Connectivity requirements for Enterprise Insights

To successfully connect your data visualization tools and software to your Enterprise Insights (EI) instance, you’ll need to have access to a few specialists in your organization, who can help you make some required configuration changes on your network.

This article provides more information on the requirements to discuss with your specialists. 

Note: These requirements apply to the standard connection option for EI. If you have purchased the virtual private cloud (VPC) offering for Jira Align and EI, you can use the VPN connection option instead. This option is useful when you cannot use IP allowlisting for access, or are unable to open port 1433 to outbound traffic over the public internet.

On this page:

• Technical points of contact
• Business intelligence (BI) tools
• Authentication with Microsoft Entra
• Allowlist IP addresses
• Open port 1433

Technical points of contact

There are three different points of contact needed from your team to assist with the connection between Enterprise Insights and your data visualization tool. One person may fill multiple roles, depending on your organization.

Jira Align admin

A team member with admin access to Jira Align is required in order to assist with firewall rules and user account management.

Business intelligence tool specialist

A team member with admin access to your preferred data visualization or business intelligence tool is required to assist with connecting EI and your software. This person is familiar with changing settings and building reports in your chosen tool. It’s recommended that this contact also has access to your Jira Align instance.

Network technical point of contact

You’ll need a point of contact on your team to establish and test the connection between your corporate network and EI. Ideally, this person can assist with changes on your network and/or VPN, locating IP addresses on your network, allowlisting, and Microsoft Entra authentication.

To best assist with any troubleshooting needs, your technical point of contact should have access to your Jira Align instance, corporate network settings, and business intelligence tool.

Business intelligence (BI) tools

To query, format, and display your Enterprise Insights data, you’ll need a business intelligence tool, that supports a connection to a Microsoft SQL Server data source, via standard ODBC SQL over the public internet using TCP port 1433. These tools are also known as visualization studios, charting and reporting software, and database management software. Popular products used with EI include:

• Tableau
• PowerBI
• SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
• Azure Data Studio
• DBeaver

Authentication with Microsoft Entra

The Enterprise Insights instance requires authentication from your network before it will respond with data. EI currently supports one option for authentication: Microsoft Entra (formerly known as Azure AD), which allows you to enforce single sign-on (SSO) and two-factor authentication options from your side.

An Azure presence is required on your corporate network to use Entra authentication. To provide your users with access to the EI instance, your Azure presence must be configured to allow guest authentication tenant access. For more information, review Microsoft’s article on allowing guest access.

You can create Entra user accounts and send invites to the user’s email address inside of Jira Align.

Allowlist IP addresses

Each Enterprise Insights data mart has a firewall that blocks all incoming connections to protect your data. To successfully connect to your EI instance, you will need to add specific IP addresses or a range of IP addresses from your corporate network to the EI firewall’s allowlist. More about IP firewalls provided by Microsoft Azure, which EI is hosted on.

Your provided corporate IP addresses must be public and static, these are also known as Network Address Translation (NAT) IP addresses.

Note that with the increased popularity of remote work, it’s possible to have segregated VPNs or corporate networks that allow some traffic off the network, and some traffic on. This could result in a user attempting to access Enterprise Insights from a home IP address if the traffic is not routed correctly. Ensure your network team is ready to provide details on routing if there are challenges with the initial connection.

Open port 1433

In order to connect to Enterprise Insights, your network administrators will need to allow outbound traffic on port 1433 in your network firewall. EI is hosted on Microsoft Azure, which will be in one of the following regions:

• Central US
• West Europe
• Australia East

Each region has a unique set of gateway IP addresses. See the full list on Microsoft’s Azure Architecture site. We recommend that you have your network team test outbound requests from your corporate network to the nearest Azure region gateway, prior to connecting to your new EI instance. This will ensure that traffic can flow through port 1433 and is not blocked by your network firewall.

Notes:

• If your business intelligence tools are hosted on an Azure hosted server, you will need to open additional ports to use Azure's Redirect connection policy:
  
  • Allow outbound communication from the client to all Azure SQL IP addresses in the region on ports in the range of 11000 to 11999
  • Allow outbound communication from the client to Azure SQL Database gateway IP addresses on port 1433.
• The gateway IP addresses listed on Microsoft’s site are used for connecting to your EI instance, while the gateway IP address subnets in the same table are IP ranges reserved for future use, should additional gateways be needed for a region. If you can't open port 1433 to all outbound traffic, we recommend opening port 1433 to both the gateway IP addresses and gateway IP address subnets to ensure continued connectivity.