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You can set up access to PhixFlow either through PhixFlow Users, by integrating with your Active Directory infrastructure, or both. If you integrate with Active Directory, Access Control is maintained by mapping Active Directory Groups to PhixFlow User Groups, as described below. By using the Active Directory integration users will login to PhixFlow using the same username and password as their Microsoft Windows domain login.

This page describes how to integrate PhixFlow with Active Directory:

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Configure phixflow-domains.xml

Connection details to the domain servers are configured in the file phixflow-domains.xml, under [tomcat root]/webapps/phixflow/WEB-INF/classes. When you first install PhixFlow, you probably created a copy of this file by simply copying the example file phixflow-domains.xml.example (see Install PhixFlow Server InstallationWebapp).

Create domain reference

To create a reference to a domain, update the section in the example file:

Code Block
languagexml
        <!-- Template of a authentication-provider -->
        <!-- 
        <security:authentication-provider ref="exampleActiveDirectoryAuthProvider" /> 
        -->

For example, if this domain will be referred to as corporate, update this to (remembering to remove the surrounding comment):

Code Block
languagexml
        <!-- Template of a authentication-provider -->
        <security:authentication-provider ref="corporate" /> 

Add connection details

Simple connection

The simplest type of connection is illustrated below, referencing a single AD server.

Update the section in the example file:

Code Block
languagexml
    <!-- Template of a bean providing domain and url to authentication-provider -->
    <!--
    <bean id="exampleActiveDirectoryAuthProvider" parent="activeDirectoryAuthProvider">
        <constructor-arg index="0" value="narnia.local" />
        <constructor-arg index="1" value="ldap://192.168.150.81" />
    </bean>
    -->

to include connection details to the domain. For example, if the domain is called corporate.local and this is manged by the domain controller at 10.23.109.45, update this to (remembering to remove the surrounding comment):

Code Block
languagexml
    <!-- Template of a bean providing domain and url to authentication-provider -->
    <bean id="corporate" parent="activeDirectoryAuthProvider">
        <constructor-arg index="0" value="corporate.local" />
        <constructor-arg index="1" value="ldap://10.23.109.45" />
    </bean>

Advanced options

For the connection you can also specify:

OptionPurposeExample
Multiple serversSome domains are served by multiple servers, to provide resilience and load balancing. These can be specified in a list. PhixFlow will try each of these in turn.
<constructor-arg index="1" value="ldap://ad1.example.com ldap://ad2.example.com" />
Root DNIf you have a large AD tree, searches may take some time, and this could lead to slow authentication for users. Therefore it is possible to specify a root DNĀ (Distinguished name) at which PhixFlow will begin searching for the user. The Distinguished Name format is standard and further details can be found on the web.
<constructor-arg index="2" value="ou=User Accounts,ou=Operations,dc=emea,dc=example,dc=com" />
Timeout

You can specify a timeout. For each server specified, if the server does not respond within the limit specified by the timeout, it will try the next server. If the last server in the list times out, then the authentication will fail.

The timeout is specified in milliseconds.

<property name="timeout" value="5000"/>

The following example, in phixflow-domains.xml.example, illustrates the application of all advanced options:

Code Block
    <!-- Template of a bean providing domain, multiple servers, connection timeout and separate rootDn -->
    <!--
		<bean id="exampleActiveDirectoryAuthProvider" parent="activeDirectoryAuthProvider">
            <constructor-arg index="0" value="example.com" />
            <constructor-arg index="1" value="ldap://ad1.example.com ldap://ad2.example.com" />
            <constructor-arg index="2" value="ou=User Accounts,ou=Operations,dc=emea,dc=example,dc=com" />
            <property name="timeout" value="5000"/>
		</bean>
    -->


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