2017
Annu
While we have released over 40 iterations of the server version of UpRaise, we had failed to document the elaborate release notes at a singular place. From this release on, our endeavor will be to post all the important information surrounding the release version here.
Version - 3.6
Release date - Jan 11, 2017
Tech
UpRaise Onboarding on Installation - Up until now, there was a somewhat twisted procedure to get you started. One had to configure an UpRaise admin, who in turn had to set things up by either looking at the documentation or playing around with administration screens. This has given way to an elaborate onboarding wizard which takes the JIRA administrator through a multi-step setup process. Along the way end-user also gets lot of additional information in the form of help text & contextual links to make informed decisions. Do note that the onboarding wizard appears only on a fresh installation.
New feature
Ability to Enable/Disable Features - UpRaise has a diverse client base, each one with its own peculiar needs. One of the frequent demands was letting the UpRaise admin choose what features to use. e.g. you may want to use OKRs but not Continuous feedback or performance reviews. Now whatever your choice is, you have the capability to switch on/off features. The top menu & left-hand navigation will appear accordingly.
Ability to Create & Align an Objective from Hierarchy View - If you've already grown accustomed to the hierarchy view of OKRs in UpRaise, this neat enhancement will make you fall in love with it. You can create the entire hierarchy of objectives - right from a company down to the team & individual while remaining in the hierarchy view. The easiest way to define OKR goals in the top to bottom manner.
Actions on KRs in List View - One of the major advantages of having OKRs within JIRA is that now they are a part of your routine. Similarly, we want you to keep the progress updated & reduce the friction in doing so through a number of UX enhancements. This belongs to one of those efforts. Ability to take actions on KRs was already there in the thumbnail view, same has been extended to the list view as well.
Quick Access to Vital Actions - From all the UpRaise screens, now you can Give & Request Feedback, Start a conversation or even quickly punch in progress on an OKR. Everything is just right in front of you.
Version 3.6.1
Release date - Jan 25, 2017
New feature
Responsible HR User in Performance Review Template - Earlier HR-related questions were available to be answered by all UpRaise Administrators. Even then it wasn't very clear how the overall process flowed. Now every distributed form (of base template Performance review), has one UpRaise administrator explicitly called out. This way, only that UpRaise admin has access to the HR related questions. Other UpRaise Admins can only view. Do note that this Responsible HR user can be modified so that the responsibility of completing the form can be assigned to another UpRaise admin.
Further Enhancements in OKR Grading - Now OKRs can be graded by multiple people, not only owner. This resolves a long-awaited request from teams who wanted owner of the OKR and the direct manager to be able to grade OKRs and record assessments.
Review Forms UI Cleanup - Review forms are now Forms. We made the module completely generic, so when we introduce some default templates in the next release - all of it comes together nicely. (Hint - Just imagine being able to do Project Feedback, Performance Reviews, Culture Surveys, One on ones etc. all within UpRaise)
Objective cycle status streamlining - Now UpRaise administrators are notified of any automated status changes in the objective cycle. As well as in case of a cycle to be closed, they are informed about the status of corresponding objectives.
Align Objectives from Different Cycles - Until now system allowed aligning of objectives only if they belonged to the same cycle. Now that validation is removed & one can align objectives from different cycles.
Objective Status in Hierarchy View - We heard you. Now the objective status is visible even within Hierarchy view.
Stopped Weekly Summary Emails - We've suppressed weekly summary emails. These will be made available once you have the ability to stop them at the instance as well as user level.
Tech Debt - Made action class names unique. Thus the conflicts that used to break either UpRaise or some other addon shouldn't happen anymore because of UpRaise.
Version 3.6.2
Release date - Feb 9, 2017
Tech
Data Centre Compatibility - UpRaise is now data center compatible.
New feature
Ability to Assign Score to Questions in Templates - Certain question types now allow you to assign scores. This becomes increasingly helpful as we further develop Review Form summaries, question weightage etc.
Template Preview - Up until now, one had to distribute a template in order to view the questions. Now that changes, you can quickly preview the questions in just a couple of clicks.
Add JIRA Issue as KR Dialog Box - Add JIRA issue as KR box had a couple of shortcomings, namely - the enter action didn't work & JQL autosuggest wasn't in place. In this release, we've modified the dialog box so the enter action now invokes the same action as a click on 'search'. JQL autosuggest will be implemented in the upcoming sprints.
Version 3.6.3
Release date - Feb 23, 2017
New feature
Weightage for Scored Question in Forms - UpRaise now allows assigning weightage to questions that can be scored. In the upcoming weeks, we will start releasing reports based on the scoring & weightage.
