How to protect your JIRA from viruses, missing files and performance issues

We have just released v2.0 of the Attachment Checker for JIRA plugin. The 2 key features introduced in this version are

virus scanning of uploaded attachments (JRA-8626)
restricting of attachments with duplicate filenames (JRA-2169)

While it is already possible to install an anti-virus scanner on the JIRA server, there are some implications:

Attachments are deleted unknowingly by the scanner without notifying the author that his file is infected. Other users will be unable to download the file later.
As mentioned in https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAKB/Anti-Virus+in+JIRA, some of the users have reported slowness with JIRA when anti-virus software is installed. This is because of the dramatic increase in disk IO and CPU usage as JIRA creates many temporary files. The Attachment Checker only scans the attachments once when they are just uploaded, thus addressing the security concerns.

The checking for duplicate filename improvement also helps to alert the user if there is already another attachment with the same filename. This solves the scenarios where a copy of the attachment has been uploaded before or the user forgot to rename the file to include the updated version number. This saves time on identifying the correct attachment to work with.

How to enable active collaboration with your wiki

What a wiki cannot do

Being a Confluence wiki user for several years, I have experienced the following difficulties:

I have to email people after posting pages/comments to get their acknowledgement/approval/comments
I got difficulty tracking which pages/comments that I need to reply after a few days elapsed

There is a lot of extra work duplicated between the wiki and emails. And when people conveniently reply to the email instead of posting to the page. The collaboration and knowledge leaves the wiki back into the emails.

As such, I observed that a lot of wikis are mostly used for passive collaboration like knowledge bases, FAQs and intranets.

However, Ad Hoc Workflows plugin for Confluence patches the gap and enables Confluence with the capabilities of:

assigning of tasks
defining workflows

How we use it

I will share one of the scenarios on how we use the Ad Hoc Workflows plugin to collaborative actively.

After each meeting, one of us will draft the meeting minutes into our wiki
Upon the completion of the draft, the author will assign the attendees a task to review the minutes
We will receive an email notification to inform us of the task with a link to the wiki page
Likewise, we can also see a list of our outstanding tasks on the dashboard for follow-up
We will go to the wiki page to make minor changes or post comments
Once everything is ok, we will mark the task as completed
The wiki page is then marked as approved once everyone has completed their reviewing tasks

Another example

It can also support more sophisticated workflows as shown in the video below.

For more information, check out Ad hoc Workflows’ official website

Confluence Mail Utilities 1.3 released

We have released the latest version of the Confluence Mail Utilities. Version 1.3 provides compatibility to Confluence 2.10.X.

For those who are new, Confluence Mail Utilities is a set of utilities to facilitate users to contribute content directly to Confluence via emails.

With this plugin, it removes the hassle to set up multiple email accounts to archive the emails in different spaces.

It also allows users to post blog entries directly from their emails without the need to log into Confluence. This will also encourage people to contribute information into Confluence without additional steps to copy and paste the information from their emails to Confluence.

For more detailed information on the Confluence Mail Utilities, check out Confluence Plugin Library.

Balsamiq Mockups Webinar

Balsamiq Mockups is a Confluence extension that allows application designers to create prototypes of their applications fast and easily.

This coming thursday (26th Feb), there is going to be a webinar where 2 end-users are going to share how Mockups for Confluence is helping their two hot startups develop killer products in a more agile, productive and fun way.

The webinar will start at 1am Singapore time and should run for about 30-45 minutes. Attendees can ask questions in real time and there will be a $100 discount code at the end of the webinar. The registration is free.