18 June 2019
The Xray team is proud to announce the release of Xray 3.4.0.
The main goal for this version is to provide a set of features and improvements to support the basics of Risk-Based Testing. This testing strategy allows organizations to focus their testing and prioritize existing tests based on the assessed risk level, which depends on the likelihood and impact of failure.
As part of our continuous improvement, more performance improvements have also been included in this version.
Discover the key features below. 
Upgrading Xray to 3.4.x
Upgrading from versions < 3.2.0
If you are upgrading from a version lower than 3.2, this implies that an upgrade task will run to pre-calculate historical data. This action is a one time action and it will run in the background so that Xray is still available during the upgrade. A re-index operation of your Jira instance is required so that the internal data becomes searchable and usable by Xray.
Upgrading from versions >= 3.2.x
If you are upgrading from v3.2.x or v3.3.x to v3.4.y, you must recalculate data in the Xray configuration section → Custom Fields. This recalculation is necessary because of the huge improvement in the amount of data that Xray needs to add to the table and to Lucene indexes.
Downgrading from Xray 3.4.x
Downgrading from Xray 3.4.x to a version less than 3.2.0 implies that you must perform a re-index afterwards. This is because from Xray 3.2.0 onwards, the content and format of what Xray indexes has changed.
Overall Coverage Gadget
Some configuration parameters for this gadget where modified as a result of supporting multiple projects whenever using a saved filter as source. It is possible that some users will get errors on the gadget after downgrading from 3.4.x. If this happens, please edit the configuration to ensure the gadget is properly configured.
Release highlights
Risk-Based Testing
Xray v3.4 adds a set of features that enable the basics of Risk-Based Testing (RBT); more about these enabling features ahead.
As always, we made it flexible enough so you can implement RBT the way you want. Thus, you may need to set up some custom fields related to RBT. For this, you may use Jira built-in capabilities or use a customization app to help you. If you're using a "compatible" Risk Management related app, you may also take advantage of it.
To make it simpler, we've included detailed setup instructions in our documentation.
Learn more here.
Revamped Xray Issue Picker Dialog 
The issue picker dialog used to associate the different Xray issue types (e.g. add Tests to a Test Execution) has been revamped to provide a better user experience. Very handy improvements were also implemented, some of which enable Risk Based Testing by providing capabilities such as sorting and filtering by any custom field of Test issues.
This dialog is now divided into three tabs:
- Select, allows users to select issues directly from their history search (issues that have been accessed recently)
- Search, allows users to search for issues using Jira and Xray custom filters
- JQL, using JQL, users can query issues in Jira
Configurable filters
You can now add any filters available in Jira to filter issues. Some default filters are provided by default. Additional filters can be configured just by adding new filters from any available filter in Jira as well as internal Xray filters.
Configurable and Sortable Columns
The results table now provides the ability for users to configure which columns they want to see, as well as sorting the table using any visible column.
Learn more here.
Sort and Rerank the Test Runs table within a Test Execution
Sort
It is now possible to sort the Test Runs table within a Test Execution.
As a result of being able to sort the table, the drag-n-drop Rerank operation might be disabled.
Users can only rerank Test Runs using drag-n-drop if the table is sorted by the original "rank" in ascending direction. Otherwise, the drag-n-drop option to rerank will be disabled.
Rerank
Besides adding the ability to sort Test Runs, it is now possible to rerank all Test Runs based on the current sort applied in the table. A button will appear on the datatable actions bar whenever the current sort applied is different from the default (based on the rank column, ASC).
Clicking on the "Apply Rank" button will apply the current sort as the new rank for the Test Runs.
This feature can be used in conjunction with the table sort above, to change the default rank for all Test Runs, perhaps based on a specific field on the Test cases (e.g. Risk, Priority, Components).
Learn more here.
Assign Test Runs based on Test user fields
If you're assigning individual Test Runs within Test Execution issues, then you can find this feature very handy. 
Starting from this version, it is now possible to assign Test Runs based on any user type field present on the Test cases.
For instance, you'll be able to assign Test Runs to the Test issue assignee. This allows users that normally execute a specific Test case (that are assigned to the Test case), to be the default assignee on Test Runs within a Test Execution just by choosing the option Test Assignee.
This option is available when:
- Assigning individual Test Runs
- Bulk assigning Test Runs
- Adding Tests to the Test Execution (within the Xray issue picker dialog)
Share built-in reports
Do you need to share an Xray built-in report with a friend and they can't seem to replicate exactly the same parameters, so they end up with different results?
Worry no more. Now you can directly share the report that you are seeing because the parameters are now present on the URL.
Learn more here.
Performance improvements
As part of our continuous performance improvements, we've improved how the status coverage is pre-calculated which should provide noticeable performance improvements inherently affecting most operations that trigger this calculation.
Improving performance is an ongoing effort, so expect additional enhancements to come ahead.
We also made an extensive document with Usage tips to improve performance, containing setup and usage best practices; please take a look at it.
And more...
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Just one more, yet important, thing...
Documentation is always important and sometimes you may miss it. We added a set of relevant articles to our already extensive documentation.
As this release provides a set of features that enable the basics of Risk-Based Testing, we've added a few related articles.
On another topic, many teams are eager to adopt Agile and Agile Testing, we've specifically made some dedicated content for them, giving some background information on the earlier topics and providing concrete examples so you can get started or even become more agile.
Finally, as teams grow they face additional challenges, including the demand for great performance. Performance is dependent on many different factors, starting with proper Jira setup, deployment type and also with Xray setup and usage patterns. Therefore, we created an article with a collection of setup, configuration and usage tips, to ensure you have the greatest performance on your deployment.
Here's a sum up of all the relevant articles that we've added:
New Features and Bug Fixes in this release