Installing and Configuring the Confluence Plugins

This page tells you how to install and configure the Confluence plugins that you need for the SharePoint Connector.

On this page:

1. Install the Confluence Plugins

To install the plugins into Confluence:

1. Go to the Confluence 'Administration Console'. To do this:

   • Open the 'Browse' menu and select 'Confluence Admin'. The 'Administration Console' view will open.
2. Click 'Plugin Repository' in the 'Configuration' section of the left-hand navigation panel to open the 'Atlassian Plugin Repository' page.
3. Scroll down to the row indicating 'The SharePoint Connector for Confluence' and click 'Install'. The Confluence plugin will be installed into Confluence.
4. Scroll to the row indicating 'Permission Checker RPC Plugin' and click 'Install'. The Permission Checker RPC plugin will be installed into Confluence.
   This plugin is also known as the 'Confluence SOAP Permission Checker Plugin'.
5. If you plan to use the federated search feature, you will need the Atlassian-supported OpenSearch plugin. Scroll to the row indicating 'OpenSearch Plugin' and click 'Install'. The OpenSearch plugin will be installed into Confluence.

1. Shut down the Confluence server.
2. Extract the contents of the downloaded SharePointConnector zip file and open the Confluence Plugins directory.
3. Copy the atlassian-extras-x.x.jar file into the <confluence installation>/confluence/WEB-INF/lib directory.
4. Restart the Confluence server.

2. Configure Confluence and the Plugins

Once you have installed the required plugins into Confluence, you should then configure the plugins and your Confluence site to work and communicate successfully with a SharePoint site. Follow the instructions below.

Enabling Confluence Remote API

In order for your SharePoint site(s) to communicate with and retrieve content from Confluence, the Remote API (XML-RPC & SOAP) must be enabled. Please follow the instructions on how to enable this setting in the Confluence administrator's guide.

Configuring Confluence to Work with a SharePoint Site

In this step, you will tell Confluence which SharePoint site(s) it can communicate with.

To configure Confluence to work with a SharePoint site:

1. Go to the Confluence 'Administration Console'. To do this:

   • Open the 'Browse' menu and select 'Confluence Admin'. The 'Administration Console' view will open.
   
   
2. Click 'SharePoint Admin' in the 'Administration' section of the left-hand navigation panel to open the 'SharePoint Admin' page. On this page, you can configure one or more SharePoint sites to work with your Confluence installation.
   
   Screenshot: The site configuration section of the Confluence 'SharePoint Admin' page
   
   
   
   
3. Enter the appropriate details into the following fields:
   
   Table: SharePoint Site Configuration Fields
   
   

   Field	Description
   SharePoint Site Alias	Enter a simple name that identifies the SharePoint site easily in Confluence. SharePoint-related Confluence macros use this name as a parameter value to identify the SharePoint site on which to run their queries. Each SharePoint alias must be unique. However, do not modify this field when editing a pre-configured SharePoint site.
   SharePoint Site URL	Enter the base URL of the SharePoint site, for example, [http://www.example-sharepoint-server.com]\\ \\ \\ .
   Confluence Access URL Enabled	You can choose to configure an alternative SharePoint URL for Confluence to use when accessing SharePoint. See the details in the section below.
   User Name	The Windows user account that Confluence will use to access the SharePoint site. Note that this user must be a SharePoint site collection administrator. The user name must follow the syntax SERVERNAME\username, where: SERVERNAME is the name of the Windows domain on which the SharePoint site can be accessed. Otherwise, this is the name of the computer hosting SharePoint. username is the username of the Windows user account used to access the SharePoint site.
   Password	The password associated with the Windows user account.

   
   
4. Select the appropriate choices for the following options:
   
   Table: SharePoint Site Configuration Additional Options
   
   

   Option	Description
   Make this SharePoint Site the default. ...	Selecting this option makes any Confluence SharePoint macros that do not reference a SharePoint Site Alias, query this SharePoint site. If this option is selected, a ' ' appears in the 'Default Site' field of the list of configured SharePoint sites (at the top of the SharePoint Admin page).
   Enable sp-list permission trimming ...	Selecting this option filters the SharePoint List macro results to content that the user has permission to access in SharePoint.
   Enable HTTP Client pre-emptive authentication. ...	This setting controls how Confluence sends authentication information to the SharePoint site upon querying the SharePoint site. When this setting is selected, Confluence will always sends the user account credentials at the start of every request. When this setting is disabled, Confluence will wait until the SharePoint requests authentication before sending the user account credentials.

   
   
5. Click the 'Test Connection' button to test that the connection to the SharePoint site is correct.
   
   If the connection was successful, you will see the message Connection Test: Success.
   If the connection was not successful, you will see the message Connection Test: Server unreachable. If you see this message, please ensure that your SharePoint site settings are correct.
   
   
6. Click 'Update SharePoint Settings' to save the configuration settings for your SharePoint site.

Configuring an Alternative SharePoint URL for Confluence

The 'Confluence Access URL Enabled' option on the 'SharePoint Admin' screen allows you to set up a special URL for Confluence to use when accessing SharePoint. There are two choices:

• 'Use Standard Access URL' – This is the default value. If you choose this option Confluence will query the SharePoint site via the 'SharePoint Site URL' configured above.
• 'Use Alternative Access URL' – If you choose this option, the 'Confluence Access URL' field appears on the screen. Enter an alternative URL. Confluence will query the SharePoint site via this URL instead of the 'SharePoint Site URL'.

The alternative access URL allows you to resolve problems where the SharePoint installation uses an authentication protocol not supported by Confluence, such as NTLMv2 or Kerberos. You can configure SharePoint to run on a separate port that bypasses the unsupported authentication protocol, and then allow Confluence to communicate with SharePoint via this alternative URL. See the recommended configuration for securing Confluence access to SharePoint.

To configure Confluence to access SharePoint via an alternative URL:

1. Set up an alternative URL in SharePoint. (See the recommended configuration for securing Confluence access to SharePoint.)
2. Select 'Use Alternative Access URL' on the Confluence 'SharePoint Admin' screen shown above.

The alternative access URL must be configured externally, as a separate network configuration.

In practice, an alternative access URL would be used in situations where Confluence and SharePoint are hosted in the same private network, either behind a firewall or on the same VPN.

(Optional) Configuring Confluence to Use the SharePoint Decorators Theme

To configure Confluence to use the SharePoint Decorators theme:

1. Go to the Confluence 'Administration Console'. To do this:

   • Open the 'Browse' menu and select 'Confluence Admin'. The 'Administration Console' view will open.
   
   
2. Click 'Themes' in the 'Look and Feel' section of the left-hand navigation panel.
   
   
3. The 'Site Theme' page opens. Select the 'SharePoint Decorators 2.8+' theme.
   
   
4. Click the 'Confirm' button.

Configuring Confluence to Share Search Results with SharePoint MOSS

If a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is available, you can configure Confluence to share search results with the MOSS server. This will allow users to search content in both Confluence and SharePoint from Confluence's search features.

Screenshot: The MOSS search integration section of the Confluence 'SharePoint Admin' page



To configure Confluence to share search results with a MOSS server:

1. Enter the MOSS server's Search URL into the 'Search URL' field. This usually has the format [http://www.example-sharepoint-server.com/searchcenter/Pages/Results.aspx] .
   
   
2. Enter the MOSS Search URL's search parameter into the 'Search Field Name'. This is usually the letter k only.
   
   
3. Click the 'Update Search Settings' button.

You will also need to configure the SharePoint side of things. You will come to this step later, as described in Configuring the SharePoint Federated Search.

If you have activated the SharePoint Decorator theme (see above|#theme]), the theme supplies a drop-down menu next to the Confluence search box, looking like this:

The drop-down menu offers two options:

• 'SharePoint & Confluence' – If you select this option when searching for content via the Confluence search, the search results page will open in SharePoint and will show results from both SharePoint and Confluence.
• 'Confluence Only' – If you select this option when searching for content via the Confluence search, the search results page will open in Confluence and will show results from Confluence only.

If you choose not to use the SharePoint Decorator theme, you and other Confluence users will not see the above drop-down menu. If you wish to search both Confluence and SharePoint content, you will need to start the search from within SharePoint.

Editing an Existing SharePoint Site's Settings

This section describes how to edit the settings for a SharePoint site that has already been configured in Confluence.

To edit the existing configuration settings of a SharePoint site in Confluence:

1. Go to the Confluence 'Administration Console'. To do this:

   • Open the 'Browse' menu and select 'Confluence Admin'. The 'Administration Console' view will open.
   
   
2. Click 'SharePoint Admin' in the 'Administration' section of the left-hand navigation panel.
   
   
3. In the top list of already-configured SharePoint sites, click the '- Edit -' link next to the SharePoint site that you want to update. The fields below the list will be populated with the current settings for that SharePoint site.
   
   
4. Edit the field details according to the table above, to the updated settings.
   
   
5. If necessary, update the additional options if required.
   
   
6. Test that the connection to the SharePoint site is correct by clicking the 'Test Connection' button.
   A message will be displayed, indicating whether or not the connection was successful.
   
   
7. Click 'Update SharePoint Settings' to save the updated configuration settings for your SharePoint site.

Screenshot: Example List of Configured SharePoint Sites

Next Step

To continue with the installation of the SharePoint Connector, please configure the access to Confluence.