Sending Users on the Right Path

This blog post describes the edu-ID Login Link composer that allows initiating certain processes that an edu-ID user goes through to login, register or complete his user attributes.

In a previous blog post we presented how AAI Service Provider (SP) administrators can customize the edu-ID registration and login pages individually for their service. However, an SP administrator can not only brand the edu-ID pages with a custom logo or custom text but he can also influence the process itself used when users register, login or when they complete their account data. Examples of such process modifications are:

  • To send a user automatically to a specific URL after registration or login
  • To make a user first provide a specific verified or unverified attribute (e.g. mobile number or home postal address) and then send him back to the service

Both of these example scenarios have been used for instance by the Swissbib service for several months. Swissbib users sometimes have to provide a verified mobile number and/or postal address before they get access to national license content, which – by agreement – should be only available to residents of Switzerland.

So, how can an AAI SP administrator customize the edu-ID processes to implement the above and more scenarios? All that is needed is to send the user on the right path, or rather to the right URL. For all those not wanting to get familiar with the technical details of how these URLs have to be composed to achieve a certain process change, we have created a useful tool that makes the URL generation very easy: The edu-ID Login Link Composer.

Screenshot edu-ID Login Link Composer
Screenshot of edu-ID Login Link Composer

The edu-ID Login Link Composer consists of a form with several inputs that are used to generate a link which triggers the requested behaviour. The user then just has to be sent  to the generated URL to start the process.

Try out the edu-ID Login Link Composer with your own AAI service.

Apache Access Control Reloaded

How to ensure that only staff members of my group in my organisation can access team documents via the web and only if they are connected via the organisation’s office network? And how to implement this without writing code? Thanks to Apache, Shibboleth and a SAML-based federation like SWITCHaai, these not so uncommon real life requirements are easy to implement. At least, once one has understood how user attributes can be used for access control. This blog entry demonstrates how to create such access control rules. Continue reading “Apache Access Control Reloaded”

How to get the Organisation Display Name of an AAI User as “Free” Attribute

Have you ever wanted to show the organisation name of an authenticated AAI user in the web application protected by a Shibboleth Service Provider? For example on an event registration web page in order to see from which organisations users registered or – like in the screenshot below – to show the authenticated user himself with which – of potentially many – AAI account he has logged in?

LoggedInAAIUser

Continue reading “How to get the Organisation Display Name of an AAI User as “Free” Attribute”