Add or edit a Jira Software Cloud source

When you have the required privileges, you can add the content of a Jira Software Cloud instance to a Coveo organization.

Tip
Leading practice

The number of items that a source processes per hour (crawling speed) depends on various factors, such as network bandwidth and source configuration. See About Crawling Speed for information on what can impact crawling speed, as well as possible solutions.

Source key characteristics

Features Supported Additional information
Jira Software Cloud version Latest cloud version
Searchable content types

Projects, issues, comments, attachments, and work logs

Content update operations Refresh check

Takes place every hour by default. A rescan or rebuild is required to retrieve:

  • Changes (creation, modification, deletion) on projects

  • Deletion of issues, and work logs, attachments, and comments on issues

Rescan check Takes place every day by default.
Rebuild check
Content security options Same users and groups as in your content system check Requires installing the Coveo User Sync app in your instance. See About the Coveo User Sync App for details.
Specific users and groups check
Everyone check
Note

Project metadata is included on the issues of the project, but the projects themselves aren’t indexed. Issues in a private project are indexed if the crawling account is allowed to access this project.

Requirements

Crawling account permissions

When you want to retrieve the content of your Jira Software instance, a crawling account with read permission is required. The source can only include the issues which are accessible by the source credentials you supply. You must therefore assign the source credentials to all necessary Jira Software permission schemes required to gain access to the issues to include.

However, when you want to index permissions along with the content, you must also grant the Jira Administrators global permissions to the source credentials.

Note

When configuring the source, you must use the credentials of a native Jira Software user. Users managed by other identity providers such as Google aren’t supported.

Add or edit a Jira Software Cloud source

When adding a source, select the Jira Software Cloud option.

To edit a source, on the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click the desired source, and then click Edit in the Action bar.

A Jira Software Cloud source indexes cloud content. If you want to retrieve on-premises (server) content, see Add or edit a Jira Software Server source instead.

"Configuration" tab

In the Add/Edit a Jira Software Cloud Source panel, the Configuration tab is selected by default. It contains your source’s general and authentication information, as well as other parameters.

General information

Source name

Enter a name for your source.

Tip
Leading practice

A source name can’t be modified once it’s saved, therefore be sure to use a short and descriptive name, using letters, numbers, hyphens (-), and underscores (_). Avoid spaces and other special characters.

Instance URL

Enter the base URL of the Jira Software Cloud instance that you want to index. It should contain either jira.com or atlassian.net.

Optical character recognition (OCR)

If you want Coveo to extract text from image files or PDF files containing images, check the appropriate box. OCR-extracted text is processed as item data, meaning that it’s fully searchable and will appear in the item Quick View. See Enable Optical Character Recognition for details on this feature.

Note

Contact Coveo Sales to add this feature to your organization license.

"Authentication" section

Enter the credentials of a dedicated Jira Software Cloud account that has access to the content that you want to index.

Notes
  • If you want to index permissions, select the Same users and groups as in your content system option in the Content security tab. For this option, you must provide the credentials of a Jira Administrator account. See "Content Security" tab for details.

  • SSOs aren’t supported, therefore in order to index the content if using an SSO, you must create a native Atlassian crawling account directly in Jira. The SSO will be bypassed.

"Content to Include" section

Some types of data are optional to index. Select the desired content.

Attachments

Check this box to index binary files attached to an issue.

Comments

Check this box to index comments posted on issues. The comments will be indexed as metadata of the Jira Software issue under which they appear.

Work logs

Check this box to index time entries on issues.

"Content security" tab

Select who will be able to access the source items through a Coveo-powered search interface. For details on this parameter, see Content Security.

Notes
  • The Same users and groups as in your content system option requires you to install the Coveo User Sync app in your instance. Install the version of the app that corresponds to the region of your Coveo organization, or install the HIPAA version for Coveo HIPAA environments. See About the Coveo User Sync App for details.

  • In order to implement the above option and index these permissions, you must provide the credentials of a Jira Administrator account in the Configuration tab, under Authentication.

"Access" tab

In the Access tab, set whether each group and API key can view or edit the source configuration (see Resource Access):

  1. If available, in the left pane, click Groups or API Keys to select the appropriate list.

  2. In the Access Level column for groups or API keys with access to source content, select View or Edit.

Completion

  1. Finish adding or editing your source:

    • When you want to save your source configuration changes without starting a build/rebuild, such as when you know you want to do other changes soon, click Add Source/Save.

      Note

      On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, you must click Launch build or Start required rebuild in the source Status column to add the source content or to make your changes effective, respectively.

    • When you’re done editing the source and want to make changes effective, click Add and Build Source/Save and Rebuild Source.

      Back on the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, you can review the progress of your source addition or modification.

      Once the source is built or rebuilt, you can review its content in the Content Browser.

  2. Optionally, consider editing or adding mappings once your source is done building or rebuilding.

    Should you need to create mapping rules for Jira Software custom fields, see this article.

Tip
Leading practice

By default, a Jira Software source indexes the entire Jira Software instance content. If you want to index only certain projects, click Save, and then specify the desired address patterns in your source JSON configuration before launching the initial build. See Add Source Filters for further information.

Source update best practice

You can get the JIRA_UNREACHABLE_SERVER error message when your Jira Software Cloud source rebuilds or is scheduled to perform a rescan during the daily Atlassian Cloud maintenance window (1 AM to 3 AM, in your server’s time zone). During this period, Atlassian may block access to the API while performing maintenance tasks.

If possible, schedule your source’s rescans so that they’re completed outside of the daily maintenance window. If not possible, ignore the errors. The next scheduled rescan outside the maintenance window shall complete normally.

About the Coveo User Sync App

Installing Coveo’s User Sync app in your Atlassian instance is required to replicate your instance’s content access permissions in your search interface. This lets users see in their Coveo search results the content that their role allows them to see in your Atlassian instance.

To replicate your instance’s permission system, Coveo must associate user email addresses with user roles. Atlassian’s API doesn’t provide this information, but provides the roles assigned to each user account ID. So, Coveo built the User Sync app to retrieve the email address corresponding to each user account ID. It can then combine this information with the roles and account IDs provided by Atlassian’s API.

For more information on sources that index permissions and on how Coveo handles these permissions, see Coveo Management of Security Identities and Item Permissions.

What’s next?