This page is for PhixFlow administrators who need to integrate PhixFlow with Azure AD to support Single Sign-on (SSO). This uses the SAML protocol.

Overview

Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is a standard for providing secure single-sign on for users.

This page describes integrating with Azure Active Directory to support SSO. If you would like to use ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services) to support SSO, please contact support@phixflow.com.

This page describes two modes:

mixed - in mixed mode, AAD performs the authentication for the users, and PhixFlow the authorisation.
mapped groups - in mapped groups mode, the groups that the user has been assigned to in AAD are mapped to PhixFlow groups; in other words, AAD is responsible for both authentication and authorisation.

Prerequisites

Before configuring SAML integration you must set Tomcat:

to use HTTPS
to have the secure flag on session cookies.

See Install Tomcat.

Adding an Unlisted (Non-Gallery) Application in Azure

Log into the Azure portal and navigate to the Enterprise Applications blade

Click on New application
Select Create your own application and then radio button Integrate any other application you don't find in the gallery (Non-gallery)
Enter a suitable name to represent the application, e.g. example-phixflow-prod, then click Create
The application Overview page will then appear
Under the Manage section on the left hand side menu, click Properties and ensure the following settings apply:
1. Enabled for users to sign-in? is set to Yes - this determines whether users assigned to the application can sign in
2. User assignment required? is set to Yes - this determines whether users who aren't assigned to the application can sign in
3. Visible to users? is set to Yes - this determines whether users assigned to an app can see it in the access panel and M365 launcher

Configuring SAML-Based Single Sign-On to Non-Gallery Applications via Azure AD (Identity Provider)

Under the Manage section for the above application in Azure, select Single sign-on
Select SAML

The Set up Single Sign-On with SAML page will appear. The only changes required are in step 1 and 2 as shown in the following screenshot:

Click the pencil icon in the top left corner of the first step and enter the following:
- Identifier (Entity ID): https://[domain]/[webapp], e.g. https://phixflow.example.com/phixflow
- Reply URL (Assertion Consumer Service URL): https://[domain]/[webapp]/saml/SSO, e.g. https://phixflow.example.com/phixflow/saml/SSO
Click Save and close this configuration box to return to the main Set up Single Sign-On with SAML page above.
Click the pencil icon in the top left corner of the second step to edit the user attributes and claims. The default attributes and claims should look similar to the following list:
Click the Unique User Identifier (Name ID) attribute and set Source to Transformation on the claim page. A configuration window will open up:

Set Transformation to ExtractMailPrefix() and Parameter to user.userprincipalname. Press Add, then press Save:

Click Add a group claim
In the configuration window which opens up, select All groups
Select the source attribute - in the example it shows Group ID

Source attribute

Group ID is fine to use when using mixed mode - that is, authentication is performed by AAD and authorisation is performed by PhixFlow.

When using mapped groups mode, this option works, but you will have to put GUIDs (e.g. 6f674ed0-bc19-4150-8af0-09100a33b6a2) into the external group fields in PhixFlow, which is less user friendly for PhixFlow administrators.

Other than Group ID, most options are only available if you are syncing with an on-premise Active Directory.

However, if you select Groups assigned to the application you can select Cloud-only group display names. If you choose this option, make sure you add groups as needed to the Enterprise Applcation (see Configure AAD Integration via SAML | Add users/groups to the enterprise application)

Press Save. This can be updated in future to harden the groups that are emitted
The resulting list of attributes and claims should look similar to the following:
In the third step (SAML Certificates), there is an option to download the Federation Metadata XML. Click Download:

Upload the downloaded XML file to the server that is hosting the PhixFlow application
In the fourth step (Set up <enterprise application name>), copy the value for Azure AD Identifier (it is of the form https://sts.windows.net/[id_string]/) - this will be needed later in the configuration of PhixFlow

Add users/groups to the enterprise application

Navigate to the Users and groups section of the Enterprise Application:

Assign users or groups to the application as needed by following the on-screen prompts.
There is functionality to bulk select users from the list and search for specific users.

Configuring PhixFlow (Service Provider)

Configure phixflow-login.xml

To set up SAML integration, you need to add details to the configuration file, phixflow-login.xml, which is in the directory <tomcat root>/webapps/phixflow/WEB-INF/classes. This file is created during installation, by copying the example file phixflow-login.xml.example, and setting any essential options; see Install the PhixFlow Webapp.

Specify the Authentication Manager

Edit the authenticationManager section of phixflow-login.xml to add a samlAuthProvider.

