Prerequisite Tasks

These instructions assume that you have an in-house installation of frevvo up and running. Refer to Configuring the LDAP Security Manager LDAP(s) for Cloud tenants if you have signed up for an LDAP tenant on the cloud server.

Roles

Required: 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. Note that, unlike the default security manager, users in the frevvo.TenantAdmin group must also be in the frevvo.Designer group to design forms/workflows.

Optional: There are two additional roles in frevvo - frevvo.Publisher and frevvo.ReadOnly.  These roles are optional.

• In order to give a user the frevvo.publishers role, create the frevvo.Publisher group in your AD and assign users to it. Refer to the Publisher Role Documentation for an explanation of this role.
  
• In order to give a user the frevvo.ReadOnly role, create the frevvo.ReadOnly group in your AD and assign users to it. Following frevvo Best Practice eliminates the need for this role.
  
  

Configuring frevvo and LDAP/Active Directory 

frevvo users and groups can be maintained externally in systems such as Active Directory or Open LDAP.  Follow these steps to integrate frevvo 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/Active Directory Security Manager class.
3. Once you have your tenant successfully connecting with your LDAP server, review the available options regarding the authentication process.
   

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 frevvo designers. These users will be able to create forms and Workflows in frevvo.
• LDAP groups and users that will be considered frevvo administrators.
• LDAP groups and users that will be considered frevvo 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.

• New frevvo in-house customers can add an LDAP tenant and configure the LDAP parameters via the Add Tenant screen. LDAP properties can be updated at anytime via the Edit Tenant screen.
• Cloud customers must request an LDAP tenant from frevvo customer support. Cloud customers will receive a default tenant login from frevvo and then they can edit the LDAP configuration properties using the Edit Tenant screen to connect to their LDAP server.

In all cases, follow these steps to configure LDAP. These instructions assume that you have an in-house installation of frevvo up and running or you have signed up for an LDAP tenant on the cloud server.

• In-house customers:

• 1. Login to frevvo as an  administrator (user:admin and password:admin if you have not changed it)
  2. Click on Manage and then 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.
  5. Configure the new tenant - Choose LDAP/Active Directory Security Manager from the Security Manager Class dropdown.

Add New Tenant Screen

 Click here to view example Edit Tenant screen...

Edit Existing Tenant Screen

• 1. 1. Enter your LDAP Configuration Properties and Sample Configurations. Alternatively, you can start off from one of the sample configurations and provide only the key information listed above. See below 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 frevvo to ignore or follow referrals.

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

     2. 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 User ID, password and email address of a user that will have the tenant admin permission. This user id is the built-in and can be used to access tenant administrative functions if you cannot log in as an authenticated LDAP tenant admin.
           1. The tenant admin id, password and email fields are required. The Change password on next login is optional. It is checked by default.
        4. 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 setup in frevvo 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

Check if the configuration is correct

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

1. Login as the frevvo tenant admin for the LDAP tenant.
2. Click on the Manage Users link.
3. Click All. You should see a list of LDAP users who were assigned one of these frevvo roles on the LDAP server: frevvo.TenantAdmin, frevvo.Designer, frevvo.Publisher, frevvo.ReadOnly
4. Now, click Back To Manage Tenant.
5. Click Manage Roles. You should see a list of groups from your LDAP server.
6. Log out from frevvo (you should be currently logged in as the tenantadmin)
7. Try to log in with the user name and password of a 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.

Since you are using LDAP to define frevvo 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 Built-in Admin

 A Tenant admin can log in directly to frevvo or log in with a user id that 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 the 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 frevvo 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, frevvo will prepend the base URL to the URLs in your Form/Document Actions. The <base_URL> is typically http(s)://<your servername>:<port>.

• You must use the admin-specific URL - <base-url>/frevvo/web/admin/login - to login as the built-in.
• Nonadmin users can also log in 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 set up. If you have forgotten the password, you can change it by :

• Log in 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 log in 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. Log in as your authenticated LDAP tenant admin. Click the Edit Tenant link. The Admin User information is displayed.
2. 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.
   
   
   

Secure LDAP Configuration

frevvo 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 to 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 frevvo can access and trust. Follow the instructions for your Keystore. If frevvo is installed in a tomcat server, the tomcat Keystore can be used. Refer to this Apache Tomcat website for instructions.

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

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

Options for Authentication

Once you have your tenant successfully connecting with your LDAP server, there are two options available regarding the authentication process.

• Options 1: Users can login using the frevvo login page and frevvo will delegate authentication back to the LDAP/Active Directory server. See the example below. There is nothing more to do if you choose this option.
• Options 2: You can implement Single Sign On with IIS. See the details below.

Option 1 - frevvo login page authenticating against LDAP

This is the case where the user will authenticate through the frevvo's login page but delegate authentication to LDAP. Let's assume that your tenant named 'LDAP' was successfully configured to connect to your LDAP server and there is a user 'john' in your LDAP server. You can now login directly via frevvo's login page:

 

The password provided in the login page is the user's password in LDAP. A very important point to note is that the user name, "john" in the example above, needs to match the value for the LDAP entry attribute configured in the property UserID Display field on the Edit Tenant screen. For instance, for Active Directory, the value of this property is normally sAMAccountName. That means frevvo will try to find an entry in LDAP that has sAMAccountName=john.

