Secure LDAP Configuration

will be connecting to your LDAP server over the network. Here are two methods to secure the LDAP connection:

1. Simple authentication over SSL - To enable SSL use the ldaps scheme in your LDAP tenant configuration in place of ldap and use port 636.  This is supported by older LDAP products such as AD 2000. It is important that the hostname in the certificate matches the hostname in your ldaps url.
2. Simple or external SASL authentication over TLS (Transport Layer Security) - To enable this method check the TLS checkbox in your LDAP tenant configuration. TLS is used by the LDAP v3 standard in products such as AD 2003 and above. TLS uses the standard LDAP port 389.  

When using either of these two methods, the recommended approach is to use a CA signed certificate. If you do not have a CA signed certificate then you can use a self-signed certificate.

Finally you need to install your signed or self-signed certificate. You can import the certificate into a keystore that  can access and trust. Follow the instructions for your keystore. If  is installed in a tomcat server, the tomcat keystore can be used. Refer to this Apache Tomcat website for instructions .

External SASL and pooling are currently not supported. This is planned for a later release. 

Configuring LDAPs for your Cloud tenant

Once your  Online cloud hosted tenant has been provisioned for production use, follow the steps below to configure your tenant to use the frevvo LDAP/Active Directory Security Manager to integrate with your company's AD server:

1. Confirm that your LDAP/AD server is running LDAPs with a third-party certification authority.
   1. It is likely your LDAP/AD server already has a CA certificate installed. But if not, this Microsoft KB article tells you how to do this: It is important that the hostname in the certificate matches the hostname in your ldaps url.

   2. Your LDAP/AD server must be running LDAPs with a third-party certification authority BEFORE performing Step 4.

      Self signed certificates are not supported for frevvo Online tenants

2. Customers that use firewall white-listing must add the frevvo cloud outgoing server IP 54.86.85.105 (host outgoing.frevvo.com) to the list.

3. Email your frevvo Security Manager resource. The frevvo infrastructure team will white label your server and port using the information provided.

   1. Provide frevvo with the following:

      1. the DNS Name(s) of the machine(s) hosting your AD server AND the IP Address or range of IP Addresses (in the case where your LDAP config is fault tolerant) of the machine(s) hosting your AD server.

4. STOP:
   
   1. Wait for a reply email from your frevvo Security Manager resource letting you know that the frevvo infrastructure team has completed the white listing of your IP(s) on port 636 (ssl) or port 389 (TLS) in our firewall and verified connectivity.
5. Once you receive this white listing confirmation email verify that you have completed:
   1. the Prerequisite Tasks listed below
   2. collected the information in the Key Information to Collect topic below
6. Go to https://app.frevvo.com
   1. Login as your tenant admin
   2. Click on the Edit tenant link
      

   3. Change the security manager to the LDAP Security Manager.

      If you have developed projects/forms/workflows in your starter/trial cloud tenant that you want to preserve, download them to your desktop as a backup BEFORE changing the existing Security Manager to the LDAP Security Manager. 

   4. Change the LDAP properties to your company's AD server following the instructions listed below
   5. Save your tenant AD configuration settings

   6. Verify that your tenant is now connected to your company AD server

Prerequisite Tasks

Active Directory Customers using LDAP must ensure frevvo.TenantAdmin and frevvo.Designer groups are specified on your LDAP/AD server. The group names must be spelled as shown. Upper/lower case may be a factor for Open LDAP systems.

• Tenant admin users must be assigned to the frevvo.TenantAdmin group.
• Designer users must be assigned to the frevvo.Designer group.

Configuring and LDAP/Active Directory 

users and groups can be maintained externally in systems such as Active Directory or Open LDAP.  Follow these steps to integrate  and your LDAP server:

1. Collect the key information listed below and verify the Prerequisite Tasks have been performed.
2. Create a tenant with the LDAP Security Manager class.
   

Key Information to Collect

• LDAP server name or ip
• LDAP server port
• User name and password with proper permissions to access and browse LDAP.
• LDAP groups and/or users that will be considered  designers. These users will be able to create forms and workflows in frevvo.
• LDAP groups and users that will be considered  administrators.
• LDAP groups and users that will be considered  publishers. This role gives a user the permission to go to the home page of every other tenant user. 
• LDAP groups and users that will be considered ReadOnly.
• LDAP user and groups base filters
• LDAP all users and all groups filters

• LDAP the attribute names in your Active Directory for UserId Display, GroupId Display, User Member Of, Group Member, First Name, Last Name, Email and Manager (optional)

Create/Edit a tenant with the LDAP/Active Directory Security Manager

The connection to your LDAP server is configured at the tenant level.

• 1. Login to your as the tenant admin
  2. Click on Manage Tenants
  3. You will see a page where the current tenants are listed. If this is a new installation you will only see the default tenant d
  4. Click on the plus icon to add a new tenant or click the Edit Tenant link to edit an existing one.
  5. Configure the tenant for the LDAP Security Manager:

     1. Choose LDAP Security Manager from the Security Manager Class dropdown.

        Add New Tenant Screen

        

         Click here to view example Edit Tenant screen...

        Edit Existing Tenant Screen

        
        

     2. Enter your LDAP Configuration Properties. Alternatively, you can start off from one of the sample configurations and provide only the key information listed above. See above for information on the TLS checkbox.

        The Name/value table highlighted in the image allows you to configure up to 10 additional LDAP properties. See this Oracle website for a complete list of all available LDAP properties. For example, you can configure to ignore or follow referrals.

        Setting the java.naming.referral property to a value of "ignore" in the Name/Value table configures to ignore referrals. Consult your LDAP Administrator for the details.

