Microsoft SharePoint

Key Features and Benefits

• Integrates sites built in SharePoint into the software delivery workflow
• Synchronizes information in SharePoint with tools used in software development and IT operations
• Enables cross-tool traceability and consolidating reporting by collecting activity data from SharePoint and other tools, into a central data repository

Common Integration Patterns

• Escalating Help Desk Problems to Developers
• Sharing Customer Feature Requests with Product
• Reporting Known Defects to the Help Desk
• Aligning Testing Teams across Testing Tools
• Providing Developers with Early Visibility into Requirements

Demo Videos

Minimal User Permissions & Hub User

We recommend that you create a new user within your external tool, to be used only for your Hub integration. This is the user information you will enter when setting up your repository connection within Planview Hub. By creating a new user, you will ensure that the correct permissions are granted, and allow for traceability of the modifications that are made by the synchronization. 

In general, your user account should have sufficient permissions to create, read, and update artifacts in your repository. However, depending on the use case, your user may need different permissions. For example, if you are only interested in flowing data out of your repository, your user may not need to have full CRUD access, as the 'create' and 'update' permissions may not be needed.

Your user should have a secure password or token. Please be aware that Hub will not allow you to save a repository connection utilizing a weak password/token, such as 'tasktop.'

See Microsoft SharePoint User Guide to learn how to create a new user in Microsoft SharePoint.

List of minimal user permissions:

• Ensure that the user has Contribute permissions for the list you want to integrate using Hub.

Connecting to the Microsoft SharePoint Repository

Standard Authentication

Required Fields:

• Location/Connection URL
  • Example Format: http://abc-msps999
• Username
  • Example Format: domain\gu-sharepoint
• Password

Optional Fields:

• Deployment Type: This field represents the deployment type of the Microsoft SharePoint instance; options include, None, Auto-detect, On Premise, and Online.
  • The None and Auto-Detect options automatically determine if the deployment is cloud-based or on-prem (i.e., Microsoft SharePoint online or Microsoft SharePoint).
  • The On Premise option represents an on-prem deployment (i.e., Microsoft SharePoint).
  • The Online option represents a cloud-based deployment (i.e., Microsoft SharePoint Online).
• Enable Legacy NTLM Authentication: If checked, NTLM authentication scheme support will be enabled when authenticating to the repository.
  • When unchecked, the NTLM authentication scheme support will be disabled and the connector will use basic authentication against the repository. See details here  for configuring IIS to support basic authentication.
  • Note: This field only applies to on-premise instances of SharePoint.
• Throttling Settings: This field indicates the number of API calls that can be made per minute. See details here.
  • Note: This field should only be set under the guidance of customer care as the ideal value is highly dependent on each customer's unique environment. 
• Connection Security: If checked, insecure connections to this repository will be allowed. See details here.

Microsoft Azure Active Directory OAuth2 via Certificate

Note: Access to SharePoint via Azure AD authentication is only supported via certificate support. Shared secret is not supported. 

See the section below for steps on configuring this authentication method.

Required Fields:

• Location/Connection URL

  • Example Format: http://abc-msps999
• Token Location
  • This can be found on the App Registration overview in Azure AD.
• Client ID
  • This can be found on the Overview page of your App Registration.
• Scope
  • Example format: https://company.sharepoint.com/.default
• Client Assertion
  • This is the entire encoded JWT token.
  • You will need to generate a custom JWT token for client assertion.

App Registration

The first step in using the Azure AD authenticator is to set up an app registration for Planview Hub — to generate authentication tokens and control access. See the section below for setting up app registration.

After setting up the app registration, you must grant 'Sites.FullControl.All' and 'SharePoint' permissions.

Note: Due to a restriction that is dictated by Azure Active Directory, the app registration must be granted access to ALL SharePoint sites within a Tenant and cannot be restricted. Please note that this may conflict with your organization's security policies.

To learn more, refer to Microsoft documentation here.

SSO Authentication

Additionally, Microsoft Sharepoint supports the following SSO implementations:

• Script (HTTP cookies)
• X.509 Certificate

Learn more about how to set up your repository in Planview Hub here. 

SharePoint Azure Active Directory OAuth2 via Certificate Configuration 

This authentication method only works with SharePoint online and Azure Active directory.

See the steps below to set up the Azure Active Directory authentication method:

1. Register an application for Hub (or Viz) on Azure Active directory 
   1.  
2. Grant permissions to the application to allow it to access SharePoint online
   1. Grant the application the "Sites.FullControl.All" permission under "SharePoint" 
3. Generate a Public / Private X.509 certificate key pair according to your requirements
   1. Note: You must use either Windows or Linux as you likely will not be able to generate a certificate key pair using Mac OSx. 
4. Add the certificate for Hub to Azure with the following steps:
   1. In the SharePoint application, click Certificates & secrets in the left sidebar.
   2. Then, add the public certificate to the Certificates section. 
      1. 

5. Generate a new JWT token

   1. Note: You must use either Windows or Linux as you likely will not be able to generate this token using Mac OSx.

   2. You can find additional information on the structure of the JWT token here and a tutorial on generating the JWT on Linux using Node here.

6. Save the token to use in Hub.
7. Fill in the Repository Connection fields in Planview Hub as follows:
   1. Token Location: This is the "Directory (tenant) ID" from your App Registration overview (see screenshot below)
      1. Example Format: https://login.microsoftonline.com/<tenant-id>/oauth2/v2.0/token
   2. Client ID: This is the “Application (client) ID” from your App Registration overview (see screenshot below)
   3. Scope: This is your base SharePoint URL, <base-url>/.default
      1. Example Format: https://mycompany.sharepoint.com/.default
   4. Client Assertion: This is the entire encoded JWT token 
      1. 

Attachments

The Microsoft SharePoint connector can retrieve the following metadata when flowing attachments out of SharePoint:

• File Name
• URL

Learn more about how to configure attachment flow in Planview Hub here.

Person Reconciliation

For person reconciliation, the following fields are available:

Learn more about how to configure person reconciliation in Planview Hub here.

Full Scan

In general, a full scan is not required to synchronize updates from this repository. However, it is possible that some read-only fields may require a full scan. Please consult with customer care for additional details.

Special Features Supported

Supported Work Items

Learn about the difference between containers and work items in Planview Hub here.

Supported Containers

Learn more about containment in Planview Hub here.