Version History

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Version history

Version	Date	Notes
6.0.1	15/07/2021	Maintenance release.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
6.0.0	07/07/2021	Compatibility release for Jira 9.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
5.2.0	22/09/2021	Maintenance release.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
5.1.0	22/10/2020	Cc and Bcc addresses. HTML emails. Support for Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
5.0.0	24/01/2020	More robust automations.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
4.1.0	26/02/2019	Compatibility with Jira 8.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
4.0.0	14/12/2018	Support for the new Data Center Approved Apps program.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
3.2.0	08/10/2018	Support for multi-line input controls in "Send Excel" action.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
3.1.0	19/09/2018	New name. Cosmetics.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
3.0.2	07/05/2018	Maintenance release.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
3.0.1	28/06/2017	Maintenance release.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
3.0.0	22/06/2017	Support for Automation Lite for Jira 3.0.0 and Automation for Jira 3.0.0.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
2.1.0	03/03/2017	Support for saved filters. New model variables. Correct MIME for XLS and XLSM.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
2.0.0	29/02/2016	New action: "Attach Excel". Support for Data Center. More robust installation.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
1.2.0	26/11/2015	Compatibility release for Jira 7.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download
1.0.0	28/11/2014	First stable version.	Release Notes & Upgrade Guide	Download

Release notes

6.0.1

This version is a maintenance release that fixes a minor bug.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: Accessing the "Getting Started" page in Jira 9 results in 405 "Method not allowed".

Upgrading from 6.0.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

6.0.0

This version is a compatibility release for Jira 9.

Compatibility release for Jira 9

The next Jira major version has been released less about two weeks ago. The Midori team has been super-busy with updating the app to support the Jira 9 codebase, while also keeping the backward compatibility with Jira 7.1 (and all versions between 7.1 and 9).

It was challenging, but we're happy to announce this new app version with Jira 9 compatibility!

Upgrading from 5.2.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

5.2.0

This version is a maintenance release that fixes a single problem caused by an API change made by Atlassian.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: Expressions relying on the "issue.getCustomField(String id)" method cannot be evaluated in Jira 8.19. (These expressions may appear in automation action configuration parameters.)

Upgrading from 5.1.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

5.1.0

This release implements the majority of the open feature requests. It also comes with streamlined dependency handling (that makes the installation procedure more bullet-proof) and a couple of smaller improvements and bugfixes.

"Send Excel" action supports "Cc" and "Bcc" addresses

The email sender action can send emails not only to "To" type addresses, but also to "Cc" and "Bcc"! The two additional types follow the standard email semantics that you'd expect.

Learn more about the extended "Send Excel Action" parameters.

"Send Excel" action supports HTML emails

It is now possible to write the email template in HTML, not in plain text only. It enables using formatting, colors, fonts, etc. in the email bodies that carry the Excel file attachments.

Saving Excel files to Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive

In some use cases, it is useful to automatically upload the PDF files which you exported from Jira to a cloud storage service. It is surprisingly easy to implement this with Better PDF Automation!

Learn more about exporting to the cloud.

More robust dependency handling

We rewrote and simplified the mechanism which detects whether the dependency app (Better Excel Exporter for Jira) is installed and enabled. It became more reliable, and we give a clear warning message at the top of each automation action configuration form when the dependency app is missing.

Improvements

• "Save Excel" action shows a configuration example for saving the XLSX file to Windows network locations.
• The #cfValue and #cfValueInline macros have been extended to support more custom field types.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: The resulted XLSX filenames contain certain characters in HTML-encoded format.
• Fixed: "Attach Excel" action does not accept blank "File name" (but it should).

Upgrading from 5.0.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

5.0.0

This major version introduces internal API changes that are not visible for the end-user, but make automations more robust under the hood.

More robust automations

As you already know, automatic Excel exports require 3 separate apps being installed to Jira, with complex dependencies between them. Unfortunately, previous app versions have been sensitive to the installation order of those 3 apps, due to the underlying OSGi wiring and classloading logic. When not installed in the expected order, Jira failed to correctly resolve the dependencies, therefore the apps couldn't inter-operate within Excel automation rules.

Starting from this major version, we reworked certain low-level technical details to make automations more robust. According to our testing, wiring and classloading problems should not occur anymore!

Upgrading from 4.1.0

Because of the API breaking changes, you need to upgrade multiple components this time. See the upgrade steps here.

4.1.0

This release is simply a compatibility release which updates the app for Jira 8.

Upgrading from 4.0.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

4.0.0

As you probably know, Better Excel Automation already supports Jira Data Center deployments (i.e. clustered Jira). To be precise, those are supported since app version 2.0.0 (released in Feb 2016).

In 2018, Atlassian re-launched its Data Center program and introduced new criteria for "Data Center readiness". This version is the official release for the revised Data Center Ready program.

