What’s new in Eficode ROOT: August 2023

Customize your experience with an all-new sidebar

In response to the feedback given by the community, GitLab has given us a brand new user experience. As you can see, everything has been shifted to the left, with the search bar now being replaced with a clickable icon. 

Group view with new UI

At the project level, this new update to GitLab enables us to pin our favorite topics to the sidebar for easier access

Before pinning the pipelines, you can see we have issues and merge requests pinned by default.

Here is the same sidebar view with pipelines pinned for easier access. Now, you won’t have to search for that one menu you use under a multitude of menus. 

The last change included in this update is the icon on the top-left that allows you to hide the sidebar. If you can’t find your sidebar, the icon to show it will always be in the top-left corner.

With all these changes to the UI, it can be scary for some users to navigate the new layout. For any users struggling with this update, GitLab has enabled a feature to disable the per-user level if you’re still getting used to the new UI.

A brand-new rich text editor

We also got a brand new editor for the rich text editor, which now provides you with the means of writing better issue descriptions and merging comments, fostering better communication through checkboxes and lists without the need for users to understand markdown.

Don’t worry; the markdown editor hasn’t been removed. The new rich text editor enables GitLab to be used by everyone within the organization. 

More done with fewer clicks

The latest version of GitLab allows you to open the search window and use new quick key features to simplify the most common tasks you do in GitLab, enabling you to avoid clicking around the GitLab UI and focus on the work at hand.

Currently, the following features are available for you to use:

> - Create a new object or find a menu item

@ - Search for a user

: - Search for a project

/ - Search for project files in the default repository branch

All of these changes are just the tip of the iceberg. For a more comprehensive overview of all the changes GitLab 16.1 brings, check out the GitLab 16.1 release announcement.

Microsoft Graph API for incoming emails has finally arrived

Ever since Microsoft announced their shift from “legacy” mail protocols in favor of more robust authentication methods for Outlook, we’ve been waiting a long time for Atlassian products to support such transition. This feature enables you to create application registration in Azure AD for incoming mail from Jira and integrate it into the service with access keys that rotate based on a set schedule. 

NOTE: For customers wanting to use this feature, it still requires application access. No delegated access from the Azure AD end is yet supported. 

Automate your sprints

You know that whole dance of how the person in charge of sprints goes on holiday, and nobody remembers to press buttons to close and start a sprint, meaning somebody else has to press the button in their place? 

In the latest update for Jira, you can automatically start and end sprints, enabling you to focus on developing the agreed backlog without fighting against Jira.

Improved comments and approvals

At long last, we can now finally comment and add attachments to Jira Service Management approvals. Not only that, but you can now pin Jira comments, making finding that one crucial topic much more straightforward.

These changes would’ve been useful in certain scenarios (like pinning a comment where a workaround was already found).

Additionally, Jira Service Management approvals sometimes required evidence on why we approved it. But now, with comments and attachments being added, this process has become a lot easier.

If you would like the full list of improvements and bug fixes, you can find them here. 

Save money by controlling licenses

With Confluence 8, we can now finally track and manage license usage better, allowing you to see the last login of users and get a direct link from the license page to the list of users consuming the license. This change enables you to have more effective tracking of licenses from the UI.

We’ve done this directly from the database for years now. But this is a great change for our customers, as now your admin can control licenses and review users by using the license straight from the UI.

Emojis are finally here

During a retrospective or a long document, you can express yourself more clearly without the need of setting up an emoji keyboard. Confluence now supports emojis, allowing you to show your colleagues how you felt during the project in a retrospective. These are easily accessible by typing in : and selecting the emoji you want. 

Master copy spaces more effectively

Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve been sitting on an amazing knowledge base or project template and thought “How do I get this out everywhere in the organization?”. Well, we have some good news for you. The new copy spaces brought by Confluence 8 have massively improved the copy space experience. The new system isn’t perfect, but it's a huge upgrade from the previous copy space functionality.

You’ll find this new functionality added to Confluence after August, under the space admin settings window. 

Click here to read a detailed list of changes coming to Confluence 8.

Scriptrunner for Confluence and Jira is moving to Groovy 4

In this upgrade, we have a breaking change coming your way: Scriptrunner is moving from Groovy 3 to Groovy 4.

NOTE: This change is in preparation for the latest JDK movement, as Groovy 3 is no longer available in newer versions of Java.

This change will bring a number of positive additions you can now use, such as:

• Sealed types to help you prevent accidental extension and inheritance of certain types in your code.
• Switch expressions, which, unlike switch statements, are optimized for branches that can do one case and break out rather than go through the rest of the tree. 
• Range enhancements to support ranges open to the left. 
• Better annotations for generic types. 

Here are the breaking changes that are most likely to affect you:

Changes to the resolution of properties (with both a Getter and Issuer returning different types)

From Groovy 4, this should be written as:

class GetterIsser {

  String getSomething() { 'yes' }

  boolean isSomething() { false }

}

def myClass = new GetterIsser()

myClass.getSomething() // will return 'yes'

Read more about the Groovy 4 changes and what has changed in Scriptrunner here.

What is Jfrog Curation?

Jfrog Curation enables you to track the open-source packages you download and control them more effectively. The aim here is to prevent harmful packages from getting into the pipelines. 

Jfrog Curation protects untrusted packages and safeguards your software against supply chain attacks. Curation allows you to create automated policies to block packages with known vulnerabilities, malicious code, operational risk, or license compliance issues before reaching your Jfrog system. 

Click the link here to find out what else has changed in Jfrog.

GitHub Enterprise Server gets even better at saying no

GitHub Enterprise Server gets an upgrade to version 3.9, which includes tons of features and improvements for those of us using GitHub Advanced Security. But the main improvements to our Github Enterprise server users are better push protection and admins being able to force a GitHub pipeline to run through, regardless of limitations.

Take a deeper dive into the details of the update in the full release notes.

The latest in Sonarqube

Version 10.1.0.73491 of Sonarqube brings with it some minor improvements to your developers’ experience, mainly by improving on the SCIM support that was introduced earlier. For C# developers, Sonarqube is dropping support for C# 4.6.2 and lower in this latest version.

We know Microsoft still offers upgrades until 2027, but now might be the time to upgrade your C# core. 

The full upgrade release notes for the latest Sonarqubes version can be found here.

Updated Eficode ROOT Team Management

Version 2.13, included in our August release, delivers enhancements on how companies using SSO and local users are handled.

The full release notes of all Eficode ROOT Team Management versions can be found on the Eficode ROOT documentation site at docs.eficode.io. 

Core and plugin revision for Jenkins LTS

Jenkins LTS Core gets a bump to version 2.401.2 LTS, with end-of-life tracking for the Operating System Jenkins is running on. 

There’s also the usual round of plugin updates, which (as always) tend to differ from Jenkins to Jenkins, depending on the specific configuration of your very own Eficode ROOT Jenkins deployment. If you’re interested, your friendly Eficode ROOT Support team can shed some light on the nitty-gritty specifics of the updates applicable to your instance.

As always, if we detect potentially problematic or breaking changes affecting your Jenkins, we’ll naturally let you know beforehand.