Bugfixes

• Fixed: PDF views are not available on screens of Tempo Timesheets 9

See the full release notes →

As you probably know, Better PDF Exporter already supports Jira Data Center deployments (i.e. clustered Jira). To be precise, those are supported since app version 5.0.0 (released in Jan 2016).

In 2018, Atlassian re-launched its Data Center program and introduced new testing criteria for "Data Center approved apps". This version is the official release for the revised program, tested to live up to the rigorous demands of Data Center environments.

New in this release

• Better PDF Exporter is a Data Center approved app!

See the full release notes →

Bugfixes

• Fixed: PDF views are not available on screens of Tempo Timesheets 9

See the full release notes →

As you probably know, Better PDF Exporter already supports Jira Data Center deployments (i.e. clustered Jira). To be precise, those are supported since app version 5.0.0 (released in Jan 2016).

In 2018, Atlassian re-launched its Data Center program and introduced new testing criteria for "Data Center approved apps". This version is the official release for the revised program, tested to live up to the rigorous demands of Data Center environments.

New in this release

• Better PDF Exporter is a Data Center approved app!

See the full release notes →

Bugfixes

• Fixed: Zephyr test steps are not rendered with "issue-fo.vm" template
• Fixed: default column configuration is exported when saved filter is modified in Issue Navigator

See the full release notes →

New in this release

• "PDF View Plugin for Jira" is now called "Better PDF Exporter for Jira"!
• Automatic fonts for any language
• QR codes and barcodes
• Limit for concurrent renderings

Improvements

• Support for the Insight custom field type "Insight Object/s".
• The $linkTypeNames variable in traceability-matrix-fo.vm was updated to recognize all current link type names as a traceable dependency between issues.
• All Groovy scripts were converted to use Apache Commons Lang 3.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: New format of the Jira Service Desk SLA fields is not exported correctly

See the full release notes + upgrade guide →

This version is a compatibility release for the Jira 7.11 line.

Notable changes

• $componentManager was removed from the rendering context. Read the full release notes to learn what it means for custom templates and scripts.

See the full release notes →

Bugfixes

• Fixed: "Export" menu in Jira Software boards cannot be opened due to a Javascript error in Jira 7.10.0+.
• Fixed: "Export" menu is not visible on Service Desk queue screen with Jira Service Desk 3.10.0+.

See the full release notes →

New in this release

• Support for Tempo period- and user filters
• Faster export of Tempo worklogs via pre-loading

Improvements

• Improved support for saved filters in automations (via PDF Automation Plugin 3.1.0)

Bugfixes

• Fixed: Dashboard cannot be exported if the Agile Wallboard gadget contains an extra field with the tag.
• Fixed: URLs generated from ${requestContext.baseUrl} break (and referenced images are missing) when the PDF is rendered in automations (tip: use ${requestContext.canonicalBaseUrl})

See the full release notes + upgrade guide →

Bugfixes

• Fixed: a NullPointerException is thrown in rare cases when exporting the Burndown Chart gadget.

This version is a compatibility release for the Jira 7.7 line.

(N.B: it hides the "Development" field in exports.)

This major release focuses on significantly improving dashboard exports.

Most importantly, this version enables exporting four new gadget types, making PDF View Plugin the only viable gadget exporter solution for JIRA (see the list of all supported gadgets).

Watch the intro video →

Support for the Issue Statistics gadget

Issue Statistics was the most frequently requested gadget to support among the JIRA core gadgets. This is now supported.

Support for JIRA Software gadgets (Sprint Burndown, Sprint Health and Agile Wallboard)

Solving the number two most popular gadget-related feature request, you can finally export the JIRA Software (aka JIRA Agile) gadgets.

New PDF views to export dashboards to 1, 2 or 3 column layouts

Getting your preferred layout is now easier.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: dashboard exports generated by automation actions have the filename "10103.pdf".
• Fixed: character encoding in Tempo worklog comments and Zephyr test data may break on Windows.

See the full release notes →

Support for nFeed

The nFeed add-on integrates external data sources (SQL databases, LDAP, Active Directory, REST APIs, Salesforce, CSV files, etc.) to Jira. From this version, PDF View Plugin is tightly integrated with nFeed, allowing you to export all nFeed custom fields to PDF. More than data export, you can easily implement custom reporting and Business Intelligence on nFeed data.

See some sample exports from nFeed and learn more about this integration.

