Add a Jive Server source

This is for:

Developer System Administrator

When you have the required privileges, you can add the content of a Jive community 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

Jive version

9

Only the minor versions currently maintained by Jive are supported. The latest version to have been tested with Coveo is 9.0.

Indexable content

Communities (also known as Spaces), social groups (also known as groups), projects, people and their profile, direct messages (requires Coveo plugin), items (private and public), discussions (private and public), blog posts (for spaces, projects, users, groups and system blogs), announcements, polls, comments (for items, blog posts, and polls), attachments (for items, blog posts, and discussions), ideas (private and public), and videos (private and public).

Support phrase substitutions (requires Coveo plugin), tags, and categories.

Content update operations

refresh

check

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

  • Comments on comments and replies on replies

  • Deleted file items

The Coveo plugin is required to:

  • Remove recently deleted Jive items

  • Properly refresh discussions

rescan

check

rebuild

check

Content security options

Same users and groups as in your content system

check

Requires the Coveo plugin.

Specific users and groups

check

Everyone

check

Requirements

Before configuring your source, you must ensure that your Jive instance is ready to work with Coveo.

Supported Jive version

The source supports Jive 9.

Note

Existing and new sources may still be able to index Jive 6, 7, or 8 content, but Coveo no longer tests the source with these versions.

Jive administrator account

When you want to include Jive permissions, you must create a specific Jive administrator account with Full Access permissions that’s only used for the source.

Jive Server accessible to Coveo

When the access to communication ports between Coveo and the Jive server 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

At least the following ports must be opened:

  • 443: standard port for secured internet connections (HTTPS)

  • 8080: Jive default port

Add a Jive Server source

Before you start, ensure that your Jive instance meets the source requirements.

Follow the instructions below to add a Jive Server 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 Jive Server tile.

  4. Configure your 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.

"Configuration" tab

In the Add a Jive Server 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

Content update and security requirement

Download and install the Coveo Jive plugin if you intend to select the Same users and groups as in your content system content security option.

Note

If you use Jive 6, 7, or 8 download this plugin instead.
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 web address of the Jive instance that you want to index.

Starting community

Optionally, enter the URL of a Jive Community where the crawling should begin. Coveo indexes the content of the communities (also known as spaces) under the starting community.

By default, the root community (also known as root space) is used.

Note

Content outside the starting community can be indexed thanks to the options in the Content to include section.
Paired Crawling Module

If your source is a Crawling Module source, and if you have more than one Crawling Module linked to this organization, select the one with which you want to pair your source. If you change the Crawling Module instance paired with your source, a successful rebuild is required for your change to apply.

Optical character recognition (OCR)

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.

Allow anonymous access

Check this box to map the Everyone group in Jive to the Everyone group of the Email security identity provider.

Important

When you check this box, all items accessible to the Everyone group in Jive become public. In other words, any user (authenticated or anonymous) of your search interface can find these items in their search results.
Project

If you have the Enterprise edition, use the Project selector to associate your source with one or multiple Coveo projects.

"Authentication" section

Enter the credentials of a Jive account with Full Access permissions to the Jive instance. See Source credentials leading practices.

"Content to include" section

This section allows you to specify whether you want to index some additional types of content. Communities (also known as spaces), projects, social groups (also known as groups), and system blogs are indexed by default.

Note

By default, all Jive content is indexed, regardless of its status (except private users content under the Jive Community domain).
People

Check the People box to index user profiles, personal blogs, and private items (items and discussions). Private messages (also known as direct messages) aren’t included.

Important

Since it’s not possible to apply permissions to people items, we strongly recommend that you don’t check the People box. Your Jive user profiles probably contain private information, and checking this box would make this data available to all search interface users.

Moreover, enabling this parameter significantly increases the crawling time. If you need to index people content, you should create a separate Jive Server source specifically to index this content.
Published items only

Check this box if you want to index only the items whose status is Published.

Note

A source refresh catches Jive item status changes and respects the configuration of this parameter.
Active Directory permissions

This option is available with Crawling Module sources only. If you’re creating or editing an source of type On-Premises, skip to "Content Security" tab.

When you check this box and provide the required Active Directory information in the fields that appear, Active Directory permissions are indexed and replicated in your search interface.

For this option to be enforced, you must also select the Same users and groups as in your content system option in the Content Security tab.

Active Directory username and Active Directory password

Enter credentials to grant Coveo access to your Active Directory.

Expand well-known SIDs

Select this option if you want the users that are included in your Active Directory well-known security identifiers to be granted access to the indexed content. Expect an increase in the duration of the security identity provider refresh operation. Supported well-known SIDs are: Everyone, Authenticated Users, Domain Admins, Domain Users, and Anonymous Users.

Tip
Leading practice

If your entire content is secured with Everyone or Authenticated users, we recommend selecting the Everyone content security option instead. The result will be the same, that is, all users will be able to access the database content through your search interface, and Coveo’s update operations will be more efficient.
Enable TLS

Select this option to use a TLS protocol to retrieve your security identities. If you do, we strongly recommend selecting StartTLS if you can. Since LDAPS is a much older protocol, you should only select this value if StartTLS is incompatible with your environment.

Email attributes

By default, Coveo retrieves the email address associated to each security identity from the mail attribute. Optionally, you can specify additional or different attributes to check. Should an attribute contain more than one value, Coveo uses the first one.

"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.

Important

When using the Everyone content security option, see Safely apply content filtering for information on how to ensure that your source content is safely filtered and only accessible by intended users.

"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.

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

      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.

      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.

Safely apply content filtering

The best way to ensure that your indexed content is seen only by the intended users is to enforce content security by selecting the Same users and groups as in your content system option. Should this option be unavailable, select Specific users and groups instead.

However, if you need to configure your source so that the indexed source content is accessible to Everyone, you should adhere to the following leading practices. These practices ensure that your source content is safely filtered and only accessible by the appropriate users:

Following the above leading practices results in a workflow whereby the user query is authenticated server side via a search token that enforces the search hub from which the query originates. Therefore, the query can’t be modified by users or client-side code. The query then passes through a specific query pipeline based on a search hub condition, and the query results are filtered using the filter rules.

Configure query filters

Filter rules allow you to enter hidden query expressions to be added to all queries going through a given query pipeline. They’re typically used to add a field-based expression to the constant query expression (cq).

Example

You apply the @objectType=="Solution" query filter to the pipeline to which the traffic of your public support portal is directed. As a result, the @objectType=="Solution" query expression is added to any query sent via this support portal.

Therefore, if a user types Speedbit watch wristband in the search box, the items returned are those that match these keywords and whose objectType has the Solution value. Items matching these keywords but having a different objectType value aren’t returned in the user’s search results.

To learn how to configure query pipeline filter rules, see Manage filter rules.

Note

You can also enforce a filter expression directly in the search token.

Use condition-based query pipeline routing

The most recommended and flexible query pipeline routing mechanism is condition-based routing.

When using this routing mechanism, you ensure that search requests are routed to a specific query pipeline according to the search interface from which they originate, and the authentication is done server side.

To accomplish this:

  1. Apply a condition to a query pipeline based on a search hub value, such as Search Hub is Community Search or Search Hub is Agent Panel. This condition ensures that all queries that originate from a specific search hub go through that query pipeline.

  2. Authenticate user queries via a search token that’s generated server side and that contains the search hub parameter that you specified in the query pipeline.

Configure the search token

When using query filters to secure content, the safest way to enforce content security is to authenticate user queries using a search token that’s generated server side. For instance, when using this approach, you can enforce a search hub value in the search token. This makes every authenticated request that originates from a component use the specified search hub, and therefore be routed to the proper query pipeline. Because this configuration is stored server side and encrypted in the search token, it can’t be modified by users or client-side code.

Implementing search token authentication requires you to add server side logic to your web site or application. Therefore, the actual implementation details will vary from one project to another.

The following procedure provides general guidelines:

Note

If you’re using the Coveo In-Product Experience (IPX) feature, see Implement advanced search token authentication.

  1. Authenticate the user.

  2. Call a service exposed through Coveo to request a search token for the authenticated user.

  3. Specify the userIDs for the search token, and enforce a searchHub parameter in the search token.

Note

You can specify other parameters in the search token, such as a query filter.

For more information and examples, see Search token authentication.

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 view the View and map metadata subpage

Content

Fields

Edit

Sources

Content

Source metadata

View

Organization

Organization

What’s next?