Getting started with Crowd

1. Go to the Atlassian download centre.
2. Download the ZIP archive file for the Crowd distribution (not EAR-WAR).
3. Unzip the zip archive into a directory of your choice, avoiding spaces in the directory name.
4. Tell Crowd where to find its Crowd Home directory, by editing the crowd-init.properties file as described in the installation guide.
5. Set up your database as described in the database configuration guide.
   This quick-start page assumes that you have an existing a JIRA application or Confluence application. So we recommend that you connect Crowd to a production-ready database and not HSQLDB. But if you are evaluating Crowd, it is fine to use HSQLDB and then move to a different database later. In that case, you do not need to do anything in this step, because Crowd contains everything you need.
6. Start your Crowd server by going to the directory where you unzipped Crowd and running start_crowd.bat.
7. To access Crowd, go to your web browser and type this address: http://localhost:8095/crowd.
8. Follow the Setup Wizard. This will guide you through the process of setting up your Crowd server and creating an admin user.

For more help on the technical procedures in this section, please refer to the Crowd installation guide.

If you need assistance, please create a support ticket.

1. Go to the Atlassian download centre.
2. Click the 'Mac OS X' tab and download the TAR.GZ archive file for the Crowd distribution (not EAR-WAR).
3. Unzip the archive into a directory of your choice, avoiding spaces in the directory name.
4. Tell Crowd where to find its Crowd Home directory, by editing the crowd-init.properties file as described in the installation guide.
5. Set up your database as described in the database configuration guide.
   This quick-start page assumes that you have an existing JIRA or Confluence application. So we recommend that you connect Crowd to a production-ready database and not HSQLDB. But if you are evaluating Crowd, it is fine to use HSQLDB and then move to a different database later. In that case, you do not need to do anything in this step, because Crowd contains everything you need.
6. Start your Crowd server by going to the directory where you unzipped Crowd and double-clicking start_crowd.sh.
7. To access Crowd, go to your web browser and type this address: http://localhost:8095/crowd.
8. Follow the Setup Wizard. This will guide you through the process of setting up your Crowd server and creating an admin user.

For more help on the technical procedures in this section, please refer to the Crowd installation guide.

If you need assistance, please create a support ticket.

1. Go to the Atlassian download centre.
2. Click the 'Linux' tab and download the TAR.GZ Archive file for the Crowd distribution (not EAR-WAR).
3. Unzip the archive into a directory of your choice, avoiding spaces in the directory name.
4. Tell Crowd where to find its Crowd Home directory, by editing the crowd-init.properties file as described in the installation guide.
5. Set up your database as described in the database configuration guide.
   This quick-start page assumes that you have an existing JIRA or Confluence application. So we recommend that you connect Crowd to a production-ready database and not HSQLDB. But if you are evaluating Crowd, it is fine to use HSQLDB and then move to a different database later. In that case, you do not need to do anything in this step, because Crowd contains everything you need.
6. Start your Crowd server by going to the directory where you unzipped Crowd and double-clicking start_crowd.sh.
7. To access Crowd, go to your web browser and type this address: http://localhost:8095/crowd.
8. Follow the Setup Wizard. This will guide you through the process of setting up your Crowd server and creating an admin user.

For more help on the technical procedures in this section, please refer to the Crowd installation guide.

If you need assistance, please create a support ticket.

1. Add a Crowd directory — Add a Crowd Internal directory to contain all your JIRA and Confluence users.
2. Add the Confluence groups — Add the 'confluence-users' and 'confluence-administrators' groups to your new directory.
3. Add the JIRA groups — Add the 'jira-users', 'jira-developers' and 'jira-administrators' groups to your new directory.
4. Import your users from a CSV file or add them manually.
5. Add the users to the groups — Use Crowd's bulk user management to add all the users to the 'confluence-users' and 'jira-users' groups. Also add any administrators to the administration groups and add the developers to the 'jira-developers' group. For more details about the permissions applicable to each group, refer to the Confluence and JIRA documentation.

If your JIRA users are currently managed via JIRA's internal management and your Confluence users are managed separately via Confluence's internal management, you can use Crowd to simplify and centralize your user and group management:

1. Add a Crowd directory — Use the Crowd Administration Console to add a Crowd Internal directory to contain all your JIRA and Confluence users.
2. Import the users and groups from Confluence — Use the Crowd importer to copy your users and groups from Confluence into the new Crowd directory. This process will also copy the group memberships into Crowd.
3. Import the users and groups from JIRA — Use the Crowd importer to copy your users and groups from JIRA into the same Crowd directory as the Confluence users. This process will add any additional users and groups from JIRA and update the existing Confluence users with their JIRA group memberships.
4. Check your users and groups in Crowd — Use Crowd's group browser to check that your users, groups and group memberships are available as expected in Crowd.

