Application Links - JIRA & Confluence

[Pieter Jacobs]

Hi all,

We've been struggling to get the link up and running but with no luck.  We're using JIRA 6.3.5 and Confluence 5.6.5.  

We've found loads of documentation and postings on forums, but either the people didn't come right, or the ones that did have different versions of the software than us, and all the screenshots are completely different to ours.  Even the documentation says things like "... 2-Legged OAuth requests and allow user impersonation through 2-Legged OAuth"  etc. but no steps on how to perform that.  No proper detail, e.g.

• what should we specify as the Service Provider Name
• Where should we get the Consumer Key, or do we have to use ssh-keygen to create the public and private key? and where do we have to place the private key (if we have to generate the keys with ssh-keygen)
• What is the Shared Secret, or is it the same as the Passphrase used when generating the private and public keys?
• Where do we get the Request Token URL?  (What token are they referring to)?
• Where do we get the Access Token URL?
• Where do we get the Authorize URL?

Everything we read indicated that we have to set up OAuth; is that correct or is there another way?

Sorry but very little of the documentation is cool; most of it refers to links that we do not have in our version, for instance, when trying to find the OAuth configuration, according to the documentation we have to go the System and select "OAuth" from the left menu, but we found it under "Add-Ons" / "Application Links".

Thanks and hope someone will be able to help us out here.

Pieter

[Pieter Jacobs]

Hi Ramiro and Brian,

Thank you very much for the quick replies!   We are busy working through the answers, but just want to find out something:

We are running two instances of Tomcat (one for JIRA and one for Confluence); it looks like the one application (e.g. JIRA) does not "know" or "see" the other one (e.g. Confluence).  From outside the server and via a browser on the server we can access both sites though.

Did any of you guys experience something like this?

Thanks,

Pieter

[Doods Perea]

Hi Pieter,

I know your comment above is more than 3 years old, but I am running into the same problem and wonder if you have found a solution that I can also use.

Thanks,

Doods

[CruzinUSA]

Hi Pieter,

I think you're running into this issue because JIRA and Confluence can't communicate with each other. From which product are you trying to create the application link? To create the application link (from JIRA, this can be done in confluence as well) you'll need to navigate to Cog Icon > Add-ons > Application Links. From here, from here enter the applicationURL (be aware of any proxies or external forces that may cause a URL rewrite) and then select create link. Input an Application Name, and select the Application type. In this case it would be Confluence. At the bottom of the form is a checkbox for Create incoming link select this. The rest of the form will fill itself out. 

After the application link has been created it should go through the process of setting up authentication. If not, edit the newly created application link. You'll want to set up 2-legged OAuth between without impersonation. 

If you have any questions or need more assistance, go ahead and open a support ticket.

[Ramiro Pointis]

Hi Pieter I'll try to explain the situation that I have to face when I did this configuration.

As explained here, there are 3 types of scenarios for the authentication:

• If the two applications you are linking trust each other and share the same user base, configure two-way authentication using Trusted Applications for both incoming authentication (authentication of requests coming from a linked application into this application) and outgoing authentication (authentication of requests sent from this application to a linked application). For example, you may link your internal Confluence instance to an internal JIRA instance.
• If the two applications you are linking trust each other but do not share the same user base, configure two-way authentication using OAuth for both incoming authentication (authentication of requests coming from a linked application into this application) and outgoing authentication (authentication of requests sent from this application to a linked application). For example, you may link your internal Confluence instance to an external (customer-facing) JIRA instance.
• If you do not have administrative rights to the application that you are linking to (e.g. linking to a public FishEye instance), configure a one-way outgoing link authenticated using basic HTTP authentication or do not configure any authentication for the link. For example, you may link your external JIRA instance to a partner organisation's JIRA instance. An unauthenticated link will still allow the local application to render hyperlinks to the remote application or query anonymously-accessible APIs.

In my case I had to use the last one, basic HTTP authentication since we were using LDAP for Confluence and internal JIRA directory for JIRA. Using this configuration we were able to search info across the applications but if we wanted to make actions like creating issues or pages from the other application the creator will be the admin user since this is used to make the link.

Basically in JIRA configuration first step I had to specify the Confluence server URL I.e. http://confluence.****.com:8090

In the second step I had to indicate the admin user and password and  in the third step I chose "There's no trusted relationship between servers"

Then I did the same thing from Confluence but using the JIRA admin password. Note that the link will already appear in Confluence but you will have to finish configuration.

Hope this helps

[Ramiro Pointis]

I'm not enterily sure but I think this must be enabled, can you check? Remote API access (Administration >> General Configuration >> Accept remote API calls).