboo, Bitbucket, code, Codeplex, developer, DVCS, Flowdock, git, Google Code, Hg, HipChat, Jenkins, JIRA, Mercurial, repositories, repository, SourceForge, Subversion, support, Twitter, UI, unlimited
