Add or edit a Jira Software Cloud source

This is for:

Developer System Administrator

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
Indexable content

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

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.

Tip
Leading practice

It’s best to create or edit your source in your sandbox organization first. Once you’ve confirmed that it indexes the desired content, you can copy your source configuration to your production organization, either with a snapshot or manually.

See About non-production organizations for more information and best practices regarding sandbox organizations.

To add a Jira Software Cloud source

  1. On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click Add source.

  2. In the Add a source of content panel, click the Jira Software Cloud (cloud-blue) source tile.

  3. In the Add a new Jira Cloud source panel, fill in the following fields.

    Name: The source name can’t be modified once it’s saved. Therefore, make sure to use a short and descriptive name, using letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores. Avoid spaces and other special characters.

    Jira address: The URL of your Jira root URL. It often ends with jira.com.

    Authentication: Specify whether your Jira Software project requires logging in or is available to anyone. If it requires an account:

    • Enter the email address of a dedicated Atlassian account that has access to the content you want to index. See Source credentials leading practices.

    • Enter an API token created with this account specifically for this source.

    • You will need to install the Coveo User Sync app in your Jira Software project to synchronize users and groups with Coveo.

  4. Click Next/Add source.

  5. If you selected No login under Authentication, select who will be able to access the source items through a Coveo-powered search interface. For details on this parameter, see Content security.

  6. Click Add source to continue configuring your source.

To edit a Jira Software Cloud source

  1. On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click the source you want to edit.

  2. Click Edit in the Action bar.

"Content to index" tab

The Content to index tab lets you define the content that you want to make available as search results.

Additional content

Optionally, you can index the files attached to the indexed issues and comments.

You can also index comments posted on issues. These comments will be indexed as metadata of this content.

Moreover, you can index work logs from time entries on indexed issues.

"Advanced settings" tab

The Advanced settings tab lets you customize the Coveo crawler behavior. All advanced settings have default values that are adequate in most use cases.

Content and images

Extract text from JPG, PNG, BMP, SVG files

Enable this option if you want Coveo to extract text from image files. 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.
Extract text from PDF documents

Enable this option if you want Coveo to extract text from PDF files containing images. 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" tab

The Authentication tab contains settings used by the source crawler to emulate the behavior of a user authenticating to access restricted Jira Software Cloud content. You provided authentication information when you created the source.

Jira address: The URL of your Jira Software root URL. It often ends with jira.com.

Authentication: Specify whether your Jira Software site requires logging in or is available to anyone. If it requires an account, provide:

  • The email address corresponding to a dedicated Atlassian account that has access to all the content that you want to index. See Source credentials leading practices.

  • An API token created with this account specifically for this source.

"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, if applicable) in your Coveo organization can view or edit the current source.

For example, when creating a new source, you could decide that members of Group A can edit its configuration while Group B can only view it.

See Custom access level for more information.

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 follow 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.

Required privileges

You can assign privileges to allow access to specific tools in the Coveo Administration Console. The following table indicates the privileges required to view or edit elements of the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page and associated panels. See Manage privileges and Privilege reference for more information.

Note

The Edit all privilege isn’t required to create sources. When granting privileges for the Sources domain, you can grant a group or API key the View all or Custom access level, instead of Edit all, and then select the Can Create checkbox to allow users to create sources. See Can Create ability dependence for more information.
Actions Service Domain Required access level

View sources, view source update schedules, and subscribe to source notifications

Content

Fields

View

Sources

Organization

Organization

Edit sources, edit source update schedules, and view the View Metadata page

Content

Fields

Edit

Sources

Content

Source metadata

View

Organization

Organization

What’s next?

Schedule source updates.