Project Restrictions Configurations - Total control over issues from what projects can be used in continuous feedback & OKRs. Similarly, the UpRaise panel displayed on issue detail page can be configured from these settings.
In-app Messenger - Reach out to us quickly from within the app. Our customer success team will help you out in getting up n running & you'd have quick responses to all your feature requests.
Version 3.6.3
Release date - Mar 6, 2017
Tech
Performance Optimization Review Forms - View Responses page was taking some time to load for forms with higher distribution user count. This is now addressed by further optimizing the performance of the review forms entities.
Minor UI Fix in Project Restrictions - A bug that made some of the project restriction settings disappear from the UI is fixed.
Version 3.6.4
Release date - Mar 21, 2017
New feature
Print Review Forms - As requested by many of you, ability to print review forms was released in the 3.6.4 version. As of now, the forms can be printed one by one. We will soon be releasing the feature that will allow bulk exporting/printing of review forms.
Filters on Templates & Distributions - UpRaise admin facing screens Templates & Distributions are enhanced for better organizing & searching the data. Now, these screens allow searching of data based on filters applied.
Team Levels introduced for further classifying team OKRs - Now each of the team can associated with a level, which will help you further drill down Team level OKRs. For example, if you have Departments, Divisions, Teams - just add a corresponding level against each of the team names. On Team OKRs page, you will be able to filter out the OKRs using this level. This will make it easy to look at all 'Department OKRs', 'Division OKRs' etc.
@ mention related performance issue fixes - Earlier while using the mentions in OKRs & Feedback, system used to retrieve all the UpRaise users slowing things down. Now, this is improved to make sure only relevant & limited set of users are returned.
Display associated KR against a comment - At the time of punch in/progress updates comments are added against certain KRs. Now within the comments, this association is clearly laid out. Earlier one had to make use of history to figure out which comment belonged to which KR.
Default filters made empty in Team & Individual OKRs - To avoid filtering OKRs based on active objective cycle, default filters are now modified to display all OKRs except Abandoned & Closed ones.
Tech
Atlassian cache implementation for User's role check - To further optimize the performance, Atlassian cache is implemented for checking user's role. This should bring down the page rendering time.
Version 3.6.4.1
Release date - Mar 30, 2017
New feature
My Forms performance improvement - One of the customers reported some latency is loading 'My Forms' with one specific user. We figured a few ways the speed of page rendering can be optimized.
Bugs
Date issue - For some customers, the system used to save the date always incorrectly. Setting it one day behind what actually was required e.g. if an objective cycle is supposed to end on 31st March & even if user-entered value as 31st March, the date will be stored as 30th March. This was happening because of some incorrect logic in timezone handling.
Version 3.6.5
Release date - Apr 24, 2017
New feature
Forms Reporting in Beta - Reporting is now available in Beta. Although available only for forms now, we are going to expand this into OKR & Continuous Feedback reporting. Aggregation & Comparison view of form responses are the ones available in this upgrade.
Additional Workflow for Performance Review Base Template - There were a number of requests for allowing team members & reviewers to complete responses in parallel. This is now available via additional workflow for the performance review base template.
Distribution Users Bulk Add - Streamlined the bulk user addition during form distribution.
Improvements in Forms Listing - Minor UI & UX improvements on Form listing pages.
Version 3.6.5.1
Release date - May 3, 2017
New feature
HRMS Sync - With this upgrade, we are releasing the HRMS connector for user data sync. Just configure the SFTP & start generating record change reports for user data. UpRaise will automatically update records from these files. For more details, get in touch with upraise-support(at)amoeboids(dot)com
Bugs
Bug Fixes - An issue that caused metric KR progress % to display 0 in hierarchy view is fixed.
Version 3.6.6
Release date - May 11, 2017
New feature
Roles Enhancement - A new role SuperAdmin is now available. Super administrator, has a sort of god view into UpRaise. Irrespective of whether OKRs, Continuous feedback or Review forms are shared with them, super administrators will always be able to view these. In this release, Super Admin role only works with OKRs. In the upcoming releases, it will be extended to continuous feedback & reviews.
Filters available as URL query parameters - Earlier sharing URL of OKR views didn't help much as the filters had to be set manually. Now filters are available within the URL. This makes it easier to bookmark URLs for quick access.
OKR Filters are remembered by the system - UpRaise now remembers the last filters used by each user & applies them when that user is back to the OKR browsing pages.