Find this section of the file:

	<security:authentication-manager alias="authenticationManager">
		<!-- test authentication provider, leave commented out -->
		<!-- <security:authentication-provider ref="testAuthProvider" /> -->

		<!-- local authentication provider - provide access for CenterView database users. Don't change it -->
		<security:authentication-provider ref="localAuthProvider" />

		<!-- Add an Active Directory Authentication Provider below this line; uncomment if using active directory integration -->
		<!-- <security:authentication-provider ref="exampleActiveDirectoryAuthProvider" /> -->

		<!-- Add SAML Authentication Provider; uncomment if using saml / single sign-on -->
		<!-- <security:authentication-provider ref="samlAuthProvider"/> -->
	</security:authentication-manager>

Edit it to look like this (omitting comments):

	<security:authentication-manager alias="authenticationManager">
		<security:authentication-provider ref="localAuthProvider" />
		<security:authentication-provider ref="samlAuthProvider" />
	</security:authentication-manager>

We recommend that you keep the localAuthProvider and a local administrator user. This means you can still login if there is problem with the SAML integration.

Set up User Accounts

If you are using mixed mode, create PhixFlow user accounts. Mixed users are authenticated by SAML but their access privileges are managed using User Groups in PhixFlow; see User.

Configure Login Forms

Edit the loginConfiguration section of phixflow-login.xml to define the login form options (local, single sign-on, active directory). These specify what the user sees on their PhixFlow login screen. This mechanism allows you to define a default form tailored to regular users and one or more forms for advanced users; see Configure Login Forms for details.

Enable a Cookie Filter

Edit the sameSiteCookieFilter section of phixflow-login.xml to set the SameSite property on the session cookie. This is required to initiate login from the PhixFlow login form.

Edit it to look like this:

<bean id="sameSiteCookieFilter"
	class="com.accipia.centerview.web.filter.SameSiteCookieFilter">
	<property name="cookies">
		<props>
			<prop key="JSESSIONID">None</prop>
		</props>
	</property>
</bean>

Enable SAML Beans

Edit the beans profile section section of phixflow-login.xml. Edit the 2 blocks that disable the options that are only required when PhixFlow is managing user authentication.

Find these lines:

Remove them or comment them out:

Find these lines, near the end of the file:

and remove them or comment them out:

Create a certificate and configure the keyManager

In this section we will generate a self-signed certificate, store associated private and public keys in a keystore, and edit the keyManager section of phixflow-login.xml to specify the keystore. A self-signed certificate is acceptable in this case because this is used to protect the SAML exchange, a private exchange between two systems. This certificate is not used to identity the service provider to general users over the public internet.

These steps involve the use of the Java program keytool, which should already be installed on your server if it has been prepared for PhixFlow by a standard installation of Java.

Windows

E.g.

Linux

Recommended: select the default option not to set a separate password for the private key. You can set separate passwords if you wish; if you do, take a note of these and set as needed in the configuration of phixflow-login.xml (see below). The security advantages of setting separate passwords are limited in this case.

E.g.

Ensure that you create your keystore in a location that is only accessible to privileged users

Now update the section of phixflow-login.xml that describes the keystore:

The minimum updates required are to set:

"file:/.../keystore.jks" to your keystore
"KeyStorePassword" to your keystore password
"keyPassword" to your key password; if you took the recommended option above when creating the keystore, this will be the same as the previous password
"keyAlias" to the key you created in the keystore above; if you followed the example, this will be tomcat
"defaultKeyAlias" to a key that exists. If the key does not exist PhixFlow will report an error when a user attempts to log in. If you followed the example, this will also be tomcat.

For example:

1.7. Configure the Context Provider

The context provider communicates the external view of the PhixFlow server to other parts of the configuration.

If the server does not run behind a reverse proxy, you can skip this section.

If the server runs behind a reverse proxy, a different context provider must be configured to reflect the public view of the service.

Edit the Context Provider section of phixflow-login.xml.

Comment out the original contextProvider
Uncomment the reverse proxy version
Change the serverName, serverPort and contextPath to match the public view.

Find these lines:

Example of Context Provider configuration (preceding comments omitted):

1.8. Configure the Metadata Generator

To support a SAML exchange, each party generates metadata to describe how to connect to it. That metadata must be installed into the other party before any connection can be made.

The metadata generator generates the PhixFlow server's metadata based on configuration parameters and data available when a user tries to connect to it.

