Spira v8.8 Released: Custom Graphs Available on Dashboards, Cross-Product Incident Associations

10-Mar-2025 by Adam Sandman Product News

We are pleased to announce the release of the latest version (v8.8) of our award-winning test management SpiraTest system, application lifecycle management SpiraTeam platform, and enterprise agile planning platform - SpiraPlan. This new version includes support for adding custom graphs to the product homepage dashboards, link test runs to incidents in other products, and also foundational API and SpiraApp platform changes for some exciting new and updated product add-ons.

Key Features

  • Users can now add any custom graph to any of their product home pages, to further personalize and improve this dashboard view.
  • Building on our cross-product testing features, testers can now link a test run to an incident in an associated product during or after execution, to more easily track and record testing bugs across products.

Upcoming Features

  • Jira Cloud Data Synchronization: a key reason 8.8 is on the smaller side, is because we are also working on major improvements to the Jira Cloud data synchronization functionality. This will take, in total a couple of months, adding key features like bidirectional syncing of requirements and tasks, deeper customizations for what syncs how, and important enhancements and bug fixes
  • Spira 8.9: its exclusive focus will be on native Generative AI in Spira, aiming for release early in Q2. This will initially deliver largely the same features as our AWS Bedrock SpiraApp, but in a completely native user experience within Spira. This release will also create the building blocks for more rapid AI innovation in upcoming releases.
  • Conditional Lists SpiraApp: This SpiraApp helps admins create dynamic and powerful customizations for end users when they work with artifacts on details pages. It lets you conditionally control what values are available in one list dropdown, based on the selected values of other list fields. In other words, changing one list dynamically updates the options in other lists.

Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes

This new release includes the following other enhancements and bug fixes:

  • Add a flat requirement count API endpoint to help users count only requirements that specifically match the passed in filter, and that excludes any parents of those matches [IN:10363]
  • Add a new function to the SpiraAppManager called getLiveFormFieldValue that retrieves the current form data for a specific field, to provide SpiraApps with greater functionality [IN:10566]
  • Allow data syncs to potentially use more than the existing system level 5 custom setting fields, by adding 20 more [IN:10619]
  • Correct the explanatory text on the template custom list page to not reference "products" - but instead the template [IN:7555]
  • Fix reports sometimes failing to generate by ensuring that any incompatible characters (such as those considered out of range) are stripped out [IN:10358]
  • Fix tags dropdowns not being a valid recipient of SpiraAppManager.registerEvent_dropdownChanged to enhance SpiraApp capabilities [IN:10675]
  • Fix the incident list page tools buttons to "Export to Excel/Word/Acrobat" not correctly generating the requested report (introduced in 8.7.0.0) [IN:10671]
  • Fix the My Page so that when widgets in the "Top" or "Bottom" sections can be more easily closed or configured in dark mode, by making the editing buttons visible [IN:6979]
  • Fix the possibility of getting an error on the Planning Board if the release selected in the release dropdown has been deleted [IN:10192]
  • Fix the Product Test Summary widget on the program home page so that it does not show inactive products or any information about them [IN:10508]
  • Fix the REST API for creating a timesheet entry closing the connection instead of throwing an error if the entry object has errors (such as missing fields or the time is over 23:59 hours) [IN:10607]
  • Fix user and hierarchy dropdowns not being a valid recipient for SpiraApps when calling the spiraAppManager.registerEvent_dropdownChanged function [IN:10573]
  • Improve the incident association panel(s) when adding an incident, to only allow users to see incidents to add if the user has view incident permissions in the selected product [IN:10630]
  • Remove "SpiraApp" from the list of available artifacts on the product admin Product Associations page, to avoid confusion [IN:9654]
  • Upgrade databases to record product history change areas in a more robust and future proof way [IN:9314]

  • When using the timesheet overview grid on My Timesheet, make sure the highlight row always reflect the live timesheet, even when switching timesheets is canceled [IN:10600]

  • AWS Bedrock SpiraApp

    • Add support for the Amazon Nova models (micro, lite, and pro) [IN:10697]
    • Fix test steps sometimes being added in the incorrect order when creating Test Cases from a Requirement [IN:10663]
    • Fix test steps and other artifacts sometimes failing to generate [IN:10668]
    • When creating test cases, tasks, or risks from a requirement, include any scenarios if the description is being included [IN:10635]

Where Can I Learn More?

  • For more details on all of the new features, enhancements and bug-fixes in Spira v8.8, please refer to the release notes.
  • Information on the new Conditional Lists SpiraApp, please review SpiraDocs.