Features to be Discontinued in Upcoming YouTrack Releases

Natasha Katson

Hi everyone!

We previously published a roadmap for Q3&Q4 2019. As we move forward in different directions, we have to leave some functionality behind. In this blog post, we’ll tell you which features will no longer be supported in our upcoming releases.

Changes Scheduled for the YouTrack 2019.3 Release

Granular Notification Scheme

With the granular notification scheme, separate notifications are sent for each event type. Event types include issue creation, resolution, adding and removing tags, comments, votes, and spent time. For example, when a user changes two issue fields and simultaneously adds a comment, two notifications are sent: one for the updates to the fields and another for the comment. This creates a lot of email noise.

A few years back, we started using a digest notification scheme by default. The digest scheme combines multiple changes from a single author into one notification if the interval between each change is less than a minute. This approach reduces notification spam while keeping subscribers up to date.

In the YouTrack 2019.3 release, we will migrate all installations to the digest scheme and deactivate the listeners that generate granular notifications. There aren’t many installations that still use the granular scheme, so very few of you will be affected by this change.

The only people who might need to take special care are those of you who have customized the notification templates for the granular scheme. If you want to continue to send customized notifications, you’ll need to copy your customizations to the notification templates for the digest scheme. Should you require special assistance, please contact our support team.

Jabber Bot

With the Jabber Bot, you could search for issues and apply commands using instant messages in a Jabber client. Based on our statistics, there are only a few users who currently use this bot. Given its lack of popularity, we decided to discontinue support for this feature and focus on technologies that are becoming more widespread. As a replacement for the Jabber Bot, you can either set up an integration with Slack or install the YouTrack Integration Plugin in your JetBrains IDE.

RSS

YouTrack has traditionally supported RSS feeds for new issues and comments. RSS is an old technology that is used by a very small number of YouTrack users. As a replacement, we are currently working on an activity feed. This feed will be available in different forms, for example, as a widget.

Legacy workflows

Some time ago we announced our plan to discontinue support for workflows written in the MPS-based workflow editor. If you still have old workflows, we encourage you to rewrite them in JavaScript. If you haven’t worked with the new workflows yet, we recommend that you watch this webinar and read the Quick Start Guide. We also offer a web-based tool that you can use to convert your legacy workflows to JavaScript automatically.

Wiki Syntax

When we introduced markdown syntax support back in 2018.1, we decided to leave in the option to toggle between markdown and YouTrack wiki syntax. Since then, the wiki syntax has become less and less popular, and we have decided to discontinue support for it in future YouTrack versions. When this change is applied, markdown will become the only syntax available for new issues in the description and the comments sections. Text created using this wiki syntax before this change will still work the same, but it will not be possible to write new text using the syntax.

Changes Scheduled for YouTrack 2020.1

REST API Authentication using Login and Password

This authentication method is now deprecated in favor of permanent tokens, which are more secure and easier to use. If you have existing applications that are integrated with YouTrack using the REST API and rely on this authentication method, you should switch to using permanent tokens before upgrading to YouTrack to 2020.1.

Old REST API

As previously mentioned, we are supporting the current version of the YouTrack REST API as a release-quality feature. All of the REST methods that are currently available for public use are described in the documentation. We will continue to enhance this reference with more use cases and improve its utility.

After the YouTrack 2020.1 release, we will start to deprecate the endpoints and methods that were supported in the previous API. If you want to continue working with a client application that uses the old REST API, you will need to update its code to work with the current API.

We’ve planned these changes in an effort to make YouTrack more modern, streamlined, and secure. We sincerely appreciate your feedback, so please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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