How to connect Jive with SharePoint

This "how-to-connect" documentation will explain the initial configuration of an example connection from Jive to a SharePoint Online List in Office 365. We will be synchronizing data stored in Jive.

This guide presupposes that you have installed the Layer2 Cloud Connector and that you are familiar with its basic functionality. The Layer2 Cloud Connector User Documentation will provide you with all necessary information.

Contents

1. Configuring Jive

2. Configuring the Layer2 Cloud Connector

2.1 Creating a new connection

2.2 Configuring the Data Entity 1

2.3 Configuring the Data Entity 2

2.4 Running your connection

3. Hints and known issues

3.1 Connection direction

3.2 Data model

3.3 Batch operations

1. Configuring Jive

To create a connection with Jive, you have to create an Add-On first and upload it into your account to get access to your data. Go to https://developer.jivesoftware.com/quickstart/oauth/ to create your own Add-On.

Set the parameters as shown in the image and download your Add-on. Go to your Jive account (we are using the sandbox https://sandbox.jiveon.com/, you'll need to have proper permissions to manage your Add-Ons) and open Add-Ons under the Manage submenu. 

Click on Upload Package and select your downloaded package. After the successful upload, click on the settings symbol under Action and click on View Client ID and Secret. Copy it.

You are also going to need the endpoint URLs for the token and the authorization. The token endpoint is https://sandbox.jiveon.com/oauth2/token and the authorization endpoint is https://sandbox.jiveon.com/oauth2/authorize.

2. Configuring the Layer2 Cloud Connector

2.1. Creating a new connection

Create a new connection by using the Create New Connection option in the Actions pane (right-hand side). The new connection will appear at the bottom of the Connection Manager List (left-hand side). Click on your newly created connection to open the connection configuration settings.

Choose a meaningful name for your connection and replace the current "New Connection" Connection Title with it.

Connections to Jive are read-only connections. Therefore, choose Left to Right as Direction.

2.2. Configuring the Data Entity 1

We will now set up our Data Entities. Go to the data entity “Data Entity 1” to open the configuration settings.

Choose a Data Entity Title. It is recommended to give your entities meaningful names to maintain an overview when you decide to set up multiple connections.

Select the Data Provider for  JSON from the data provider list. You can search for  JSON by typing into the selection box.

For the Connection String, we need the in step 1 mentioned information. You can copy the below connection string and adjust it to match your gathered information. Use the Verify Connection String option to evaluate if the provided connection string is valid.

OAuthVersion=2.0;OAuthRequestTokenURL=https://sandbox.jiveon.com/oauth2/token;OAuthAuthorizationURL=https://sandbox.jiveon.com/oauth2/authorize;OAuthAccessTokenURL=https://sandbox.jiveon.com/oauth2/token;OAuthRefreshTokenURL=https://sandbox.jiveon.com/oauth2/token;OAuthClientId=yourclientid;OAuthClientSecret=yoursecret;CallbackURL=http://localhost:33333;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;URI=https://sandbox.jiveon.com/api/core/v3/people;

• "OAuthVersion=2.0;" this property defines the OAuth version.
• "OAuthRequestTokenURL=url;" this property must be set to the token endpoint URL from step 1.
• "OAuthAuthorizationURL=url;" this property must be set to the authorize endpoint URL from step 1.
• "OAuthAccessTokenURL=url;" this property must be set to the token endpoint URL from step 1.
• "OAuthRefreshTokenURL=url;" this property must be set to the token endpoint URL from step 1.
• "OAuthClientid=yourclientid;" this property must be set to the generated client ID you copied from step 1.
• "OAuthClientSecret=yourclientsecret;" this property must be set to the generated client secret from step 1.
• "CallbackURL=url;" this property must be set to the same URL you set in your Add-On in step 1.
• "InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;" this property determines the auto refresh from the token you are using.
• "URI=url;" this property determines to which URL you want to point to get data from. Look the Jive API for more URLs.

The Select Statement text box is used to define specific data queries. We will be gathering all the results from our JSON resources. You can copy the below select statement and adjust it to match your needs. Save your changes by using the right-hand pane option Save Changes.

SELECT * FROM resources

To check if all necessary columns are received, you can use the Preview Data option on the right-hand pane which will provide you with a pop-up window showing your sample data from your Jive entity.

2.3. Configuring the Data Entity 2

We are going to send the data to a custom SharePoint Online list. It's required that you set up this list prior to the next steps. Your list should contain matching columns according to your source entity.

Use the left-hand pane to switch to the data entity "Data Entity 2". We will be using the Layer2 SharePoint Provider for this setup. 

For more information about the SharePoint provider visit:

https://www.layer2solutions.com/support/cloud-connector-faqs/layer2-csom-sharepoint-ado-net-provider.

You can copy the below Connection String which contains the minimum of required properties to connect to your custom SharePoint Online list.

URL=https://your_custom_sharepoint_list_url/AllItems.aspx;Authentication=Microsoft_Modern;

• "URL=https://your_custom_sharepoint_url/AllItems.aspx;" this property defines the URL of your custom list that will be addressed.
• "Authentication=Microsoft_Modern;" this property will determine the authentication method used. Microsoft_Moddern is the default authentication method to access Microsoft Office 365 / SharePoint Online and should work in most cases, even if the SharePoint site is connected to an ADFS. This authentication does not need any further connection string settings, other than the URL of the connected system.

Enter the password that belongs to the user account used in the connection string into the Password field. Save your changes by using the right-hand pane option Save Changes.

In the next step, we will configure our mapping settings. Click on the Mappings option on the left-hand pane. If your fields from SharePoint are named identical to the fields from your source system, the Enable Auto Mapping option will match those columns. Disabling this option allows you to match your columns as needed. We enabled auto-mapping in our setup. Save your changes by using the right-hand pane option Save Changes.

2.4. Running your connection

To run your connection switch back to the main connection configuration node and use the Run Now Button located on the bottom of the setup page. The Run Synchronization Toolbox will also display the synchronization process. 

Below is a data preview of the information we have accessed in our source entity:

This will be the result in our SharePoint Online list after our initial successful synchronization:

3. Hints and known issues

3.1. Connection direction

As far as tested, this connection supports uni-directional only.

3.2. Data model

To see all the tables and views you can access with the Jive provider, use these queries in the Select Statement:

SELECT * FROM sys_tables

SELECT * FROM sys_views

If there are more tables or views available, you can load them with the option "load more" in the popup window.

3.3. Batch operations

If you try to make multiple operations at the same time, you can get an error that batch operations not allowed. Set the parameter Other=’BatchSize=1’ in your connection string to avoid this error. 

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