If your JIRA and Confluence users are currently all managed via JIRA's internal management, you can use Crowd to simplify and centralize your user and group management:

1. Add a Crowd directory — Use the Crowd Administration Console to add a Crowd Internal directory to contain all your JIRA and Confluence users.
2. Import the users and groups from JIRA — Use the Crowd importer to copy your users and groups from JIRA into the new Crowd directory. This process will also copy the group memberships into Crowd.
3. Check your users and groups in Crowd — Use Crowd's group browser to check that your users, groups and group memberships are available as expected in Crowd.

If your users are in a corporate LDAP directory, you can choose whether you want to store your groups in LDAP or in Crowd.

• If you want to store your users and groups in LDAP:
  1. Add a Crowd LDAP directory connector — Choose the options for your specific version of LDAP, such as Microsoft Active Directory or Novell eDirectory. Crowd supports a number of LDAP flavors, as listed in the documentation.
  2. Check your users and groups in Crowd — Use Crowd's group browser to check that your users, groups and group memberships are available as expected in Crowd.
• If you want to store your users in LDAP and your groups in Crowd:
  1. Add a Crowd Delegated Authentication directory — Choose the options for your specific version of LDAP, such as Microsoft Active Directory or Novell eDirectory. Crowd supports a number of LDAP flavors, as listed in the documentation.
  2. Add the Confluence groups — Add the 'confluence-users' and 'confluence-administrators' groups to your new Crowd Delegated Authentication directory.
  3. Add the JIRA groups — Add the 'jira-users', 'jira-developers' and 'jira-administrators' groups to your new Crowd Delegated Authentication directory.
  4. Add the users to the groups — Use Crowd's bulk user management to add all the users to the 'confluence-users' and 'jira-users' groups. Also add any administrators to the administration groups and add the developers to the 'jira-developers' group. For more details about the permissions applicable to each group, refer to the Confluence and JIRA documentation.

Take the following steps, choosing your directory and other options as indicated in the linked documentation:

1. Add a Crowd directory — Choose the directory type you need to contain all your JIRA and Confluence users.
2. Add your users and groups either via Crowd's importer or manually:
   • Import your users and groups into Crowd.
   • Or do it manually:
     1. Add the users.
     2. Add the Confluence groups — Add the 'confluence-users' and 'confluence-administrators' groups to your new directory.
     3. Add the JIRA groups — Add the 'jira-users', 'jira-developers' and 'jira-administrators' groups to your new directory.
     4. Add the users to the groups — Use Crowd's bulk user management to add all the users to the 'confluence-users' and 'jira-users' groups. Also add any administrators to the administration groups and add the developers to the 'jira-developers' group. For more details about the permissions applicable to each group, refer to the Confluence and JIRA documentation.

You may want to test a user's login to a specific application if the user has reported problems with logging in, or if you have just set up the first user to access a new application. The test verifies whether a user will be able to log in to a given application, based on the application, directory and group associations in Crowd.

Go to the application's 'Authentication Test' tab in the Crowd Administration Console, as described in the documentation. The documentation also describes the possible error messages and the steps you can take to resolve any problems.

You may need to change or reset someone's password, if they have forgotten their password or if someone else has come to know the password.

Crowd users can change or reset their own passwords too. See the user documentation. To allow this, you need to grant them Crowd user rights, as described below.

Go to the 'User Details' screen in the Crowd Administration Console, as described in the documentation.

If you have configured an email server and a notification template, Crowd will send the user an email about their new password.

Aliases are useful if the same person has different usernames in JIRA and Confluence. You can define the user just once in Crowd, and allocate one or more aliases for the different applications that the user can access.

The documentation has the full details. In summary:

1. Make sure that aliasing is enabled for JIRA and Confluence, on the application's 'Options' screen.
2. Add the appropriate alias for each user, on the user's 'Applications' screen.

You can give your users access to Crowd's Self-Service Console, where they can edit their own profile, change their password and see the applications they are allowed to access. They can read the User Guide for guidance.

Make sure that the person's username is in a user directory where all users are authorized to use Crowd. Please refer to the documentation for details.

When you first set up Crowd, you will define a single Crowd administrator. It is advisable to give other people administration rights too, so that you do not run into problems when the single administrator is unavailable.

Make sure that the person is a member of the 'crowd-administrators' group. Please refer to the documentation.