LDAP import

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Maybe you work with a corporate directory that contains your assets or employee-manager relationships used for approval processes. Such LDAP entries can be imported in Insight. To make things easy, Insight has modules that works with popular LDAP directories, which fetch the structure and the assets from your directory. This article shows you how to set this up. Learn more about importing

You need to be a Jira admin to create and configure LDAP imports.

Overview

An LDAP directory is a collection of data about users and other assets. LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is an Internet protocol that web applications can use to look up information about those assets from the LDAP server.

We provide a built-in connectors for the most popular LDAP directory servers:

  • Microsoft Active Directory
  • Apache Directory Server (ApacheDS)
  • Apple Open Directory
  • Fedora Directory Server
  • Novell eDirectory
  • OpenDS
  • OpenLDAP
  • OpenLDAP Using Posix Schema
  • Posix Schema for LDAP
  • Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition (DSEE)
  • A generic LDAP directory server

LDAPS validation

LDAPS (Secure LDAP) is supported and doesn't have any special requirements from Insight to work.

If you are trying to import from an LDAPS source, you can choose to validate the LDAP server certificate with an imported Certificate Authority (CA) certificate. If you select to validate the LDAP server certificate, you must import the root CA certificate from the CA that signed the LDAP server certificate, so your Jira can use the CA certificate to validate the LDAP server certificate. More information is explained here.

Be sure to change the port to 3269. This is due to the fact that a GC (global catalog) server returns referrals on 389 which refers to the greater AD "forest", but acts like a regular LDAP server on 3268 (and 3269 for LDAPS) when changing from LDAP to LDAPS.

Import fields

Once you've chosen your import type, you'll need to enter details about it. Here's the description of fields you should see in Insight.

General fields

Here are general fields, common for every import type:

Name

Description

NameThe name of the import.
DescriptionThe description for your convenience.
Concatenator

You can specify a default concatenator. When joining multiple data locators into one Insight attribute, this will be the default concatenator. One example could be to join two columns like "First name" and "Last name" into one attribute. So "Mathias" (first name) and "Edblom" (last name) will be concatenated as "Mathias Edblom" if using \s as concatenator.

Enter \s for space-concatenated. To include a concatenate character, place the value between double quotes (i.e "\s").

Empty ValuesDefines what should happen when a Data Locator is empty. Should the import remove the attribute value or just ignores it and leave the current value as is.
Defines what should happen if a Data Locator is unknown to Insight. This could happen with attribute types like "Status" and "Select". The value can be added as an option or just ignore the value.

Format for date fields in import source to convert dates into Insight. If left empty, Insight will automatically try to find correct format. 
The format should be specified according to the Java SimpleDateFormat guidelines.

Format for date/time fields in import source to convert dates into Insight. If left empty, Insight will automatically try to find correct format. 
The format should be specified according to the Java SimpleDateFormat guidelines.

Module fields

These fields are specific to an import type (module).

Setting

Description

URL

Protocol, Hostname and Port of the server running LDAP. Example: ldap://ldap.example.com:389

User DN

The distinguished name of the user that the application will use when connecting to the directory server. Examples:

  • cn=administrator,cn=users,dc=ad,dc=example,dc=com
  • cn=user,dc=domain,dc=name
  • user@domain.name

Password

The password of the user specified above.

Base DN

The root distinguished name (DN) to use when running queries against the directory server. Examples:

  • o=example,c=com
  • cn=users,dc=ad,dc=example,dc=com
  • For Microsoft Active Directory, specify the base DN in the following format: dc=domain1,dc=local. You will need to replace the domain1 and local for your specific configuration. Microsoft Server provides a tool called ldp.exe which is useful for finding out and configuring the the LDAP structure of your server.

If you want specific Base DN in your object type see the Selector value below

Search filter

Defines the scoop of the filter search, default is (objectClass=*) which will give you all entries. If you only want Jira Users for example, you can set (objectClass=person). Note that the Users in LDAP need to have the the "objectClass" set to "person".

The search filter is important in the way that it can affect the synchronization time.

Search scope when importingSearch scope determines how objects should be fetched from the LDAP. Default setting is ONE_LEVEL while the locators and structure are created with SUBTREE.
Follow ReferralsLDAP functionality to make sure you always get the correct data, even in a distributed LDAP environment.
Include namespaceThis option is only applicable when creating an Insight object structure from an LDAP server. The option will append the namespace e.g. cn=users,ou=company,=dc=examle,dc=com to the object type description. The value is not used while performing synchronizations.

(warning) Be sure you test the synchronization in a test environment before doing it in production.

Scheduling fields

Scheduling fields are responsible for keeping your data in sync:

NameDescription
Synchronizing AccountThe Jira user to use when synchronize data into Insight
Cron ExpressionThe interval for the automatic synchronization.
Automatically SynchronizeIf the import should be scheduled for automatic synchronization.

Pre-defined structure and configuration

In the next step, after you've filled in the required fields, Insight will ask you whether you want to create a predefined structure (object type mappings) and configuration (attribute mappings). Details of this will differ depending on the import type. Some object type mappings are disabled by default, so make sure to select the relevant ones.

You can import users or groups from only one Organizational Unit (OU) during an Insight LDAP import. For more information, see How to import users or groups from specific OUs with Insight LDAP import.

Here's some details for the LDAP import:

Predefined structure

The structure will be created based on the result from the LDAP server. When creating the predefined structure a query will be sent to the LDAP server with the configuration specified and fetch the result. Based on the result an object type hierarchy will be created. Each node (identified by DN) that has children will be treated as an object type and created. The attributes belonging to the Insight object type will be the attributes found on the node in the LDAP server.

If the result returned by LDAP server retrieves objects that don't have children, then it will be not possible to create a predefined structure automatically and it should be created manually.

The predefined structure will create two additional attributes for each object type. The attribute CN (Common Name) will be used as label and the attribute DN (Distinguished Name) will be set with the property hidden.

All attributes created by the predefined structure in the LDAP import will be of type Default Text. If the data represent something else review the attributes and change them accordingly.

Example

Example LDAP structure

Resulting Insight Object Type Structure


Predefined configuration

The predefined configuration will query the LDAP server and create a configuration mapping based on the same criteria as the structure described above. As data locators all attributes found will be choosable with the addition of the CN (Common Name) and the DN (Distinguished Name).

The identifier will be set to DN for each object to uniquely identify each object from the LDAP server.

Since the predefined configuration will be different based on the connected LDAP server the following is one example mapping the Employees as  seen in the previous example

Example

If the LDAP import is configured to import users one can use the REGEX configuration to split users in order to create multiple users.

Import configuration created

You can now view your import configuration, but it's not ready yet. You still need to create or review the object type and attribute mapping, and make sure there are no problems with your import configuration.

When you're ready, go to 2. Create object type and attribute mapping.

Before you go

In the next step, you'll create the object mapping settings. Here are some settings specific to the LDAP import type.

Object type mapping

Name

Description

Selector

In the LDAP import type the Selector is prepended to the Base DN value before the search in LDAP is executed. The value is used to narrow down the structured tree in the LDAP to specific nodes.

The search filter will be the same as specified in the general configuration but the selector will narrow the scope where the search filter is applied.

For example:

If the Base DN is dc=ad,dc=example,dc=com and the Selector is cn=users the resulting LDAP search base will be cn=users,dc=ad,dc=example,dc=com.

Last modified on Aug 19, 2022

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