Epics are handled uniquely when added as KRs - When epics are added to objectives as Key Results, unique handling of progress comes into play. UpRaise first checks, if there are any 'issues contained within the epic' & then depending on each one's resolution the epic progress is calculated. e.g. if 3 out of 5 issues contained within that epic are complete, epic progress is treated as 60%
if there are no issues within the epic, resolution of the epic will be used to calculate progress (this will of course be binary, either 0% or 100%)
Version 3.6.6
Release date - May 30, 2017
JIRA Issue Search Pop-up Improvements - The pop-up where JIRA issues are added as key results is now improved & the process is split into two steps. First for selecting the issues & 2nd for reviewing what is being added. Earlier limitation of only 10 results showing in the pop-up is done away with by introducing pagination in the first step. With this release, one can add as many JIRA issues in one go as required.
Order KRs within an Objective - Ability to set priority for key results by way of organizing them sequentially was one of the long-standing requests. Now there is this possibility by using drag n drop at any of the following places - List view, Thumbnail view & Detail view. Do note that the ability to drag n drop is available only to users who have edit access to the objective.
Super Admin Role Enhancements - Some of the missing pieces from super admin role implementation are completed with this release. Super admin now has access to the in-app messenger. Also, the insight view page is modified to show all data to a super admin.
Bugs
Objective Detail Page in the Same Tab - Minor bug where the objective detail page was being opened in a new tab is quashed.
User Search Failed if JIRA Username was Modified - There was one specific issue where some of the users, who were already part of UpRaise company directory but searching them returned empty results. This used to happen for users whose JIRA username was modified. This is now taken care of.
Version 3.6.7.1
Release date - Jun 15, 2017
New Feature
Pagination on Teams Listing Page - If you have lots of teams in your company, it is now easy to browse them with the help of pagination.
Insight View Filter by Feedback Creator - As many of you requested, now insight view lets you filter feedback based on who created them.
Bulk User Selector - Now user selection is easy via bulk user selector, available on insight view page.
Bugs
Links Within Emails Fixed - Couple of email templates had broken links, that now is fixed.
Decimal/Comma Issue Related to Locale Fixed - Some of the European locales were creating issues when progress percentage had a decimal. Fixed.
Default Objective Labels Removed - On fresh installations, the default objective labels are no more created
Version 3.6.7.2
Release date - Jun 19, 2017
Bugs
Critical Bug Fix - In the last release (3.6.7.1) a new bug was introduced that updated anyone's role to 'user' when that entry was modified from company directory. e.g. even if you updated designation of a user, it would update his role to 'user' irrespective of what it was before. That erratic behavior is now fixed.
Version 3.6.7.3
Release date - Jun 22, 2017
Bugs
Hierarchy View Loading Time - Since the introduction of 'expand all' loading time for OKR hierarchy view became abysmally slow for large instances. We've taken out that functionality & the page now loads normally.
Exception in User Delete Listener - An exception was reported in the user update listener. Now handled.
Version 3.6.8
Release date - Jul 5, 2017
New Feature
JIRA Group-based UpRaise Access - Managing UpRaise access is easier than ever with JIRA group-based setting. All the existing installations will be automatically migrated to All Users (if the limited rollout was turned off) or User Based Access (if limited roll-out was turned on). With JIRA group-based access, one can set default as enabled/disabled for all groups & then set exceptions.
Ability to Share an Objective with Teams - One of the most requested features was the ability to share an objective with one or more teams rather than individual users. These will be implied permissions, meaning users will have access based on their association with the team/s.
Ability to Clone, Move & Carry Forward Objectives - You can now easily Clone, Move & Carry forward objectives from one cycle to the other. Carry forward is a special action that allows you to continue working on an OKR if it remained incomplete in the previous cycle & still is important enough to be worked upon.
Ability to Export OKRs - One can now export OKRs in excel from the OKR pages. It allows you to select which level of OKR you want to export & then sends out the export as an attachment to an email.
Tech
Oracle DB Compatibility - Some of the features were breaking on Oracle DB. That is now fixed.
Version 3.6.8.1
Release date - Jul 26, 2017
New Feature
User Profile & Team Changes Are Audited - Any changes that now happen to a user's profile as well as team's attributes, are now tracked in the database. In the coming releases, we will start making use of these data points in different features.
My Forms - My forms page is now completely redesigned with the introduction of quick filters. Soon we will introduce ability to configure these quick filters.
User Profile Page in Company Directory - As the first step towards building out the entire user-facing company directory, we are releasing the user profile page. Now all of the user display name links on UpRaise pages, take you to the user profile page in UpRaise. This page at the moment lists profile attributes along with OKRs (active, scheduled & past).
