Add a Jira Software Data Center source

This is for:

Developer System Administrator

When you have the required privileges, you can add the content of a Jira Software (Server) 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

The following table presents the main characteristics of a Jira Software Data Center source.

Features Supported Additional information

Indexable content

Jira projects[1], 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 Jira 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 the Coveo plugin to index all permission types.
Without the plugin, only some permission types are indexed.

Specific users and groups

check

Everyone

check

Requirements

Jira Software Data Center instance accessible to Coveo

When the access to communication ports between Coveo and the Jira Software Data Center instance is restricted, the appropriate port(s) must be opened in the network infrastructure such as in firewalls to allow Coveo to access the content.

Note

Single sign-on (SSO) isn’t supported. If your instance uses an SSO, you must create a native Atlassian crawling account directly in Jira to bypass it and crawl the instance content.

Plugin

Download and install the Coveo Jira plugin on your Jira Software Data Center instance if you intend to select the Same users and groups as in your content system content security option. Without the plugin, only some permission types are indexed.

Crawling account

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 a Jira Software Data Center source

A Jira Software Data Center source indexes on-premises (server) content. To retrieve cloud content instead, see Add a Jira Software Cloud source.

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.

Follow the instructions below to add a Jira Software Data Center source that uses the desired content retrieval method.

  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 On-premises (server) or the Crawling Module (crawlingmodule) tab, depending on your content retrieval context. With the latter, you must install the Crawling Module to make your source operational.

  3. Click the Jira Software Data Center tile.

  4. In the Add a new Jira Software Data Center source panel, provide the following information:

    • 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.

    • Address: The base URL of your Jira Software Data Center instance. Ensure to include the protocol (https:// or http://).

    • Authentication: How Coveo should log in to your Jira Software Data Center instance to index your content.

      If you select Personal access token

      1. Create a crawling account dedicated to your source. This account must have access to all the content that you want to index. See Source credentials leading practices for other leading practices to follow. This account must also have the Jira Administrators global permission.

      2. Create a personal access token for your crawling account.

      3. Back in the source configuration panel, enter this access token.

      If you select Basic authentication

      1. Create a crawling account dedicated to your source. This account must have access to all the content that you want to index. See Source credentials leading practices for other leading practices to follow. This account must also have the Jira Administrators global permission.

      2. Back in the source configuration panel, enter the username and password of this account.

      If you select No login - Content to index is public

      1. Click Next.

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

    • Project (available with the Enterprise edition): Optionally, associate your source with Coveo projects.

  5. Click Add source.

  6. Specify your source settings. Refer to the following sections for detailed information on the source settings:

"Configuration" tab

When configuring or editing your Jira Software Data Center source, the Configuration tab is selected by default. It contains your source’s general and authentication information, as well as other parameters that let you specify the content to index.

"Content to index" subtab

The Content to index subtab 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. By default, these comments will be indexed as metadata of issue items. However, you have the option to index comments as individual items instead. If you do, access permissions will also be indexed, which means that only the users allowed to access a comment will be able to find it through a Coveo-powered search interface.

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

"Advanced settings" subtab

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

Content and images

If you want Coveo to extract text from image files or PDF files containing images, enable the appropriate option.

The 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.

"Authentication" subtab

The Authentication subtab contains settings used by the source crawler to emulate the behavior of a user authenticating to access restricted Jira Software Data Center content.

Jira address: The base URL of your Jira Software Data Center instance. Ensure to include the protocol (https:// or http://).

Authentication: How Coveo should log in to your Jira Software Data Center instance to index your content.

If you select Personal access token

  1. Create a crawling account dedicated to your source. This account must have access to all the content that you want to index. See Source credentials leading practices for other leading practices to follow. This account must also have the Jira Administrators global permission.