Better Excel Automation is a Data Center approved app!

The followings have been done to comply with the revised development and testing requirements:

1. This version has been verified against the Atlassian's official Data Center technical checklist, which would identify potential non-cluster-safe parts in the app. All points are met.
2. This version has been tested in our internal AWS infrastructure which is using "c4.xlarge" type standard EC2 instances to host the Jira nodes. The testing confirmed that the app works correctly and consistently in clusters with 1, 2, 4 and 8 nodes (and anything in-between).
3. This version has been successfully tested with UPM 3.0, the new generation of the Universal Plugin Manager.

Upgrading from 3.2.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

3.2.0

This version utilizes multi-line input controls recently introduced to Atlassian UI kit.

Improvements

• Previous app versions only provided single-line input controls for the "To" and "Email body" fields of "Send Excel" action. Now resizable multi-line controls are available.

Upgrading from 3.1.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

3.1.0

Bye-bye "Excel Automation Plugin for Jira"! Hello "Better Excel Automation for Jira"!

In addition to some cosmetic changes, with this version we made a slight adjustment in the app's name due to the following reasons:

• The new name is better aligned with the app's name which it automates ("Better Excel Exporter for Jira", also renamed recently).
• The term "plugin" was replaced by Atlassian first with "add-on" and then with "app". We decided to get rid of this completely.

You may still see the old name popping up here and there, until we roll out the change everywhere. Thanks for the patience!

Upgrading from 3.0.2

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

3.0.2

This version is a simple maintenance release.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: Action configuration interface is displayed as a key-value pair editor with modern Automation or Automation Lite versions.

Upgrading from 3.0.1

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

3.0.1

This version is a simple maintenance release.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: When passing an empty issue list, XlsApi writes a warning to the log.

Upgrading from 3.0.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

3.0.0

Code Barrel took over the old Automation Plugin for Jira from Atlassian in March 2017 and renamed it to Automation Lite for Jira. Its latest release 3.0.0 is built from their next generation codebase, which is the same codebase that is the foundation of Code Barrel's paid automation app called Automation for Jira.

Support for both Automation Lite for Jira and Automation for Jira

Better Excel Automation for Jira supports both the old Automation Lite codebase and the new one, but you must be careful about the versions.

• If you use Automation Lite for Jira 3.0.0 or newer: use Better Excel Automation for Jira 3.0.0 (upgrade to this release!)
• If you use Automation for Jira 3.0.0 or newer: use Better Excel Automation for Jira 3.0.0 (upgrade to this release!)
• If you use Automation Lite for Jira pre-3.0.0: use Better Excel Automation for Jira 2.1.0 (do *not* upgrade to this release!)

Bugfixes

• Fixed: Emails created by the "Send Excel" action are sent even if emailing is disabled globally.

Upgrading from 2.1.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

2.1.0

Support for the column configuration of saved filters

Starting from this version, JQL Filter Trigger based automation rules with a JQL like "filter = 10100" or "filter = 'Pending Quotes'" automatically use the column configuration of the referenced saved filter. It was a very popular feature request that we delivered in this release.

To support this mechanism, automation action configuration parameters support new template variables and the Excel renderer receives new model variables. These newly introduced variables are related to the enclosing automation rule.

Note that it also requires Better Excel Exporter 2.4.0+.

Improvements

• "Save Excel" action automatically creates the missing parent directories for the Excel file (if necessary).

Bugfixes

• Fixed: "Attach Excel" creates issue attachments with the XLSX MIME type even if the template is XLSM or XLS.
• Fixed: "Send Excel" creates email attachments with the XLSX MIME type even if the template is XLSM or XLS.

Notable changes

• New intro video embedded in the Getting Started page: Automating Jira Excel exports with Better Excel Automation

Upgrading from 2.0.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

2.0.0

New action: "Attach Excel"

This new automation action allows generating Excel spreadsheets on a specific schedule or by triggered by issue events (created, updated, transitioned, work logged, etc.) and then attaching the resulted file to a Jira issue. The target issue can be the one which triggered the automation, or another one selected by a JQL query!

Support for Data Center

This release fully supports Jira Data Center, enabling automation in clustered Jira deployments.

More robust installation

Previous app versions may have had class-loading issues right after installation or version update. This release comes with rewamped OSGi dependency management, to prevent those issues.

Upgrading from 1.2.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

1.2.0

This is a compatibility release for Jira 7, also maintaining compatibility with the Jira 6 line.

Upgrading from 1.0.0

Just update your app version using UPM (Universal Plugin Manager, the app manager built in to Jira).

1.0.0

Just some days after releasing the stable version of Better Excel Exporter for Jira, the automation solution that integrates it to your business workflows is finally available!