Edit the metadataGeneratorFilter section of phixflow-login.xml and set:

entityId to a value that globally identifies the PhixFlow instance - https://[domain]/[webapp], e.g. https://phixflow.example.com/phixflow
entityBaseURL to a the URL normally used to start PhixFlow - https://[domain]/[webapp], e.g. https://phixflow.example.com/phixflow

This is the metadataGeneratorFilter section before configuration:

Configure the Identity-Provider Metadata Provider

The identity provider metadata provider defines how PhixFlow installs and handles the identity-provider's metadata - in our case, the Federation Metadata XML downloaded from AAD in a previous section on this page.

Save the identity provider's metadata file in a convenient folder. You can specify a path using:
- either classpath:dir1/file
  This refers to a file in directory dir1 under the webapp's classpath. This is ambiguous as it can mean webapp/WEB-INF/classes/dir1 and tomcat/lib/dir1.
- or file:/dir1/file
  This refers to the top-level directory /dir1. Without the forward slash / it refers to dir1 under the current directory, which is normally the Tomcat home directory.
Edit the metadata provider section of phixflow-login.xml.
- Change metadata/idp-metadata.xml to the location of the identity provider's metadata file.
- Update metadataTrustCheck to false

This is the metadata provider section of phixflow-login.xml.

A resulting example configuration:

Configure SAML User Details Service

For mixed mode

Mixed mode is when AAD performs the authentication, and PhixFlow performs the authorisation.

For this step you will need the Azure AD Identifier, this was captured earlier during the Azure AD set up
In phixflow-login.xml, find the samlUserDetailsService bean:

Uncomment the entry key section
Update exampleEntityId to the value of Azure AD Identifier
Ensure the entry is pointing to exampleAuthenticationOnlySamlAttributeMap

A resulting example samlUserDetailsService bean:

Update the exampleAuthenticationOnlySamlAttributeMap bean:
- Replace the contents of the bean with the contents below
- Update the property domain to reflect the domain of your identity provider, i.e. of your Microsoft tenant (technically, this is the value that will be displayed as the domain for any users who login using SAML; but you are strongly recommended to make this the domain of your identity provider)

For mapped group mode

In mapped group mode, you rely on the groups a user is assigned to in AAD to allow them access to certain PhixFlow apps and features. I.e. AAD is responsible for both authentication and authorisation of users.

Set up mapped groups in PhixFlow

See Configure Groups for External Login. To complete this you will need the names or IDs of groups that are being supplied by AAD via the SAML exchange. These can be obtained directly from AAD but see also Configure AAD Integration via SAML | Discovering details claims values and group names/ IDs for a handy way of discovering these.

Complete configuration of phixflow-login.xml to support mapped groups

For this step you will need the Azure AD Identifier, this was captured earlier during the Azure AD set up
In phixflow-login.xml, find the samlUserDetailsService bean:

Uncomment the entry key section
Update exampleEntityId to the value of Azure AD Identifier
(Note that you can update the value example1SamlAttributeMap or use this section as a template to create a new mapping with a different name, and rename the reference to this bean in the step below to match this, but in these instructions we have assumed that you will use the default names)

Find the example1SamlAttributeMap bean:

There are a number of ways of updating this attribute map, this is a flexible mechanism for specifying the format of token claims, but for the remainder of this configuration we supply a recommended configuration that should suit the majority of PhixFlow instances.

Update the example1SamlAttributeMap bean:
- Replace the contents of the bean with the contents below
- Update the property domain to reflect the domain of your identity provider, i.e. of your Microsoft tenant (technically, this is the value that will be displayed as the domain for any users who login using SAML; but you are strongly recommended to make this the domain of your identity provider)

Discovering details - claims values and group names/ IDs

There are various ways of getting details of the claims, and the names/ IDs of groups to be mapped (from AAD), but in many cases it is easiest to see what is being provided via SAML. To do this:

Apply the debug settings Option 1 (as described below)
Attempt a login with a test user that you believe has been set up correctly
Examine the server log file

In the example below, in the groups claim, Group ID has been set as the source attribute.

Other settings for SAML User Details Service

You can optionally add property name attributes to configure:

single (global) logout
By default, PhixFlow uses local logout. When a user logs out the PhixFlow session is terminated but
- the SAML identity provider is not notified
- the user is not logged out of their identity provider session.
Alternatively, single logout terminates the PhixFlow session and logs out of the identity provider. Depending on your identity provider configuration, this may include terminating sessions with other identity providers. To apply single logout to all users in this domain, add the line:
<property name="globalLogout" value="true" />

Troubleshooting

When troubleshooting the configuration, you can include additional diagnostics information in logs, by adding lines to logback.xml.

Option 1: more debug information

Option 2: full debug information

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