KNF:SSOnotification/en

Entree Federation: SSOnotification

Nederlands

English

If a school has its own connection with the Entree Federation (for example an ELE (electronic learning environment) or an ADFS) there is the possibility to skip the WAYF (Where Are You From) screen of Entree. This is done via the use of a cookie, which is set after the user has logged in on his own environment (for example an intranet page or the homepage of the ELE).

The cookie only contains information about the Identity Provider on the basis of which the correct Identity Provider is selected on the Entree WAYF screen.

To show the advantage of SSO notification follow the two scenarios beneath.

Example without SSOnotification:

To simulate this scenario follow these steps:

1. The student/teacher logs in on the ELE/Active directory
   • Go to: Reference ELE
2. The student/teacher clicks on a link to learning material
   • Click on 'Naar dienst' ('To service')
3. You're going to the WAYF (Where Are You From) screen. There's no information available about the school the user is coming from.
   • Search and select 'Referentie Omgeving' ('Reference application')
   • Click on 'Verder' ('next')
4. The user data (attributes) are requested from the Identity Provider by Entree Federation
   • This step is unique for our Reference ELE, because of the possibility to enter dummy data. Normally the user attributes are sent through the back channel
   • Click on 'Direct verder naar dienstaanbieder' ('Directly to Service Provider')
5. The user is now logged in and subsequently the user attributes that were used during the login process are shown.

Example with SSOnotification:

To simulate this scenario follow these steps:

1. The student/teacher logs in on the ELE/Active directory
   • Go to: Reference ELE
   • Click on 'SSO Notificatie instellen' ('Set SSO notification')
2. The student/teacher clicks on a link to learning material
   • Click on 'Naar dienst' ('To service')
     In this scenario the WAYF screen will not be shown. The system reads the cookie that is used for SSO notification and automatically selects the correct school.
3. The user data (attributes) are requested from the Identity Provider by Entree Federation
   • This step is unique for our Reference ELE, because of the possibility to enter dummy data. Normally the user attributes are sent through the back channel
   • Click on 'Direct verder naar dienstaanbieder' ('Directly to Service Provider')
4. The user is now logged in and subsequently the user attributes that were used during the login process are shown.

Implementation

The SSO notification cookie can be placed, after the user has logged in on the schoolportal, with an redirect to Entree Federation.

Config redirect URL

The redirect URL has 4 parts:

1. The Entree Federatie URL where the redirect will be redirected to.
2. The unique identifier of the Identity Provider as known in Entree Federatie. This is the entity ID of the IdP and can be found here: https://engine.entree.kennisnet.nl/sso/wayfsearch
3. The URL (url-encoded) of the serveraddress where it comes from.
4. The redirectURI (url-encoded), this is the URL where the users goes to after the redirect. In most cases this is the same place, but if needed it can be somewhere else. This has to be an address owned by the school, it can't be the address of the Service Provider.

Important: Before you can use the SSO notification, the URL needs to be added to the whitelist. You can send the URL via an ticket Kennisnet.

Endpoint

1. production: https://ssonot.entree.kennisnet.nl/?id=<identifier van de IdP>&url=<url-encoded ELO URL>&redirectUri=<url-encoded redirect URL>
2. staging: https://ssonot.entree-s.kennisnet.nl/?id=<identifier van de IdP>&url=<url-encoded ELO URL>&redirectUri=<url-encoded redirect URL>

The redirect URL looks like this:
https://ssonot.entree.kennisnet.nl/?id=<identifier van de IdP>&url=<url-encoded ELO URL>&redirectUri=<url-encoded redirect URL>

Example

In the example, this is the IdP identifier http://authenticate.example.org, and this is de URL where the redirects starts http://www.example.org and this is the url where the user will be redirected to afthe the cookie is set http://www.kennisnet.nl.
https://ssonot.entree.kennisnet.nl/?id=http://authenticate.example.org&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.org&redirectUri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kennisnet.nl

third party cookie

When an Identity Provider places an SSO notification cookie via an AJAX call or an iframe by Entree Federation, this is considered to be a third party cookie. Third party cookies are placed by domains (in this case Entree Federation) other than the domain of the website you are visiting (the Identity Provider). Some organizations use third party cookies to track users when they visit different websites. Since this type of third party cookies (also called tracking cookies) can infringe the privacy of users, their use is increasingly discouraged by browsers and often blocked.

This may prevent the SSO notification cookie from being placed. In such a case, the user can still log in via Entree Federation, but will have to select his or her school on the WAYF screen of Entree Federation. Since browsers have indicated to block third party cookies completely in the long term, placing an SSO notification is best done by means of a redirect.