Redmine 4 brings significant changes to the code, improved performance, and security. Let’s look under the hood!
A large portion of updates is related to the performance of the system and its functionality. The RedmineUP team takes you on tour along the most prominent updates in the new edition.
Major technical updates list:
- Individual and asynchronous email notifications
- Improved time log
- New syntax to include Issue ID, its subject and tracker
- Start date of the following issue takes into account non-working days
- LDAP authentification with non-standard characters
- More comfortable settings for issues/sub-issues and projects
- Enabled copying of attachments when copying the projects
- Fixed leakage of information on roadmap/version page, custom queries
Major usability updates list:
- Improved Calendar and Gantt view
- A bunch of updates for WIKI and attachments
- New translations
- Improved navigation — less scrolling and more visible buttons
- SEO-wise: easier to block crawling bots from accessing projects/wikis
- Improved text formatting
Now, let’s get into details of the changes from the major update released on 9th December.
Significant changes to projects and issues
The new release brings improvements to the administration, such as more informative error messages, easier way of copying and unarchiving projects or moving Issue related configuration into a separate tab.
Significant improvement is adding a new syntax that shows links to issues with the tracker name and subject of the tasks. By using ##IssueID, it renders in full: Bug #123: Can’t Save Changes to Project.
Users can now select subprojects on an issue creation form. Also, they can enable to display subprojects’ Issues on Issue Summary page.
Changes make performing operations more intuitive and accessible to perform.
New LDAP library allows using non-standard UTF-8 characters, such as Cyrillic, German umlauts, Spanish, French symbols from Spanish, and other languages. With updated translations, Redmine is easier to use by international teams.
Small, but useful changes are adding users export to CSV files and adding an option to re-activate archived project for admins in a click.
Individual and asynchronous email notifications
In the older versions, there is only one generic email for that. Finally, each user can have a separate notification email.
Emails are now sent asynchronously by default. It improves performance and eliminates the problem when one of the recipients’ email was wrong no one would get the notifications.
Email delivery now uses Rails ActiveJob. It’s a framework for creating, enqueueing and executing background jobs on a variety of backends. Admins of large Redmine systems should consider switching to persisted (ongoing) backend jobs, as the default solution can consume a noticeable part of in-memory queue resources.
Time logging got simplified
Update to Redmine makes it easier to report time and to brings clarity over the logs. The most crucial change adds a new column that shows when time entry was added.
To make time reporting easier, Redmine developers allowed to set the default columns and totals for the log list. Bulk edits of time entries are now possible — also small but nice detail–a cancel button in time reporting form, that returns us to the Issue lists.
Issues editable from Gantt and Calendar.
Gantt chart and calendar got context menus. It’d be now more comfortable to interact and update the issues in both views.
A resizable Gantt!
Yep, the Gannt panel is now re-sizeable. You can manually slide and adjust the width of a section with Issues and the main chart. It’s excellent news for teams using nested projects structure, or when your tasks have long subjects.
Better image, audio, video previews
The fourth version of Redmine brings improved image display in the form of a preview for transparent images, solving problems with image orientation and allowing setting the preview size with a CSS style. It also provides a preview for audio and video files. No more need to download a file to see what it contains!
Small interface improvements
First comes a bug fix for Issue notes — now after opening a link to a specific Issue note, it shows you the note and highlight it.
What’s new? Additional buttons for editing Issues, Wiki preview, and version comparison, as well as new tabs, to switch between file version/different commits. WIKI’s would be easier to copy and edit, as it’s now possible to bulk-delete Wiki attachments, and allowed to copy Wiki attachments when copying projects
A nice touch is a “My activities section” added to My page Dashboard.
New Ruby and Rails brings a smoother performance
Redmine 4 uses the latest Rails version 5.2.2 released at the beginning of December. The supported Ruby version has also changed, and the new release requires 2.2.2 or higher while supporting 2.3–2.5.
Complete Redmine 4 changelog
If you’d like to see a complete changelog for Redmine 4.0, follow the link. It’ll guide you to the list of all new features, updates, and patches in the new version.
How / Where to test Redmine 4?
Unfortunately, the Redmine demo instance available at the Redmine.org is quite old (dating 2014). However, we got you back! :)RedmineUP Team prepared a Redmine Demo server running on 4.0.1, so you can play around with it.
Wanna upgrade? Plan and Test first
The Redmine update improves application performance and makes work more convenient. Although, don’t jump to open water. Be aware of potential downsides. If you are using Redmine with our plugins, you are safe. They’re compatible new Redmine already. However, if you are using other plugins, it’s probable that they can cause conflict or errors in your Redmine.
Keep in mind, that with multiple potential environment configurations, database, Ruby and Rails versions, your team might encounter problems with older/less-popular modules, system performance, configuring new backend jobs and so on.
We recommend creating a sandbox server and migrating your system piece-by-piece. After migration of each part, perform a test to check its compatibility. If you’re Redmine is hosted on shared hosting, such as Digital Ocean, Bitnami or other, it might be problematic.
How to securely perform the upgrade /update/ migration?
Spoiler alert (and disclosure): Hire a team of professionals. We offer a Redmine upgrade/migration services. Such operations are usually completed within one business day, and performed in suitable time for your team, independent of your timezone.
Our team also provides Redmine maintenance services. It covers caring for application performance, its support, and maintenance, as well as periodical Redmine and plugins updates. Additionally, we support teams with consultations for the best Redmine configuration and use.
The easiest way to get Redmine 4? Move to Cloud
You should also consider migrating to a cloud-hosted version of Redmine, where you work on an automatically updated version of the Redmine with plugins and maintenance included. If you’re interested in migrating a self-hosted Redmine to a Cloud, at this page, we listed the details.
Disclaimer: the post appeared originally on RedmineUP Blog. Here you see an updated and polished version of it.
