Connect Jira/Confluence to multiple Crowd instances

[599media GmbH]

Hi,

is it possible to connect Jira/Confluence to multiple Crowd instances?

Company A manages the users of Crowd Server A and Company B manages their respective users in Crowd Server B -- both companies "share" a jira instance for several project-specific reasons. We'd like to connect both Crowd servers to this single jira (confluence) instance. Does this work? And if it works, is there anything special configuration-wise?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Jira and Confluence both allow for multiple user directories, and those directories can be a mix of types.

The most complicated one I've seen recently was a result of merges of companies and internal business units,and when we looked at the Confluence user directories, they had:

• Main company LDAP
• Business unit 1: Crowd server A
• Internal directory
• Incoming business 1: Crowd server B
• Incoming business 2: Their LDAP
• Business unit 2: Using their Jira

and a few others!

It worked fine, technically.  Their user directories were a mess, but they needed to get the merges of systems done before they had the time to review and revise their user directory set up.  This was a temporary situation, and they are gradually dropping all the incoming directories, working their way down to what will probably be "Crowd 1, Crowd 2 and internal".

If you are going to do this, there is one thing I would strongly recommend - if you have more than one service (you mention Jira/Confluence so that's at least two), make sure the directories are listed in the same order in all of the servers!

[599media GmbH]

Thank you. Is there anything special about the SSO configuration?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I suspect you might only be able to enable it for one of the Crowd connections. 

I've not tried - this particular client had decided not to try to (re)implement it until they'd sorted out their user base.  I expect to be asked when they've finished their consolidation, so your question is rather prescient - I might have an answer in February, but I don't yet!