Atlassian Stack: Confluence (integration)

Today's goal is to integrate Confluence with Jira and Crowd.  In the Jira admin doc I found a section on integrating Jira and Confluence.  I'll run through that.

• configured quick search to point back to the Jira URL
• configured track back, had to also go into Jira
• user Confluence gadgets in Jira (I those to use trusted applications instead of oauth). I had to configure trusted application on both the Jira and Confluence sides.  After reading the instructions, it became clear that adding gadgets would be a pain -- you have to add them individually.  I've decided to add gadgets only when/if I decide they might be useful.  Enabled the atlassian-gadgest-shared plugin in Confluence
• enable Jira linker plugin by entering the download URL of the plugin into the Confluence plugin manager screen
• after a bit of searching I found the Confluence section that describes how to integrate Confluence into Crowd. I did not build a new directory.  I just reused the one I made for Jira instead.  I made the required confluence groups and made one of the users a member of both groups.  copied the jar files and edited the configuration files as instructed. restarted confluence.  Logged in with a crowd user and enabled External user management so that you have to manage users via Crowd.
• add the "userful extendsions" described in the instructions.  Of the 3 suggested, I could only install the Jira Confluence portlet because the other two wanted me to authenticate for access to accounts I don't have.  Oh, we..

Not as a clean integration as I would've liked. Much of it appears to be plugin driven, which have to install yourself.