        
        

        1. If you are creating a new tenant:
           
           1. Enter a tenant id, a tenant name and description.
           2. The Max Concurrent Users is the maximum allowed by your license or less.
           3. Specify the LDAP User ID that will have the tenant admin permission. If editing an existing tenant, verify that the tenant admin user id is the LDAP user id for the tenant admin.
        2. Click Submit. You will see your new tenant in the tenant list if the connection to your LDAP server is successful.

The Ignore Case and Notify checkboxes are checked by default. It is recommended that you leave them checked. Refer to Mixed or Upper case User Names topic for an explanation of the Ignore Case option.

The Notify checkbox determines whether the task notification emails (including new task, rejection, escalation and reminders) setup in workflows are sent or not.

Clicking the submit button tests the connection. Any errors are displayed at the top of the form. Here is an example of an error when there is a typo in the LDAP server name:

Here is another example if the connection password is not correct

LDAP(s) Built-in Admin

A Tenant admin can login directly to frevvo or login with a user id who has been given tenant admin permissions in your Active Directory.

When you create a new tenant you are prompted to set up a tenant admin user id, password and email address. This tenant admin does not authenticate via your LDAP IDP. It only exists in frevvo. If you experience an issue with your LDAP configuration such that you can't login as an Active Directory authenticated user, use th built-in admin to login to your tenant as a tenant admin in order to fix your configuration issue. The built-in is able to access the tenant admin functions if your LDAP Server should become inaccessible. Only one built-in tenant admin account is supported.

Browse this URL to login as the built-in: <base_URL>/frevvo/web/admin/login. When specified, will prepend the base URL to the URLs in your Form/Document Actions. The <base_URL> is typically http(s)://<your servername>:<port>. For cloud customers the <base> is always https://app.frevvo.com.

• You must use the admin specific URL - <base-url>/frevvo/web/admin/login - to login as the built-in.

  • Non admin users can also login using the admin specific URL.

If your tenant originally used the Default Security Manager and then you changed to the LDAP Security Manager, this tenant admin account has already been setup. If you have forgotten the password, you can change it by :

• Logging as your authenticated LDAP tenant admin. Click the Edit Tenant link. The Admin User information is displayed .

  • If logging in as the authenticated LDAP tenant admin is not possible, browse this admin specific URL - <base-url>/frevvo/web/admin/login. Enter the built-in userid. Click Forgot Password? Once you have changed the password, browse the admin specific URL again and login with the tenant admin user id and the new password. If you need to change the password again, or make changes to your tenant, click the Edit Tenant link. The built-in password can be changed on this screen.

    

    This error message displays if any other user clicks on the Forgot Password? link after browsing the admin specific URL:

    

What if you do not remember the userid of your original tenant admin? Follow these steps:

1. Login as your authenticated LDAP tenant admin. Click the Edit Tenant link. The Admin User information is displayed.

   

   1. If logging in as the authenticated LDAP tenant admin is not possible, the frevvo (Cloud customers) and in-house superuser can see the built-in tenant userid from the Edit Tenant page.

Check if the configuration is correct

Here are some quick tests to check if the LDAP configuration is correct:

1. Login as the  tenant admin for the LDAP tenant.
   1. Click on the Manage Users link.
   2. Click All. You should see a list of LDAP users which were assigned one of these roles on the LDAP server: frevvo.TenantAdmin, frevvo.Designer, frevvo.Publisher, frevvo.ReadOnly

Now, click Back To Manage Tenant.

Click Manage Roles. You should see a list of groups from your LDAP server.

Log out from  (you should be currently logged in as the tenantadmin)

Try to login with the user name and password of a designer user in LDAP. You need to specify the proper tenant when logging in. For instance, if john is a valid LDAP user and the name of the LDAP tenant is MYLDAP, you should log in as john@MYLDAP. The password would be john's password in LDAP. Verify that the Project Home Page displays.

Log out from 

Try to login with the user name and password of a non-designer user in LDAP. Verify that the user's Task List displays.

Since you are using LDAP to define users and roles (i.e., groups), you do not see an Add User icon or Add Role icon on the Manage Users or Manage Roles pages.

LDAP Configuration Properties and Sample Configurations

These are the properties used to configure the LDAP/Active Directory security manager. The properties in bold are required.

cn=admin,dc=test,dc=frevvo,dc=com

If your AD has nested groups, please see this FAQ: How do I enable frevvo to retrieve users from nested groups?

Mixed or Uppercase User Names

The first issue occurs when the user logs in. For instance, John Stevens LDAP account is JStevens but he logs in as jstevens, he will be recognized by case insensitive LDAP and thus granted access but will not be recognized as a designer or as a tenant admin by . To solve this, check the Ignore Case checkbox on the LDAP Configuration screen. To prevent issues you could always login to  using lower case jstevens. LDAP will grant access as it is case insensitive and  will know that you may have the designer or admin special permission. However users can forget to do this. Setting Ignore Case in your LDAP security configuration will solve this. 

The second problem is in directing tasks to  users if your LDAP user names are mixed case. One solution is to use hidden controls on your forms with rules to convert the case of user names to lower case. The example below shows two text controls on a form, one visible, EmployeeMixedCase, and the other hidden, Employee.

A user types a name (regardless of case) into the EmployeeMixedCase control. The hidden Employee control has a business rule that takes the value of the visible control and converts it to lowercase.

Employee.value = EmployeeMixedCase.value.toLowerCase(); 

The form or workflow routing can then use {Employee} rather than the control that may be mixed case. 

Referrals

LDAP administrators can configure to ignore or follow referrals by entering the LDAP property name and value in the table provided on the Add Tenant (on-premise) or Edit Tenant (cloud) screens.