New "Performance Tuning" page

We compiled a page about what to do and what to avoid when developing custom PDF templates for large scale of data. If you are working with many-many-thousands of issues or many-many-thousands of fields or complicated Groovy scripts, bring a cup of coffee and read the Performance tuning page. We will keep improving it with our future findings, as well.

See the full release notes →

Support for Insight

Insight is the leading asset management add-on for Jira. PDF View Plugin now exports all Insight custom fields (object keys, names, and attributes optionally) to PDF.

• See sample exports from Insight
• Learn more about this integration

Support for 4 new Jira Service Desk custom field types

"Customer Request Type", "Request Participants" and "SLA" custom fields have been supported for years. Now we introduced additional support for:

• Approvals (including detailed decisions)
• Organizations
• Satisfaction
• Satisfaction Date

Improvements

• The template "issue-fo.vm" exports resolution date.
• Table-heavy templates have nicer table borders (also see this hint).
• Default titles and default filenames are generated according to a slightly revised logic.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: The "Due Date" standard field and "Date Picker" type custom fields incorrectly use the user's timezone
• Fixed: Long issue keys like "VERYLONGPROJECTKEY-123" cannot be exported from agile boards

See the full release notes→

This version is a compatibility release for the Jira 7.4 line.

This version fixes the problem of the #cfValue() and other Velocity macros not rendering randomly: at some exports (including both manual and automated ones), they appear in the PDF document in their original form.

Root cause: there is a potential race condition in Jira's internal macro caching, that we could successfully reproduce with a Python script that simulates rendering PDF documents while generating unusual load also on the Jira web interface.

Fix: although the problem is not in the PDF View Plugin side, we managed to develop a fix for this.

We also reported the problem for Atlassian here: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-64200

This version is primarily a compatibility release for the Jira 7.3 line.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: "Cumulative" type Created vs. Resolved gadgets are exported as count (non-cumulative)

Support for view contexts

Previous PDF View plugin versions used the concept of view types. The multiple issues view type, for example, offered the PDF view for any screen that worked with multiple issues, including Issue Navigator, Jira Agile backlog or Jira Service Desk queue among others. From this version, we allow more fine-grained control over which screen in the UI a view should be available in.

Compatibility release for the upcoming Better Excel Plugin 2.2.0

The next release of our Excel exporter Jira add-on also introduces view contexts. This PDF View Plugin version is also a compatibility release for that.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: Export menus triggered permission errors for anonymous users (typically in the Dashboard menu)
• Fixed: An "ORDER BY" clause (which makes no sense anyway) in the visibility restricter JQL breaks visibility checking

Support for Zephyr

You can export Zephyr tests (with the "test steps" custom field), test executions and test step results to PDF. These sections can be optionally turned on or off, and integrate perfectly with all the other issue export features to provide the optimal output depending on your use case.

Default template with improved structure

Because the PDF View Plugin can now export so many different types of information, from field values, through attachments, diagrams, worklogs, comments, etc. to test executions, the default template started to become a little unstructured. Therefore we made a couple of changes in issue-fo.vm in this release.

Improvements and bugfixes

• Better error reporting at "on-the-fly" template errors (ex: script to execute was not found).
• Usernames and passwords containing international characters are accepted by the Gliffy integration script

This version is simply a compatibility release for the Jira 7.2 line.

Support for Gliffy

You can export the high resolution Gliffy diagrams that illustrate your issues to PDF documents. Gliffy diagrams will be core part of your issue exports, just like image attachments.

View names in the "Export" drop-down in any language

View names can now contain alphanumeric characters from any language, from German to Japanese. This was previously limited to the English characters only. Finally, you can offer native language experience for your team.

SVG graphics

SVG is a powerful and simple way to add dynamic vector graphics to your PDF documents. Ex: rotate text, draw lines, display shapes, etc.

Support for project / user avatars and issue type / priority icons

• project avatar
• user avatar
• issue type icon
• priority icon

Template updates:

• gantt-chart-fo.vm: tolerates NULL priority values
• issue-fo.vm: exports the project avatar (optional)
• issue-navigator-fo.vm: keys of resolved linked issues are ruled out
• project-report-fo.vm: tolerates NULL priority values
• project-report.groovy: tolerates NULL priority values
• release-notes-fo.vm: exports the project avatar as logo, long issue keys don't overlap with summaries, smarter logic
• requirements-specification-fo.vm: exports the project avatar on the cover, use status category colors for the status lozenges
• sales-report.groovy: minor changes
• story-card-fo.vm: exports the issue type icon, priority icon and the assignee avatar for each card
• timesheet-fo.vm: minor visual changes

