Readme for Micro Focus Connect Confluence Connector 24.2

This readme describes how to configure Micro Focus Confluence Connector. Refer to the Micro Focus Community and Micro Focus Connect Help Center for further configuration instructions.

The Micro Focus Confluence Connector for Micro Focus Connect (Micro Focus Confluence Connector) lets you synchronize Confluence assets like Pages with assets in OpenText Products, for example Epics found in the Micro Focus Octane Connector.

Copyright

Copyright 2018 - 2024 Open Text.

The only warranties for products and services of Open Text and its affiliates and licensors ("Open Text") are as may be set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Open Text shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.

Except as specifically indicated otherwise, this document contains confidential information and a valid license is required for possession, use or copying. If this work is provided to the U.S. Government, consistent with FAR 12.211 and 12.212, Commercial Computer Software, Computer Software Documentation, and Technical Data for Commercial Items are licensed to the U.S. Government under vendor's standard commercial license.

Contents
  Installation and Upgrade Information Technical Notes
Prerequisites Known Issues Need assistance with the product?

Features

Supported Versions

This version of the connector is certified with Confluence (hosted)

Unless otherwise specified, for any given MF Connect connector from OpenText, all versions of the connector product that are officially released and supported by it's vendor both four months before the time of the release of the connector as well as at the time of using the connector, are supported by OpenText. Not all product versions will be tested and validated by OpenText for each connector release. Instead, OpenText chooses a subset of versions that we deem representative or most important to run validation and certification tests against. These selected versions are mentioned in the respective connector read-me, clearly identifying them as "validated" or "certified". As stated above, this does not mean that Micro Focus Connect does not support other product versions – it only means that no validation test cycle was executed for the other versions.

Supported Assets

This version of the connector supports common Confluence asset types, such as page, comment, and attachment.

 

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Prerequisites

This connector requires at least build 24.2 of Micro Focus Connect and can be configured using the Micro Focus Connect UI.

The following are required to run the Connector. For further configuration instructions, see the Micro Focus Connect Release Notes.

  1. Create a Connector directory. For example: C:\Program Files\Micro Focus\Connect\AppData\connectors\mfcConnectorConfluence
    • NOTE: If this is being installed into an existing connector directory, you must remove the existing mfc*.jars
  2. Copy the following libraries (and the provided Connector jar, and the provided mfcConnectorUtil jar) into the connector directory you created.


Confluence Setup

Your Confluence space should have "User Created" templates configured, see the example templates below.

Once you create the custom User Template, make sure to attach a label to the template (example: "epic-feature" to be attached to Epic custom User Template).

This label will be auto-attached to new pages based on the template, and will be used to fetch such pages to sync.

You will see the label in the "Label" dropdown list when creating Data Source.


User Templates can be created under: Space Settings / Content Tools / Templates


User Created Templates


Do these steps after you have created a template.


Creating a new Template


Epic Template Example


Requirement Template Example


Story Template Example



Confluence User Permissions

The user configured in the Confluence data source must have the following access:

 

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Installation and Upgrade Information

The following information contains notes regarding installation, but does not replace the entire process.

Required Connection Information

In order to use this connector, you will need to collect and enter this information in the Micro Focus Connect user interface:

 

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Known Issues

Changing Page Types Not Supported

Changing of Page types (e.g. from a Story to an Epic in Confluence) is not currently supported.

Moving a Page under another Page will not be detected

If a user changes the parent of a Page, this will not be detected by Micro Focus Connect. The user will need to change some content of the Page as well.

 

Optional Connection Information

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Technical Notes

Discovery and Synchronization of Items

Micro Focus Connect relies on Confluence Rest API to search, read, update, create, and delete Confluence items. CQL is also used through Confluence Rest API calls.

Difficulty Recognizing Access Rights Errors

Access Rights errors can be difficult to recognize in the error log. Often they will show up as "A JSONObject text must begin with '{' at character 0 of ...".

User Maps for Confluence

The Confluence UI exposes three ways to identify a user ("Full name", "Public name", "Email address"). User Map entries in Micro Focus Connect for Confluence must use the "Full name".

Data Source Setup

The number of 'Space' values in the drop down list is limited to 500. Spaces not in the list can be entered in the format as those listed, 'space key:space name'

Mapping Rich Text Fields to and from Confluence (outgoing)

In some cases, Confluence surfaces Rich Text (aka HTML) content that references style sheets local to Confluence. For example, Confluence tables reference a style sheet named confluenceTh. When mapped from Confluence into a RichText property, this data will not render correctly because this style is not available.

Mapping Rich Text Fields to and from Confluence (incoming)

Micro Focus Connect leverages the Atlassian wiki renderer used by Confluence to convert from html to its wiki format. This renderer is able to translate a limited set of HTML into its internal wiki markup language. In many cases, incoming HTML will be translated into Confluence as plain text.

Attachments and Comment Support

Attachments and Comment syncing is available for Pages. In Confluence, adding, updating, or deleting a comment or attachment doesn't change Page modified time. Based on this, MF Connet won't be able to sync any changes in Comments or Attachments until the page is modified.

Invalid values in data source properties can show as greyed-out italicized text

Property Type Discovery for Dates and DateTimes

The connector uses the name of the property to determine if it is a LocalDate or a ZonedDateTime field. If the property ends with "date", e.g. Due Date, then it is recognized as a LocalDate type. If it ends with "time", e.g Completion Time then it is a ZonedDateTime type. LocalDate types use the format YYYY-MM-dd for input. ZonedDateTime types use the format YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm:ss-XX where XX is the GMT offset. For example, 08 is the offset for PST. If the property name doesn't end with "date" or "time" the contents can still be synced into a LocalDate or ZonedDateTime property on the opposite side of the sync. The only difference is ZonedDateTime is parsed using DateTimeFormatter.ISO_ZONED_DATE_TIME - which requires .AAA following the seconds indicating the milliseconds.

Type (Page)

Type is a Confluence Page, and creating a type object is like creating a page. The name of the type object will be Page title.

SubType (Custom)

SubType is entered into Confluence page as following:

Modifying Property Name

Modifying a property name after a type (page) or Subtype are created, will cause that property not to be synced. In case, you want to change the property name, then first you need to do so in the Template, then update the mapping in Connect, and finally update the property name in the existing pages.

Bi-directional Syncing

The Confluence Connector does not use history to determine if a property has changed. This can result in fields synchronizing in the wrong direction.

Instead the Connector simply uses if the page update time has changed since the stored watermark ( which in most cases is the last synchronization time ). During a synchronization, the Connector will report that each property was last updated when the page was last updated. This may result in Confluence values overwriting values from the Other side when both sides have changed and the Confluence item was changed more recently, even if the change to the Confluence item was not to the specific property being synchronized.

Non ASCII Attachment Names

When Micro Focus Connect creates attachments with non-ASCII names, the attachment names appear URLEncoded in the Confluence UI.

DEFAULT_HTTP_READ_TIMEOUT_MILLIS

MF Connect uses a read socket timeout of 300000 ms (5 minutes) and this value cannot be updated

 

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Need assistance with the product?

Get support enables you to open a support incident or to submit a bug. You can also browse many helpful support resources.

 

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