User data compatiblity

Many of our customers are choosing to migrate to cloud or use a combination of our on-premise (Data Center and Server) and cloud products. An important aspect of these scenarios is user management, or the ability to migrate or share the same user base between on-premise and cloud.

Differences in how users are identified in on-premise and cloud products

These products use different approaches to identifying users. This is the main obstacle in sharing your users between the two without any upfront cleanup or changes:

• On-premise products identify users by usernames. It’s probably safe to assume that many of your users' email addresses are invalid since they have never been required.

• Cloud products identify users by email addresses. You won’t be able to migrate or share users whose addresses aren’t correct.

To help you identify the problems earlier and save time and errors during the migration, we’ve created a User data compatibility app that scans your user directories and generates a report with users whose emails don’t meet the requirements.

When to use this app

You can use this app as an extra tool for identifying problems with your user base. You’d usually use it:

• Before migrating to cloud with one of our migration tools

• Before sharing your user base between your cloud and on-premise products

The app creates a report with highlighted errors, but you’ll need to fix them manually.

What’s supported by the app

Here’s a summary of supported products and features:

Install the app and scan your user directories

To install the app:

1. Go to Administration > Manage apps > Find new apps.

2. Search for User data compatibility.

3. Install the app.

To scan your user directories:

1. Access the app in the User management administration area:

   • In Jira, go to Administration > User management > User data compatibility.

   • In Confluence, go to Administration > General configuration > User data compatibility (in the Users & Security section).

2. Start the initial scan by clicking Scan database. Depending on the size of your user database, it might take up to a few minutes to show the results.

View scan results

Here’s a sample view of the User data compatibility app after an initial scan:

1. Scan details: Details of the latest scan and its results. Only the latest results are shown, there’s no scan history.

2. Filters: Filter the results by error types, user’s last authenticated date, and directory.

3. User details: List of users with invalid email addresses, details on why they’re invalid, and the directory these users live in.

4. Actions: Start the scan again, or export the results to CSV, which will be useful when fixing the errors.

What you can do with the report

Here are some recommendations that we’ve found useful:

• Narrow down the results by using filters and export them into CSV files

• Use the Directory filter to tackle individual user directories separately and export them to individual CSV files to share with your identity team.

• Use the Last authenticated filter, and the user’s status, to clean up users who are no longer needed.

• Use the CSV files as a base to fix invalid users in external directories, and then sync them with your on-premise product.

Having problems?

This app is included in Atlassian Support. If you need assistance, you can submit a support request.

Next steps: Using the migration tools

Once you fix the email addresses, you shouldn’t get any errors during the migration so you can start moving your projects, or only some parts of them, into cloud. Here are some useful pages:

• Jira Cloud Migration Assistant or Jira site import

• Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant