Warning about removal of SLA modules from Enhancer Plugin

Enhancer Plugin for Jira was one of the first apps in Atlassian Marketplace and our aim was simple when developing it, helping others who use Jira and giving them what is missing most. Through the time we added many features to our plugin and we did our best to provide great support to our customers. SLA feature which is one of our most popular features gathered so much interest that we decided to create a dedicated plugin for this feature. Keeping core SLA features in Enhancer we created Time to SLA app with many new features and improvements for a complete SLA management. This allowed us to provide a dedicated support and improvement process for customers whose business heavily depends on SLAs.

It was 2014 when we released Time to SLA app and invited our customers to take a step forward in their SLA management. Still we did not removed any SLA features from our Enhancer plugin app since we were dedicated to provide a consistent experience to our users who already adapted to those features and have no requirement for more. After five years of this decision now we are at a point where we think that we need to reconsider of the future of this module in Enhancer plugin. There are couple of reasons which makes us believe that keeping and maintaining SLA modules in Enhancer is no more feasible so we decided to remove SLA features from Enhancer Plugin completely after 01.06.2019.

Since we believe in the importance of clear and transparent communication we would like to share our reasons behind this decision and discuss what we can do to make this migration process as easy as possible for you.

Why we are removing SLA modules from Enhancer App?

There are couple of reasons behind this decision. Although they exists for a certain amount of time we finally decided to take action after the recent negative feedbacks from some our customers.

Performance overhead of in-memory SLA calculations
SLAs in Enhancer Plugin works in a simple way, it dynamically calculates the current values of SLA from scratch every time a user browse an issue. Clearly this simple method does not scale well with large instances and issues with long history. We have overcome this problem in Time to SLA plugin by constructing a database backed calculation mechanism which greatly improves the performance and could easily answer any size of demand from customers. 

Problems with searches based on SLA fields
SLA metrics on Enhancer Plugin are calculated on the fly and this calculation includes JQL evaluation in SLA definition. Can you guess what happens when you make searches based on those SLA fields? JEP tries to evaluate those JQLs in SLA definition yet since there is an already ongoing search on top of this SLA calculation a deadlock occurs and Jira throws an error. This problem does not exist on Time to SLA since SLA data is already calculated during JQL searches thanks to its database backed calculation mechanism.

Focusing on distinctive features of Enhancer App
Along with SLA feature Enhancer app provides many other features which is not covered by any other app in Snapbytes product family. We think that it is best to spent our effort on those core Enhancer features while leaving SLA part to its master which is Time to SLA app.

What is expecting users who use SLA features from Enhancer Plugin?

You should migrate your SLAs till 01.06.2019 after that point your SLAs will not be visible on your issues yet you will be still able to view existing definitions. In order to provide a smooth transition into Time to SLA plugin we will provide a free one year licence for existing Enhancer users. Please raise a Licence help ticket here and our support team will happily help you.

What is expecting you after migrating into Time to SLA app?

• More advanced SLA configuration
  • Date fields as start/end or deadline for SLAs
  • Pause on any statuses
  • Reset by any issue fields or custom fields
• Perfect visualization of your metrics
  • Dynamically counting Time to SLA fields
  • Detailed SLA panel on issues
  • Excel report
  • Large and appealing selection of SLA gadgets
• Strong notification module
  • Notify your users before or after a certain amount of time from SLA deadline
  • Recure your notifications until your team satisfy SLA notification
  • Customize your notification templates with using SLA metrics and any other fields from Jira
  • Freely select recipients from assignee, reporter, user field etc.
• Full blown calendar module
  • Multiple working intervals per day
  • Recurring holidays
  • Half days to set custom working interval for specific days
  • Time zone selection for global support
• In-depth search functionalities
  • Search with remaining time, overdue time etc
  • Search for met, exceeded or progress SLAs
• and a dedicated team thriving to improve your experience

How you can migrate your SLAs into Time to SLA Plugin?

1. Redefine your JEP calendars in Time to SLA → Calendars page
   
   
2. Redefine your JEP SLAs in Time to SLA → SLA Configuration page
   
   
   
3. By default all active SLAs on issue will be displayed in SLA Panel. 
   
4. You can also define additional SLA fields in Time to SLA → Custom Fields
   
   
5. Once your all SLA configurations are complete navigate to Time to SLA → SLA Generation for existing issues and execute a system-wide SLA regeneration. This is a single time operation and it will calculate SLAs for all your existing issues.
6. You are ready to go!