Release notes

[Jane Hosie-Bounar]

Can I create release notes from my Jira tickets and save them as Word or rich text?

[Dan Breyen · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jane Hosie-Bounar welcome to the community.  I found a Knowledge Article from Atlassian regarding creating release notes .

As long as you have a Confluence page, you can export the page to Word.

If you are in Jira, and you use a filter to generate your list, you can export that to Word and several other options as well.  

Hope that helps.

[Dwight Holman · Accepted solution]

There are a two manual ways to do this in Jira. I assume you don't need an automatic solution...

TL;DR

We use Jira Releases and Fix Versions to track software changes, but have not found the Release Notes feature worth using for a number of reasons. YMMV.

Defining a Release

First you must define the release and link work items (issues) to it:

1. Create a Release via Project > Releases
2. Indicate which work items (issues) are included in the release by setting the Fix versions field to the Release
3. Close the work items (issues) and change the release status to Released. When you do this you will be prompted to create release notes (see below).

Creating Release Notes

You can create release notes later by opening the release details page and clicking the Release notes button (top right) and you will be offered the same two options - Either:

1. Create in Confluence
   • Choose the Confluence space
   • Select the work item types
   • Select the fields you want to include
   • Click Create in Confluence. This creates a DRAFT Confluence page with links back to the Jira work items.
   • Good if that's how you want to publish release notes. You get a summary at the top, and a table containing the work items (not sorted or grouped).
     
     or
     
     
2. Click the Create release notes in Jira link. This creates HTML or Markdown you can copy or save. You can paste this into Word - basic but works ok. 
   • Choose the work item types to include
   • There are Formatting options, but the layout is basically fixed.
   • I couldn't get the option to add issue fields to work - seems to be broken at present
   • Generates a list grouped by Work item type, with the work item Key and Summary field of each item included.

Neither option provides a way to define your own template.

If you want to use Confluence to publish release notes - you could probably create your own custom template using a Jira Issues macro.

You can find the documentation here - I recommend trying the feature yourself.
https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/create-release-notes/

Backlog Items

There are related JAC tickets - many have been open for a while, notably the suggestion to have a custom release notes template - open since 2014.

[Sujeet Pathak]

Hi @Jane Hosie-Bounar 

Out of box release notes feature from Jira does not support direct export to Word. It primarily creates release notes in confluence and in Jira.

If you are looking for a solution which works seamlessly without manually copying data from one format to other, you may try out our free app - Free Automated release notes and reports 

This app natively supports creating release notes and reports in Word format. Apart from word, you can also create release notes in many other formats such as PDF, Email, Confluence, Slack, MS-Teams, JSON, Markdown etc. You can even automate generation of release notes and reports. The new AI features also lets you draft your release notes more efficiently. 

Do try this and let us know in case you need any help or if you want to schedule a demo.

Best,
Sujeet