How to connect JIRA and Confluence for real...

[Kenn North]

I've read the blog posts
http://blogs.atlassian.com/confluence/2011/03/create-share-discover-more-wiki-content.html

I've studied the documentation
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Configuring+OAuth

I've created an admin user on JIRA and an admin user on Confluence to facilitate the OAuth connection, and I can then create JIRA tickets, but only under that generic admin user. If a arbitrary user of our wiki tries to create a new issue it isn't attributed to that user, it's attributed to the generic admin user. This is very annoying.

Questions:
1.) It's not clear anywhere that I've seen, but do we need Crowd to enable the ability to log new JIRA issues from the wiki and have them be attributed to that user?
2.) Why is this so poorly documented? The documentation is woefully skimp on the details of this integration. All there is are the videos that illustrate the magic that could happen if your stars align and you get it working.

Please help us understand how to set this up properly. If it means purchasing Crwod, fine, but we need to know that will actually work.

[Kenn North · Accepted solution]

I spoke with Robert at Atlassian. We got it working on our test server! The main issue I can see is that it was not clear to create the application link on ONE side of the connection. Meaning run through the wizard for Application link on either the Wiki or JIRA, NOT both. That I think is what really messed us up. We have admins that are separate for the wiki versus JIRA, and we both got online to set it up originally and that apparently was a bad thing.

As of right now it's working and if I have other issues I'll go through support.

Once I was shown how to do it, the process was trivial, so I'm not sure why 1.) it's not documented well, and 2.) we didn't just figure it out. I think we were likely trying to outsmart the system.

[Jeremy Largman]

Thanks for writing this up Kenn. I've written a knowledge base article on it as well.

[Kenn North]

Thank you Sarah.

Yes, we have over 5,000 users, and we are using LDAP to login to both JIRA and Confluence, so the usernames are the same, but it's not SSO. I have configured an Application Link according to the documentation. It does work, but again, I can only create a ticket in JIRA as the generic admin user I used to setup the Application link. If I don't' use that generic admin user in the Application link configuration I can't create tickets in JIRA at all.

Additionally if I go to the OAuth section of my personal settings there is not a link anywhere to add a new OAuth token.

I have found this whole setup to be the most cumbersome thing in the world with regard to Atlassian products. It's not straight-forward, and it's not what is advertised on the videos for the release of Confluence 3.5.x. We have many users asking for the feature in the video. I'd love to give it to them, we've paid the licensing on both systems, but we can't get it to work.

In addition, like I say, we've paid the licensing fees, and we've got the products installed, but here I am trying to get help on this answer forum and it took quite a while for an Atlassian employee to respond. We have no method for asking these types of reasonable questions to a support rep at Atlassian.

[SarahA]

Hallo Kenn

You do not need Crowd to be able to log new JIRA issues from the wiki (unless your userbase is huge). Instead of OAuth, try using Application Links. The definitive guide to integrating the Atlassian products is here:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/ATLAS/Guide+to+Installing+an+Atlassian+Integrated+Suite

In particular, the setup of Confluence integrated with JIRA is here:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/ATLAS/Dragons+Stage+3+-+Install+Confluence

The above guide (the "Dragons" guide) does assume that you have a particular environment. For example, it shows you how to manage the Confluence users in JIRA, and it assumes that people have the same usernames in JIRA and in Confluence.

Here is the detailed documentation about Application Links in Confluence, including the option to set up OAuth. This is required if the users have different usernames in Confluence and JIRA:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF35/Configuring+Application+Links

Here are the guidelines about when it would be useful to have Crowd:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF35/User+Management+Limitations+and+Recommendations

I hope this is useful.

Cheers, Sarah

[Kenn North]

Thank you Sarah.

Yes, we have over 5,000 users, and we are using LDAP to login to both JIRA and Confluence, so the usernames are the same, but it's not SSO. I have configured an Application Link according to the documentation. It does work, but again, I can only create a ticket in JIRA as the generic admin user I used to setup the Application link. If I don't' use that generic admin user in the Application link configuration I can't create tickets in JIRA at all.

Additionally if I go to the OAuth section of my personal settings there is not a link anywhere to add a new OAuth token.

I have found this whole setup to be the most cumbersome thing in the world with regard to Atlassian products. It's not straight-forward, and it's not what is advertised on the videos for the release of Confluence 3.5.x. We have many users asking for the feature in the video. I'd love to give it to them, we've paid the licensing on both systems, but we can't get it to work.

In addition, like I say, we've paid the licensing fees, and we've got the products installed, but here I am trying to get help on this answer forum and it took quite a while for an Atlassian employee to respond. We have no method for asking these types of reasonable questions to a support rep at Atlassian.

[JamieA]

I agree that it's poorly documented, and in fact it's multiply documented where most of the docs are just plain wrong. This whole area seems to be in major transition for the last year, and it's not finished yet AFAIK.

[SarahA]

Hallo Kenn and Jamie

I'm contacting our support team now. :)

Cheers, Sarah

[Jeremy Largman]

Hi Kenn,

So sorry about this! I'm a bit embarrassed - you definitely shouldn't have slipped through the cracks like this. We offer support through our support system at support.atlassian.com. Our support is 24x7, we have response levels from 1 hour to 1 day. This question is definitely in the scope of what we support (check the doc about what we do).

We've created a support ticket on your behalf, and we'll assign a support engineer to follow up.

[Kenn North]

We are using 3.5.3 Confluence and I'm out of town and can't remember the JIRA version...

I have tried to get the individual OAuth stuff setup, but I can't seem to get it to work unless I have an admin user on both systems. Which will for me, but not the 5000 other users that utilize the sites..

[Martin Cooper]

The latest versions of the tools have moved to Application Links which are far easier and more intuitive to set up. However if have Trusted Relationship set then the user that is logged in will be the user that creates the issue.

It sounds like in your OAUth set up you are using a basic authentication which means the connection is run under the identity of the user you have configured for the link.

If you can post the exact versions can provide more details

[Kenn North]

We are using 3.5.3 Confluence and I'm out of town and can't remember the JIRA version...

I have tried to get the individual OAuth stuff setup, but I can't seem to get it to work unless I have an admin user on both systems. Which will for me, but not the 5000 other users that utilize the sites..

[Martin Cooper]

Which Versions of the tool are you using - the relationship options are different depending on which version.

You do not need Crowd to make this work

My Apologies I'll learn to read the tags next time - 4.3 and 3.5 but can you confirm minor version