Enhancements in Clone, Move & Carry Forward Actions - Incorporating the first round of feedback from end-users, these actions are more useful than the first release.
Tech
Evaluation License Limitations - Evaluation license can only create a certain number of objectives & a certain number of template distributions.
Version 3.6.8.2
Release date - Aug 8, 2017
New Feature
KR Detail View - Key results now have a dedicated detail page of their own, except JIRA issues. Comments, punch-ins, history all are maintained separately for Objectives & Key results.
UpRaise Panel on Issue Detail Page - UpRaise panel within issue detail page is redesigned & now offers quick access to link that issue as a key result.
Continuous Feedback on User Profile Page - Newly designed User profile page now also displays continuous feedback.
Objective Cycle Filter in OKR Hierarchy View - To help easily navigate the OKR hierarchy view, there is now objective cycle filter.
Last Punch-in Date - Visual cues are displayed within the hierarchy view to show when an OKR was recently progressed.
Version 3.6.9
Release date - Aug 24, 2017
New Feature
Drift Messenger Removed - In-app support messenger removed from the application. It will be brought back along with a privacy agreement.
All OKR in Place of My OKRs - For many of you, existence of My OKRs & Individual OKRs side by side was confusing. We got rid of the confusion by introducing All OKRs.
OKR Export Enhancements - OKR exports are now enhanced with additional information about OKRs. Additionally, the export happens immediately via browser rather than via email.
Attachments to OKRs - It is now possible to attach files to both, objectives as well as key results.
Company Directory for Non-admins - Now it is possible to publish company directory to non-admin users.
Bugs
Additional Issue Update Events Handled - In the case of some custom workflows, UpRaise did not listen to issue close or issue update events. That is now taken care of.
Minor bug fixes.
Version 3.7
Release date - Sep 12, 2017
New Feature
Team Listing & Profile - Pages to list teams & team profiles are now available. Team profile page also lists team OKRs - Active, Scheduled & Past ones.
Usage Report - Usage report is now available to help administrators gauge user & feature level adoption of UpRaise.
Version 3.7.0.1
Release date - Sep 20, 2017
Bugs
HRMS sync bug was introduced in the last release which led to teams being updated to empty. That issue is now resolved.
Version 3.7.1
Release date - Sep 29, 2017
New Feature
REST APIs - We have started rolling out REST APIs. First in the lot is the OKRs module. REST APIs are now available to search, retrieve details & update progress of OKRs. These are still in Beta. We will soon be rolling out other features via REST APIs.
Global Search - UpRaise global search box now allows finding OKRs, Users & Teams.
Gadgets & Reports - Objective cycle status & compliance reports are now available.
Version 3.7.2
Release date - Oct 13, 2017
New Feature
Average scores from forms are now displayed on 'View Responses' as well as 'My Forms' page
Ability to delete objective cycles irrespective of the status
Easy access to call to actions
Bugs
Minor bug fixes
Version 3.7.3
Release date - Nov 9, 2017
New Feature
Objective cycle attributes are cleaned up for better usability. Created till date & Edited till date parameters are not available anymore.
Consequentially, users can now add OKRs in the past as well.
View response page now shows only the filters that are applicable to the corresponding template's workflow. This enhances the filtering experience for UpRaise admin & super admins.
Distribute template UI is enhanced for better usability.
Review forms activities are now shown within the form view.
My forms pages are enhanced via better sorting & addition of historical filter. Any form that is past due 6+ weeks, will be automatically marked as historical.
It is now possible to set up automated reminders while distributing a form. On the set date, system will remind form assignee if the process is not complete.
Ability to watch a key result, similar to an objective.
Bugs
Review form status colors were not in sync with the lozenge colors, which is now fixed.
Version 3.7.3.1
Release date - Nov 10, 2017
Bugs
Daily job frequency was incorrectly released in the last version. The job ran more frequently than necessary. Although it did not have any functional impact, we would recommend upgrading to this version.
Version 3.7.4
Release date - Nov 10, 2017
New Feature
Automated KR Reminders
One of the long-standing requests was automated reminders to key result owners. The intention is to increase OKR adoption & keep the progress updated for as much duration as possible.
One can now set up KR reminders from key results detail page. These emails are dispatched to the KR owners & are completely configurable.
360 Review Base Template
360 review base template for performance reviews now incorporates lot of feedback points we received in the past month or so. Reporting around this template will be available in the upcoming release.
Print Review Form Prints Form History
In addition to the form questions & answers, printing a review form also prints the entire form history.
Bugs
Minor bug fixes