Scalability

We refactored the PDF document renderer from an everything-in-memory to a streaming architecture, resulting in drastic performance improvements. 25-50K issues can be exported to complex, tens-of-thousands-of-pages documents. We also updated the following document templates to scale better to large data sets (faster and using less memory):

• issue-fo.vm
• issue-navigator-fo.vm
• gantt-chart-fo.vm
• requirement-specification-fo.vm
• story-card-fo.vm

Error tolerance

The robustness of the exported logic was vastly improved to deal with unexpected HTML and XML. It can handle unknown elements, unknown attributes, unknown CSS styling, and every sort of syntax errors. If you are maintaining or migrating field values in HTML, this will save you lots of headache.

Expressions Reference Manual

Want to export field X of object Y? Use this new template both as cheatsheet and as testing environment.

Bugfixes:

Support for Jira Data Center

In a clustered Jira environment, all configuration including PDF templates, Groovy scripts and other resources are transparently replicated among the nodes by the add-on. When exporting, you can access any random node in the cluster to get your PDF document. Therefore, the add-on fully supports Jira enterprise deployments.

Licensing via Atlassian Marketplace

Starting from this release, add-on licenses can be purchased from Atlassian Marketplace.

This release is compatible with the the Jira 7 line.

There are no functional changes in this release.

PDF VIEW VISIBILITY (SECURITY)

Define visibility criteria for each PDF view, to show or hide them for specific groups, users or issues.

UI INTEGRATION WITH Jira AGILE, Jira SERVICE DESK & TEMPO

Export PDF tickets directly from the backlog, Scrum/Kanban board, ticket queue, timesheet, calendar, report and list views.

TEMPLATE IMPROVEMENTS

Templates are bullet-proof even in unexpected conditions (like empty issue lists). Non-human-readable custom files, like lexo-rank, are not exported by default.

REST API

Leverage the standard API to get access to the PDF views and to render PDF documents from external clients.

BUGFIXES

Most importantly, we fixed the "alpha must not be null" problem for transparent PNGs.

This version is simply a compatibility release for the Jira 6.4 line.

This version fixes a NullPointerException that was thrown when trying to render PDF documents in automation actions.

This version enables to export, print and share Jira dashboards and reports.

Combining this with the PDF automation capabilities gives a powerful tool to anyone's hands who's looking for automatic Jira reporting. It's not you opening your browser for reports anymore, but the reports coming to your mailbox automagically.

New in this release

• Support for Tempo Timesheets: export Tempo custom fields (Account, Team, Iteration) and Tempo worklogs to PDF. This version has also updated the "timesheet-fo.vm" template to allow generating professional timesheets and invoices from Tempo data. Learn more
• Support for Jira Service Desk: export Jira Service Desk custom field (SLA's, Customer Request Type) to PDF. Learn more
• Support for Table Grid Editor: export any Table Grid Editor managed custom field (tables, lists) to PDF. Learn more
• Export for remote links: remote links are exported into a new section in the issue-fo.vm template. They will appear in the default "PDF" and "PDF (All fields)" exports.

New in this release

• Support for JEditor: PDF exports will preserve the formatting of all JEditor-rendered fields, including Environment, Description, comments, single- and multi-line text custom fields.
• Support for Jira Agile fields: proper export for the Jira Agile-specific custom field types, "Sprint" and "Epic”.
• Performance improvements for large exports: you can export large number of issues 30-40 times faster!
• Revised default template:
  • Subtasks, labels, view restrictions for comments are now exported.
  • Support for the Security Level field.
  • 2 modes to export custom fields: visible or all custom fields.
  • Fixes in international texts.
• New tools in the Velocity rendering context to:
  • export by issue screen definitions (tabs)
  • support custom field visibility
  • export work ratio
  • format dates just as you like
• New “Getting Started” page

Read the full release notes

This version is simply a compatibility release for the Jira 6.3 line.

This version introduces a public PDF API to generate PDF documents from Jira issues and other Jira data.

You have the following options to leverage the PDF API:

• Install and configure the free open source post function- and service scripts to your Jira.
• Automate your processes with the powerful Jira Automation Plugin.
• Write your custom Groovy scripts, and run them with the Script Runner Plugin.
• Build your own Jira plugins in Java, or integrate PDF exporting capabilities to your existing plugins.

Follow these links to learn more.