Option 2 - Single Sign On with IIS

In this scenario, a user authenticates to his windows account and tries to use frevvo. Since the user is already authenticated to the network, frevvo will recognize his credentials and automatically forward the user to his frevvo account, if he is a designer, or allow the user to use a form/flow if those resources are available to the tenant.

The basic deployment is IIS fronting frevvo and the authentication is done against LDAP.  For that to work you need to:

1. Install frevvo 
2. Configure frevvo to work with IIS
3. Configure Windows Authentication 
   1. Configure Windows Authentication on IIS7
   2. Configure Windows Authentication on IIS6
4. In IIS, Make sure that Anonymous Authentication or Basic Authentication is NOT configured in the Web Application (Default Web) that will be used to proxy requests to frevvo. 

Please also refer to the force auth property for forms and workflows. Force auth lets you override SSO for an individual form or flow.

Once all is configured and running it is possible to test these scenarios:

Signing in from within the network

In this case, the frevvo server and the Active Directory server are running on the same network. The user is already authenticated to the windows network and points the browser to:

http://[server]/frevvo/web/tn/[LDAP tenant]/login

Substitute LDAP tenant above with the tenant name you configured with the LDAP Security Manager. The server variable should be the ip address of the machine where IIS is installed.

The user will automatically authenticate to frevvo. It is crucial that the LDAP user is known to frevvo, in other words, the user should be one of the entries retrieved by the LDAP expression configured in the All Users Filter on the LDAP configuration screen.

Signing in from outside the network

In this case, the frevvo server and the Active Directory server are running on different networks. The user is trying to hit the URL below from outside the network. 

 http://[server]/frevvo/web/tn/[LDAP tenant]/login 

Substitute LDAP tenant above with the tenant name you configured with the LDAP Security Manager and the server variable with the ip address of the machine where IIS is installed.

Since the user is not authenticated in the windows Network, he will be prompted by the browser for credentials. IIS will authenticate the user in the network and forward the request to frevvo. The user will be automatically redirected to his initial page without having to re-enter his credentials.

Single sign-on Browser Configuration

If you are still being prompted for Windows authentication after SSO is configured, the security settings for your browser may be too high. Configure your browser to authenticate using the "system logon credentials" (Kerberos authentication mechanism) by adding the frevvo server to the browser's trusted sites.

Follow these steps for the specified browsers:

Configuring Firefox

If you are using either the IisLoginModule or NtlmLoginModule option, your Firefox users may want to modify their browser settings. By default, Firefox will prevent automatic login. Browsing the frevvo SSO URL will cause a windows dialog box to popup requesting login information. This popup can be avoided by having your users modify their Firefox settings as described below.

1. In the Firefox address bar type about:config.  This will display all settings for Firefox.  
2. In the filter box type ntlm and hit the enter key. This will narrow the display items to those pertaining to NTLM authentication.
3. Double click on the key entry network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted.uris.  This is a comma-separated list of trusted servers for which automatic NTLM authentication is enabled.
4. In the edit box displayed, enter the name of the server you are accessing.  For example, http://frevvoserver.com/.
   1.  If you are using SSL, replace http with https.
      
5. Click the OK button.  Firefox should now enable automatic NTLM authentication with the frevvo server.

Configuring Chrome

To configure chrome you need to start the application with following parameter: auth-server-whitelist - <Allowed fully qualified domain name>.

 For example: In Windows,

1. Click the Start button, All Programs, Accessories, and then click Run. 
2. In the Open box, type following and click Ok:
   • chrome --auth-server-whitelist="*frevvoserver.com" 

Configuring Safari

No additional configuration is needed.

Configure URL Properties in frevvo-config.properties for LDAP SSO

Add the frevvo.internal.baseurl and the frevvo.forms.server.external.url properties to the frevvo-config.properties when using LDAP SSO. The frevvo.internal.baseurl property is needed for for various activities like accessing the ACL page, publishing templates, resetting tasks etc. Let's say you have a browser signed in via SSO to machine m1 (port 80).  IIS is running on m1 (port 80) redirecting /frevvo/web to frevvo running on m2:8082. The browser submits a form to m1, IIS redirects to m2:8082.  The doc action is a frevvo:// URI which gets resolved to http://m1/frevvo/...  frevvo POSTs to this URI  but m1 rejects the POST since it is not authenticated.

To avoid situations such as these, set the frevvo.internal.baseurl to the actual host:port of the frevvo server.

If the frevvo.forms.server.external.url  property is set, all share dialogs for forms and Workflows will use this as the external URL. This may be needed when using frevvo.forms.server.external.url if that external url is not also accessible from the form server machine. Use the syntax shown in the example. change the <myexternalhost>and <port> to your external server name and the port that you are using for frevvo on this server.

Follow these steps:

• edit <frevvo-home>/tomcat/conf/frevvo-config.properties
• Add the properties shown below with your information: Save the changes to the file.
  
  

frevvo.internal.baseurl=http:// <ip or server name of the machine where the frevvo server is hosted>:<port>
frevvo.forms.server.external.url=http://<myexternalhost>:<port> 

Upload Control Behavior

If your system is configured for LDAP SSO, the upload control may display the "uploading..." image continuously when uploading an image to an upload control in a form, accessed from a space, on a mobile device. To workaround this issue, configure IIS so that it does not require re-authentication for every single request.

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 frevvo. To solve this, check the Ignore Case checkbox on the LDAP Configuration screen. To prevent issues you could always login to frevvo using lower case jstevens. LDAP will grant access as it is case insensitive and frevvo 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 frevvo 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 frevvo 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.