Today, we have released version 1.0.5. Among other improvements, the new version continues on the track of versions 1.0.3 and 1.0.4, enhancing error reporting for export of project configurations.

Reflecting on this matter I think we have learned two important lessons. First one is that reality can be very different from our ideas when we are designing software. In the case of Project Configurator, originally we thought the export process would very seldom cause errors, so we did not care to add decent error reporting to it. When real users started to try and evaluate the plugin we quickly realized our assumption was wrong. The facts are that admins take a JIRA development or test instance and add, remove or change workflows, custom fields, plugins, screens, etc and this process sometimes end with internal inconsistencies. Some of these inconsistencies can break the export.

The second lesson is related to how to fix those problems. When users reported them, very often the nature of the error was clear (for example, a custom field type plugin was missing) but it was hard to find the exact object (custom field in that case) that was creating the problem. This created more support work and even required the users to attach XML dumps of their databases to their issues so that they could be reproduced and analyzed in our test environments. It would be much more convenient if the error information provided users with some clues about the object that causes the error. In this way, the system helps users to detect the problem and fix it without requiring external help. We are certainly very happy to help users of Project Configurator :D, but I imagine that users will be even happier if they can fix these problems faster !!

We hope version 1.0.5 will be a great step in this direction.