Account Provisioning With Single Sign-on (SSO)

For Bonita Runtime configured with SAML or OIDC single sign-on, user account’s creation will be available by using information coming from the Identity provider (IdP) at user’s login.

For Teamwork, Efficiency, Performance and Enterprise editions only.

This information applies to a Bonita Runtime deployed from a bundle or docker image, NOT to the runtime launched from Bonita Studio. <BUNDLE_HOME> refers to the root directory of the bundle.

Making possible user accounts and their authorization groups automatically creation in Bonita Runtime database at user log in - provided access is authorized by the SSO provider.

Configure Bonita to create new user accounts

If you want the Bonita Runtime accounts to be created automatically once a user accessing Bonita has been authenticated with the SSO provider, make sure you have a Bonita Runtime configured for single sign-on with OIDC or SAML first.

Then, in the tenant_engine folder of the existing tenant: <BUNDLE_HOME>/setup/platform_conf/current/tenants/<TENANT_ID>/tenant_engine/ edit the file bonita-tenant-sp-custom.properties to uncomment, and modify when needed, the following lines :

...
# Create users on the fly, when they are missing from bonita but authenticated by the SSO. The users will belong to the groups and role specified below.
authentication.passphraseOrPasswordAuthenticationService.createMissingUser.enable=true
bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.addDefaultMembership.enable=true
authentication.passphraseOrPasswordAuthenticationService.createMissingUser.defaultMembershipGroupPath=/acme/hr
authentication.passphraseOrPasswordAuthenticationService.createMissingUser.defaultMembershipRoleName=member
bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.createDefaultGroupAndRole.enabled=true
bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.createUserGroupsAndRole.enabled=true
bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.lowerGroupsAndRoleNamesCase.enabled=true
...

  • authentication.passphraseOrPasswordAuthenticationService.createMissingUser.enable activates the missing user account creation when set to true. The users are created with a username that matches the configuration of the SAML PrincipalNameMapping element or the OIDC principal-attribute.

  • bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.addDefaultMembership.enable add automatically to all the users created through this feature a membership to the group specified by the property authentication.passphraseOrPasswordAuthenticationService.createMissingUser.defaultMembershipGroupPath with the role specified by the property authentication.passphraseOrPasswordAuthenticationService.createMissingUser.defaultMembershipRoleName. The default value for this property is true.

  • authentication.passphraseOrPasswordAuthenticationService.createMissingUser.defaultMembershipGroupPath specify the group path of a group in which every user account created on the fly will be added when bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.addDefaultMembership.enable is set to true. The full group path is needed.

  • authentication.passphraseOrPasswordAuthenticationService.createMissingUser.defaultMembershipRoleName specify the name of the role to use to create the default memberships when bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.addDefaultMembership.enable is set to true.

  • bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.createDefaultGroupAndRole.enabled indicates if the default groups and roles identified by authentication.passphraseOrPasswordAuthenticationService.createMissingUser.defaultMembershipGroupPath and authentication.passphraseOrPasswordAuthenticationService.createMissingUser.defaultMembershipRoleName should be created automatically in Bonita database if they do not exist. The default value for this property is false.

  • bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.createUserGroupsAndRole.enabled indicate if the groups and the roles specified by the User attribute mapping properties bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.role and bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.groups(after group mapping resolution) should be created automatically in Bonita database if they do not exist. The default value for this property is false.

  • bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.lowerGroupsAndRoleNamesCase.enabled indicates to always set group paths and role names to lower case before group mapping resolution and groups and role creation in Bonita database. This is to avoid having multiple groups and roles created with diferent case. The default value for this property is true.

User accounts update is not supported. Once an account exists for a user in Bonita Runtime database (whether it was created with account provisioning or manually), the user’s attributes and groups will not be retrieved again from the IdP and not be updated.

Configure User attributes mapping

In addition of the username it is possible to use more information coming from the Identity Provider of the SSO in order to create the user account in Bonita, like first name, last name, email, etc…​
Actually, all the user information retrieved from the SAML response attributes or the OIDC ID tokens can be mapped to the attributes of a user account in Bonita.
In order to do that, in the tenant_portal folder of the existing tenant: <BUNDLE_HOME>/setup/platform_conf/current/tenants/<TENANT_ID>/tenant_portal/ edit the file user-creation-attribute-mapping-custom.properties and copy (and uncomment) from the file user-creation-attribute-mapping.properties the lines for the attributes you want to map.
Use $account. prefix to target a SAML attribute from the SAML response of a claim from the OIDC ID token.
A value without prefix will be directly used as it is for all users created through this feature.
For example:

bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.firstName=$account.given_name
bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.lastName=$account.family_name
bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.email=$account.email
bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.jobTitle=employee
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.title=$account.title
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.address=$account.personalAddress
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.building= $account.personalBuilding
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.city=$account.personalCity
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.country=$account.personalCountry
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.email=$account.personalEmail
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.faxNumber=$account.personalFaxNumber
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.mobileNumber=$account.personalMobileNumber
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.phoneNumber=$account.personalPhoneNumber
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.room=$account.personalRoom
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.state=$account.personalState
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.website=$account.personalWebsite
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.personal.zipCode=$account.personalZipCode
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.address=$account.professionalAddress
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.building= $account.professionalBuilding
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.city=$account.professionalCity
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.country=$account.professionalCountry
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.email=$account.professionalEmail
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.faxNumber=$account.professionalFaxNumber
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.mobileNumber=$account.professionalMobileNumber
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.phoneNumber=$account.professionalPhoneNumber
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.room=$account.professionalRoom
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.state=$account.professionalState
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.website=$account.professionalWebsite
#bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.professional.zipCode=$account.professionalZipCode
bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.role=member
bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.groups=$account.customGroups

The property bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.role defines the name of the role to use for the users group memberships creation (values with the prefix $account. are supported as well).
The property bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.groups defines the groups to use for the users group memberships creation. Its value can be a list of Bonita group paths comma separated (e.g.: /acme, /acme/hr, /acme/rd) or an SSO attribute / token claim with the prefix $account. (see the section Configure groups mapping for this use case).
If the property bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.createUserGroupsAndRole.enabled is set to true (and if there is a mapping for them in case of groups coming from the SSO), groups and roles will be created automatically if they do not exist.
If the property bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.lowerGroupsAndRoleNamesCase.enabled is set to true (default value), these 2 properties are not case sensitive and the groups/role will be created with lower case names/paths

Configure groups mapping

When the value of the property bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.groups in user-creation-attribute-mapping-custom.properties starts with the $account. attribute, it means the list of groups of the user should be retrieved from the SAML response attributes or the OIDC ID token and each group that should result in a membership creation should be associated with a group path to use in Bonita.
In order to do that, in the tenant_portal folder of the existing tenant: <BUNDLE_HOME>/setup/platform_conf/current/tenants/<TENANT_ID>/tenant_portal/ edit the file user-creation-group-mapping.properties and add one line for each group mapping. For example:

bonita_user=/acme
bonita_hr=/acme/hr
bonita_admin=/acme/admin

Any group coming from the IdP that is not mapped with a Bonita group will be ignored during the users memberships creation.
The format the groups attribute value coming from an OIDC token can either be an array or a String (using commas as separator).
The format the groups attribute value coming from an SAML response can either be a multiple values attribute (one value for each group name) or a single value attribute (using commas as separator).
If the property bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.lowerGroupsAndRoleNamesCase.enabled is set to true (default value), this file is not case sensitive and the groups will be created with lower case names/paths (However, the case used in the file will be kept for the display names of the groups).

In order to access a Bonita application a user needs to have the profile associated with this application. The mapping between groups and profiles can also be automatized to avoid having to do it manually once the groups have been created.
In order to do that, in the tenant_portal folder of the existing tenant: <BUNDLE_HOME>/setup/platform_conf/current/tenants/<TENANT_ID>/tenant_portal/ edit the file user-creation-group-profile-mapping.properties and add one line for each group-to-profile mapping. For example:

/acme=User
/acme/hr=User
/acme/admin=Administrator

Contrary to the group path, the profile name is case sensitive even if the property bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.lowerGroupsAndRoleNamesCase.enabled is set to true.

Conditional access (mandatory goup)

It is possible to condition the creation of the Bonita user account to the membership of a user to a specific group in the SSO’s Identity Provider.

In the file user-creation-group-mapping.properties, the property bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.mandatoryGroup defines a group that the user must be part of in order to be able to log in on the application.
If the group is not present in the list of groups retrieved from the SAML response attributes or OIDC ID token of the user, then access is denied and the user is not created in Bonita. For example:

bonita.runtime.authentication.passphrase-or-password.create-missing-user.userAttribute.mandatoryGroup=application_user

Troubleshooting

How to troubleshoot?

To troubleshoot issues with user account provisioning, you need to increase the log level to TRACE for the packages com.bonitasoft.engine.authentication in order for errors to be displayed in the log files bonita.log (by default, only errors and warning are displayed).

In order to do that in a Tomcat bundle, you need to edit the file <BUNDLE_HOME>/server/conf/log4j2-loggers.xml.

  • Add the following line :

    <Logger level="TRACE" name="com.bonitasoft.engine.authentication"/>

An INFO message is logged for each user, group, role or membership creation. Other WARNING, DEBUG and TRACE messages are logged when groups or roles already exist or if their creation fails.