  2. Create a personal access token for your crawling account.

  3. Back in the source configuration panel, enter this access token.

If you select Basic authentication

  1. Create a crawling account dedicated to your source. This account must have access to all the content that you want to index. See Source credentials leading practices for other leading practices to follow. This account must also have the Jira Administrators global permission.

  2. Back in the source configuration panel, enter the username and password of this account.

If you select No login

Go to the Content security tab, and then select who will be able to access the source items through a Coveo-powered search interface. For details on this parameter, see Content security.

"Identification" subtab

The Identification subtab contains general information about the 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.

Note

The Same users and groups as in your content system option requires you to provide the credentials of a Jira Administrator account in the Configuration tab, under Authentication.

"Access" tab

In the Access tab, specify 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.

For more information, see Custom access level.

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.

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

      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.
      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.

      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. Once your source is done building or rebuilding, review the metadata Coveo is retrieving from your content.

    1. On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click your source, and then click More > View and map metadata in the Action bar.

    2. If you want to use a currently not indexed metadata in a facet or result template, map it to a field.

      1. Click the metadata and then, at the top right, click Add to Index.

      2. In the Apply a mapping on all item types of a source panel, select the field you want to map the metadata to, or add a new field if none of the existing fields are appropriate.

        Notes

        • For details on configuring a new field, see Add or edit a field.

        • For advanced mapping configurations, like applying a mapping to a specific item type, see Manage mappings.

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

      3. Click Apply mapping.

    3. Depending on the source type you use, you may be able to extract additional metadata from your content. You can then map that metadata to a field, just like you did for the default metadata.

      More on custom metadata extraction and indexing

      Some source types let you define rules to extract metadata beyond the default metadata Coveo discovers during the initial source build.

      For example:

      Source type Custom metadata extraction methods

      Push API

      Define metadata key-value pairs in the addOrUpdate section of the PUT request payload used to upload push operations to an Amazon S3 file container.

      REST API
      and
      GraphQL API

      In the JSON configuration (REST API | GraphQL API) of the source, define metadata names (REST API | GraphQL API) and specify where to locate the metadata values in the JSON API response Coveo receives.

      Database

      Add <CustomField> elements in the XML configuration. Each element defines a metadata name and the database field to use to populate the metadata with.

      Web

      Sitemap

      Some source types automatically map metadata to default or user created fields, making the mapping process unnecessary. Some source types automatically create mappings and fields for you when you configure metadata extraction.

      See your source type documentation for more details.

    4. When you’re done reviewing and mapping metadata, return to the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page.

    5. To reindex your source with your new mappings, click Launch rebuild in the source Status column.

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

Permission types indexed without the Coveo plugin

If you select the Same users and groups as in your content system content security option, you should install the Coveo Jira plugin on your Jira Software Data Center instance. Without it, only the following permission types are supported:

Jira Software permission types Supported without plugin

Group & user

check

Project

check

Application role

check

Issue-level

x

Attachments

check

Comments

check[2]

Time Tracking

check

Limitation

When indexing content with the Crawling Module, ensure not to change space character encoding in an item’s URI, as Coveo uses URIs to distinguish items.

For example, an item whose URI would change from example.com/my first item to example.com/my%20first%20item wouldn’t be recognized as the same by Coveo. As a result, it would be indexed twice, and the older version wouldn’t be deleted.

Item URIs are displayed in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au). We recommend you check where these URIs come from before making changes that affect space character encoding. Depending on your source type, the URI may be an item’s URL, or it may be built out of pieces of metadata by your source mapping rules. For example, your item URIs may consist of the main site URL plus the item filename, due to a mapping rule such as example.com/%[filename]. In such a case, changing space encoding in the item filename could impact the URI.

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 edit source mappings

Organization

Organization

View

Content

Fields

Edit

Sources

View and map metadata

Content

Source metadata

View

Fields

Organization

Organization

Content

Sources

Edit

What’s next?

1. Jira project metadata is included on the issues of the project, but the projects themselves aren’t included.
2. You must activate the option on the source to support permissions on comments.