First things first, if you haven't already got Crucible up and running carry out the following steps:

1. Download Crucible from the Atlassian Download Center.
2. Unzip the downloaded package to the desired installation directory.
3. Navigate to the bin sub-directory of your installation directory. Type/execute run.bat (under Windows) or ./run.sh (under Linux) to launch Crucible. A Crucible console window will appear, listing the startup progress. Give it a few minutes to complete.
4. On the same machine go to http://localhost:8060/ (or use the hostname or IP address in place of localhost from another machine). You will be prompted to enter a license key and set the admin password.

There are a lot of installation options. To learn more, see the complete documentation.

It should only take you a few minutes to have a running instance of Crucible. If you are still struggling after twenty minutes please contact our support team for assistance. They're ready to help at any time.

Once installed, you need to connect Crucible to a Source Code Management (SCM) repository, so that you can get reviewing right away. You can instantly connect to any of the supported SCMs listed on the Supported Platforms page.

If you use Crucible with FishEye, FishEye allows advanced searching and rapid access to repository contents. Note that your Crucible evaluation license enables FishEye.

See the configuration documentation for more.

Your Crucible instance must have at least one project, in a fresh install this is named "Default Project". It is a good idea to rename this to something more personal. If you plan on having multiple projects, you might also want to change the review key when renaming the Default Project (it defaults to 'CR'), this should not be the same as any other keys (e.g. JIRA project, Bamboo plan) that you use. At Atlassian we prefix our JIRA project keys with CR-, e.g. the FishEye project's key is CR-FE, but you can use whatever you like.

Crucible projects let you organize your reviews into logical groups, however they also serve several other purposes:

• Access control — is set at the project level
• Permission schemes — which roles can do what
• Default participants — e.g. auto add the team lead to every review
• Default length — set the number of week days to set the due date for a new review

You can also associate JIRA issue tracker(s) with your project by configuring JIRA integration in Crucible.

Crucible can deliver email feeds based on user-configured parameters. For example, you can watch the contributions of a specific colleague or changes to a branch of code you're working on. To take advantage of this feature, you will need to tell Crucible about your SMTP server.

You can also configure custom templates for notification email messages and fine-tune the frequency of email delivery, for example, choosing a daily digest.

Move onto the next step to learn about Crucible's integration with JIRA, Atlassian's award-winning issue tracker.

1. If you already have a JIRA server set up, you can set up integration between your JIRA server and Crucible. Once established, activity on relevant JIRA issues will appear in the Crucible activity stream. JIRA issue keys will also be hyperlinked and a small information window will load when you mouse-over JIRA issue keys.
2. Visit the Crucible documentation for instructions on how to set up JIRA integration in Crucible.

Congratulations! Our support records indicate that over 80% of support calls happen during this installation phase. Once you have made it this far, the rest of the evaluation ought to flow smoothly.

There are heaps of tweaks and configuration options that you can experiment with. Check out the Crucible Administrator's Guide for more information.

Otherwise, move on to the next step and launch right into lightweight code reviews.