The integration services described below may require additional one-time and/or annual fees. For more information, please contact us.
When the learning environment is integrated to your Active Directory (AD) via ADFS / SAML, it can:
- Authenticate the users directly against AD each and every time they try to log in the learning environment.
- Optionally have a account created in the learning environment after a user successfully authenticates
IMPORTANT NOTE: The learning environment doesn't download nor store the user's password. It sends a request to your AD server each and every time a user tries to log in.
User Information
In order for AD authentication to work, the learning environment needs to store some user information in its database. At a minimum, it needs the following information:
- Username
- First name
- Last name
- Email address
If this information is stored in your AD, then the learning environment can create / update their account in the learning environment's database. Otherwise, if those 4 fields are not available, the learning environment can import user profile information from your HRIS (Human Resources Information System) or even a CSV file. The source of the information is not important, but it is important that the information be available. The learning environment will not create user accounts if any of the above 4 fields are missing.
The rest of the information (i.e. job title, department, telephone) is optional and does not need to be imported in the learning environment. If you decide not to import additional information however, please note that this information will not be available in the various reports available in the learning environment.
Assumptions
There are a couple of rules that need to be respected in order for the integration to work:
- You must accept SAML requests from the learning environment. This means that your Identity Provider will need to allow requests from the learning environment over a secure port (HTTPS).
Domain-Based Authentication
This feature is only available to organizations that have subscribed to the Multi-site version of the system. For more information, please contact us.
In a /wiki/spaces/Healthcare/pages/34844303, it's quite common for the learning environment to connect to multiple Active Directory servers. In many cases, there could be conflicts between the usernames across two or more Active Directory servers. For example, there could be a user with the username "jsmith" in both Active Directory servers.
The multi-site version of the learning environment supports domain-based authentication. When enabled, the system can allow two users with the same Active Directory username (e.g. samAccountName) to login the learning environment by specifying their domain as per the screenshot below.