Crowd 2.4 : Crowd 1.6 Release Notes

18 December 2008

The Atlassian Crowd team is proud to present Crowd 1.6.

Crowd 1.6 introduces a new, more intelligent caching system that will improve performance of Crowd with LDAP, particularly for large and off-site directories.

This release also brings a quicker setup process for Atlassian applications. The Crowd Administration Console allows you to choose the application you want to integrate (JIRA, Confluence, Bamboo, FishEye or Crucible), prompts you for the necessary information and automatically adds the required directory and groups.

There are new directory connectors for OpenDS, Fedora Directory Server and OpenLDAP (based on the Posix/NIS schema).

You'll find a number of smaller improvements in this release too. More unusual characters are supported in the UI and in LDAP directories. Using Crowd's new authentication-related API events, you can create plugins that react when a user logs in, logs out, changes their password, and so on.

Highlights of this release:

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Upgrading to Crowd 1.6

You can download Crowd from the Atlassian website. If upgrading from a previous version, please read the Crowd 1.6 Upgrade Notes.

Highlights of Crowd 1.6

Smarter Caching

Crowd 1.6 introduces a new, more intelligent caching system that will improve performance of Crowd with Microsoft Active Directory and ApacheDS. You should notice the improvement particularly in directories which are large, slow or off site.

  • Crowd now keeps an up-to-date cache of user, group and role information retrieved from the LDAP directory.
  • The cache uses lazy loading where possible, storing only the information that is required rather than loading the entire directory into the cache.
  • Crowd ensures that the cache remains up to date by monitoring the LDAP directory for updates. When a change occurs, Crowd updates the server-side cache incrementally.
  • Refer to our documentation for an overview of Crowd caching and details of the LDAP caching.

Quick Application Setup

Crowd 1.6 brings a quicker setup process for Atlassian applications. Crowd now supports specific application types for JIRA, Confluence, Bamboo, FishEye and Crucible.

  • The Crowd Administration Console allows you to choose the type of application you want to integrate and prompts you for the necessary information.
  • Crowd automatically adds the required directory and groups. For example, if you are integrating Crowd with JIRA, Crowd will add the 'jira-users', 'jira-developers' and 'jira-administrators' groups for you.
  • The setup process will prompt you to import the users from JIRA or the relevant application.
  • Then you can move quickly to the next stage, configuring the application's libraries and other settings, which is still a manual process.

Connectors for OpenDS, Fedora DS and OpenLDAP (Posix)

Crowd 1.6 provides three new built-in directory connectors. The new connectors do not affect any directories already configured. They will make it easier to set up your directory if you are starting from scratch.

Spring Security 2

Other Good Things

  • In Crowd 1.5, we introduced an early version of the Atlassian Plugin Framework 2. Crowd 1.6 now supports version 2.1 of the Atlassian Plugin Framework.
  • Crowd now fires a number of API events related to authentication and change of password. This allows developers to create listener plugins that spring into action when a user logs in, logs out, changes their password, and so on.

Complete List of Improvements and Fixes

JIRA Issues (37 issues)
Key Summary Priority Status
CWD-1368 Crowd client not properly locating crowd-ehcache.xml causing caching not to occur Major Resolved
CWD-1360 AppTypes: Wording Suggestions Major Resolved
CWD-1346 Implement server-side remote directory caching Major Resolved
CWD-1345 Properly find the Deleted Objects container if the baseDN is not the root of the AD domain Major Resolved
CWD-1344 Implement "flush cache" button for event caches. Major Resolved
CWD-1343 Implement role disable checkbox for caching directories to avoid object duplication Major Resolved
CWD-1342 Spring-ldap 1.3-RC1 changed the way authentication happens with Open Directory - maintain compatibility Major Resolved
CWD-1341 Configure redirection of context-sensitive online help links for existing 1.5 release Major Resolved
CWD-1339 If baseDN is not the root of the tree, deleted objects detection does not work Major Resolved
CWD-1336 Update Crowd to Plugins 2.1.2 Major Resolved
CWD-1332 Directory connector dropdown should default to Microsoft Active Directory Major Resolved
CWD-1328 Re-word the label and description for the 'has access' cache checkbox on the Admin Console Major Resolved
CWD-1325 Add UI options for new directory types and clean up the descriptions Major Resolved
CWD-1323 Possible Bug in Token Random Numbers Major Resolved
CWD-1314 Update MySQL Hibernate dialect to create transactional InnoDB tables by default Major Resolved
CWD-1306 Upgrade Crowd to plugins 2.1 Major Resolved
CWD-1304 Change DirectoryEntity.compareTo() to correctly compare subclasses Major Resolved
CWD-1301 Can no longer change Delegated Directory User Configuration. Changes do not save. Critical Resolved
CWD-1279 SafeParametersInterceptor has broken the AtlassianImporter Major Resolved
CWD-1275 handles funtion in CrowdCredentialsProvider throws exception with NULL parameter Major Resolved
CWD-1273 SecurityServer.authenticatePrincipalSimple() overwrites InvalidAuthenticationException text with an incorrect message. Major Resolved
CWD-1264 Remove user link does not work for usernames with plus sign (+) Major Resolved
CWD-1262 Speed up OpenLDAP user listings using memberOf group membership attribute Major Resolved
CWD-1206 Throw IllegalArgumentException in CrowdCredentialProvider's changePassword to throw a friendlier 500 page exception (JRA-13685) Major Resolved
CWD-1205 Crowd profiling label always displays 'off' after logging levels are updated Minor Resolved
CWD-1194 Support SUN OpenDS LDAP Server Major Resolved
CWD-1170 Cannot delete Group when name contains a + Major Resolved
CWD-1159 BadLdapGrammarException occurs when Crowd attempts to read a DN Major Resolved
CWD-1119 Unhelpful Exception with resetPrincipalCredential() when SMTP Server rejects email address Minor Resolved
CWD-1114 Groups can be created with '&' in name but cannot subsequently be deleted Minor Resolved
CWD-1099 Unable to create username with a plus (+) character with Open LDAP Major Resolved
CWD-1069 Groups that contain backslashes ('\') cannot be modified from Crowd Major Resolved
CWD-1048 Create FedoraDS connector class Major Resolved
CWD-844 Upgrade Acegi integration libraries to Spring Security 2.0 Major Resolved
CWD-779 Sun OpenDS is not supported Major Resolved
CWD-772 Crowd client libraries and caching need further review to improve JIRA performance Critical Resolved
CWD-562 Cannot create group in ApacheDS 1.5.1 Major Resolved

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