Readily available post functions and services:

• Generating PDF documents in Jira workflows
• Generating PDF documents in Jira services

Automating PDF exports with the Jira Automation Plugin:

• Sending PDF documents from a JQL result periodically
• Sending PDF documents on issue events (creation, update, comment, etc.)

Using the API:

• Using the PDF API from Groovy
• Using the PDF API from Java

Happy integrations!

This version is a compatibility release for Jira 6.0. (Previous plugin versions are not working with Jira 6.0.)

This is a maintenance release to fix three problems found in plugin version 2.0.0:

1. A conflict between the PDF View (this plugin) and the Create and Link (by Customware) plugins. It resulted partly broken license configuration screens on systems where both plugins were installed.
   
2. An unlikely servlet-filter mapping issue. It was reported by a customer with a complex network topology environment, which effectively rewrote URLs used by the plugin.
   
3. Better (re)use of Velocity contexts and resources during PDF rendering.
   

Upgrading: just update your plugin using UPM (the plugin manager built in to Jira), that's all.

— Upgrading from plugin version 1.8.0? Make sure you read the upgrade instructions!

This is our biggest release since the first public version. 

The most important change is that plugin is now adapted for Jira's modern plugins 2 framework:

• The plugin is dead simple to install and upgrade dynamically through the Universal Plugin Manager (UPM).
• The plugin does not use files from the Jira server's filesystem any longer. All those resources (PDF templates, Groovy scripts, configuration files) are managed through a web based editor. Template development and customization is easier than ever.
• The plugin now runs in an OSGI container. Install, uninstall, upgrade, start and stop the plugin any time without stopping and restarting Jira itself. Hello Zero Downtime!

This version also introduces a new Agile report template, which exports Burn Down Charts, Velocity Trend Charts and some other key agile metrics for printing (sample PDF). It can be used with or without GreenHopper!

This version is a compatibility release for Jira 5.2, which also comes with a couple of notable improvements: 

• Chart rendering
  We ship a mini-library (charts.groovy) to render beautiful charts in your PDF documents. 

• Customizable PDF filenames
  This version enables you to set the filename for the PDF document generated.

• Customizable PDF metadata
  Metadata is information about the document itself, like its author, original title and abstract.

• Easier installation
  Until this version, a couple of Jira classes needed to be overwritten with our so-called "patched Jira classes", for the plugin to work properly. Not anymore.

This version introduces Groovy scripting to implement custom logic. Use simple scripts to implement fantastic features to your PDF documents, like drawing charts, integrating with external applications or databases, accessing Jira's internal data, doing precise math or implementing custom algorithms with efficient data structures. Learn more

This version comes with two new templates, to produce Gantt charts (sample PDF) and traceability matrixes (sample PDF).

This version is a compatibility release for Jira 5.0. Previous plugin versions are not working with Jira 5.0.

This version implements the popular feature request of embedding the issue attachments in the exported PDF files. After turning on the feature, all files attached to the issues will be included in the PDF files. Readers of the PDF will be able to open or extract those easily. In other words, you can distribute "self-containing document packages" generated from your Jira issues. Learn more.

This version also introduces a new template for Software Requirement Specification documents (SRS), that follows IEEE recommendations ( sample PDF). See all templates shipped with the distribution in the Template Directory.

This version is a compatibility release for Jira 4.4. Previous plugin versions are not expected to work properly with Jira 4.4.

Also, a new template to generate timesheets from Jira worklogs has been added. This can also be used to generate invoices from Jira, using worklog and pricing information. Even if you don't like the shipped template, this is a great starting point to develop your own.

Please see this PDF document for a sample.

This is a maintenance release that resolve a minor packaging issue, which previously resulted in "duplicate package" at Jira starts.

This is a compatibility release for Jira 4.3.

Previous versions are not expected to work with Jira 4.3, so you will need to update to the plugin version 1.3.1 when you start using Jira 4.3.

This version fully supports the source code syntax highlighting features of Jira. When using the { code} macro to display source code in issues, the highlighted source code will look exactly the same in the exported PDF as it looks in your browser.
Supported languages are: Java, C/C++, JavaScript, ActionScript, XML, HTML, and SQL.

Automatic down-scaling for large images, preformatted wrapping and clipping, other bugfixes.

After 20 months in beta status, we are happy to announce that this version is ready for production use.

Version highlights:

• Support for "wiki renderer" fields: Environment, Description, comments and custom fields look beautiful in the PDF! Text formatting, images, lists, tables, etc. is exported.

• Support for issue change histories: you can export change history records to the PDF.

• Tested with Jira 3.13.3 - Jira 3.13.5.