JIRA Client 1.0 Beta 1 is now available for download. JIRA Client is a desktop client for Atlassian JIRA issue tracking system. It offers a time-saving, interactive user interface and also allows to work with issues while being offline. It also integrates with IntelliJ IDEA using TrackLink plug-in and allows to link code with issues and search for these links. Key features: - Offline mode with later synchronization; - Three-pane main window, which shows filters with counters, a list of issues and details of a selected issue - all on the same page; - Query builder, which allows to build any combination of filters; - Query counters, which immediately show how many issues satisfy any given filter. To try the product, download JIRA Client and request free evaluation key. JIRA Client is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X platforms. JIRA Client is free for participants of established open-source projects. JIRA Client pricing for commercial use will be announced soon. We will offer personal, corporate single-user, corporate floating and academic licenses. To stay in touch, please subscribe to our announcements forum. Igor Sereda ALM Works Links: - Screenshots - Download - Request free evaluation license - Detailed feature list - Discussion forum

It is worth to mention that for those who using Eclipse, there is a free JIRA integration available in Mylar plugin. It also provides offline support, background synchronization, query editor, integration with Search view and with Mylar's Task List and task context management. You can also access several issue tracking, such as JIRA, Bugzilla, Trac as well as receiving tasks in the IDE using Web connector from Mantis, OTRS, SourceForge, IssueZilla (java.net, tigris.org), ChangeLogic, Google code hosting and other issue tracking repositories with web UI. At the moment, JIRA integration may not be as rich as in JIRA Client, but it is evolving and open for community contributions. For those who are unfamiliar with Mylar, I recommend to watch webinar Mylar: A Task Focused UI for Eclipse with Mylar's project lead Mik Kersten.

I agree Mylar is a fine product, and well worth mentioning. It is focused though, to my mind, on a different matter - providing you with a relevant context for your current task. It is a great idea, to which integration with JIRA is only a means of getting that relevant information. JIRA Client, on the other hand, is a dedicated - guess what - client for JIRA, so we are focusing on things that could be done better in a GUI application, things that are not quite feasible today in a web app even with AJAX and so on. That makes a lot of sense for any CRUD application, and for the one that needs a "reading" from the user even more.

I agree Mylar is a fine product, and well worth mentioning. It is focused though, to my mind, on a different matter - providing you with a relevant context for your current task. It is a great idea, to which integration with JIRA is only a means of getting that relevant information.

Actually, there is another thing to keep in mind. Developers who are using IDE to work on issues, need very limited subset of the issue tracker features. So, Mylar's goal is to support that subset. Another thing that unless you have one-man shop, developer don't use much the planning features in the issue tracker, and that job is delegated to the project lead or other manager, and those folks often not using IDEs and happy with the web UI.

JIRA Client, on the other hand, is a dedicated - guess what - client for JIRA, so we are focusing on things that could be done better in a GUI application, things that are not quite feasible today in a web app even with AJAX and so on. That makes a lot of sense for any CRUD application, and for the one that needs a "reading" from the user even more.

I know what you mean and that probably was valid point few years ago. Novadays JIRA folks will probably disagree with you. Modern AJAX apps are getting really close to rich standalone UI and getting even better every day. Some of their features is really hard to match in the rich UI, such as availability, no need for client installation or update, hyperlinking everywhere, easy integration with other online services, etc.

those folks [project lead, manager] often not using IDEs and happy with the web UI.

I am not sure this is completely true. I have heard many managers complain about the requirement to be always connected to a http server just to review some issues/incident/problem cases especially when they wish to work remote at a customer site or on the road.

Modern AJAX apps are getting really close to rich standalone UI and getting even better every day

From my usage this is not the case. Unless you are talking about the "bare bones" type of standalone UI that could easily be replaced. I know of many companies that moved away from performance management vendor solutions that were Web based because of the performance issues, both in terms of response time and number of clicks, inherent in these solutions themselves. By the way what could be more "available" than having the data on the machine itself. The other points or all debatable and can be implemented in a Java client application just as easy as in a Java server application acting as a Java client to another online service. One good thing thing about web applications is that because of limited interactivity designers are forced to focus on the key use cases and work flows. Great initially but after a while a possible hindrance to more complex and knowledge creation activities. Regards, William Louth JXInsight Product Architect CTO, JInspired "Java EE tuning, testing, tracing, and monitoring with JXInsight" http://www.jinspired.com

The interface for JIRA contains little in the way of AJAX richness - something that I hope will change - I find that the current web interface is a bit slow and clunky (i.e. lots of clicks), especially when bulk editing issues. Was disappointed not to find much of an improvement in the desktop JIRA client. Where is the 'drag-and-drop issues onto a new version' type of functionality?

Was disappointed not to find much of an improvement in the desktop JIRA client. Where is the 'drag-and-drop issues onto a new version' type of functionality?

It's in our plans :) As of version 1.0, we are going to release a product, which has three major selling points: 1) offline use, 2) more powerful filters + sub-queries + counters, 3) issue browsing/triage with multiple tabs. We already planned a feature to "move issues into a query", i.e. change the issue so it satisfies a filter. What you mention is a particular case of this feature. So please check back when we have a newer version. Cheers, Igor

It would be far more better i you developed this application on top of netbeans platform.

Hi Igor, I fully support the idea of having a rich client for Jira for work-intensive planning tasks. I once tried to use Jira directly for a sprint planning and it was simply too tedious. Jiraclient could be an option here. I also do support the idea of integrating with IDEs such as Eclipse. As additional point to what has been discussed, it is a great option to enhance Jira with additional client-side functionality. I have noticed that you have some sort of hierarchy support but could not enable it. Can you provide me with some pointers? There seems to be a closed Jira issue w.r.t. showing task subtask relations, but I can't find it in the UI. Cheers, André

... actually, I also did not find a way to edit work estimates ... maybe I am a bit blind. Cheers, André

Hi André, Current JIRA Client version has quite a few limitations yet. Time tracking is not yet supported as well as sub-tasks. The full list of unsupported stuff is available at this page: http://almworks.com/jiraclient/limitations.html We understand this is a show-stopper for many prospective users, and we'll have a lot more coverage in version 1.1. The hierarchy view can currently show linked issues in a tree. For example, you can place duplicates under the original issue. When sub-tasks are supported, it will be possible to view them in a hierarchy also. Kind regards, Igor

I just wanted to add that's it's great to see ALMWorks' JIRA client providing the Swing-based platfrom the benefits that Mylar's JIRA Connector provides the Eclipse platfrom. Especially in the area of IDE integration, we have been seeing substantial benefits in what a rich client can do over the Web UI, such as seamlessly linking between source code references in a JIRA issue and the IDE's editor, or dragging a file straight from an IDE view in order to attach it to a bug. And as Igor points out, having offline access to the issue tracker is a pretty huge deal that I can't imagine working without anymore. Since this seems to be a common misconception, I should also point out that Mylar's Task List is not limited to IDE installs of Elcipse, and thanks to the matic of OSGi can already be used as a standalone rich client, is already being used by many as a standalone rich client: http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Mylar_User_Guide#Rich_Task_List_Install Even though we're targeting two different platfroms, what I'm hoping that we can collaborate on in the future is headless Java APIs for accessing issue trackers such as Bugzilla and JIRA. To help enable this reason we have kept Mylar's core connectors de-coupled from the Eclipse UI: http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Mylar_Architecture -- Mik Kersten, Mylar Project Lead, http://eclipse.org/mylar