SSO Guide for Chemwatch Clients

Single Sign On (SSO) allows clients to login through their identity provider. Instead of having to type in their Domain Name, User Name and Password, users will instead be redirected to their identity provider associated with their domain.

Usually we do the following to setup SSO:

Create a test copy account.
Obtain client metadata.xml and make the config in the test account.
Send our metadata.xml to be imported into IdP.
Test how it works on a copy account.
Move settings to production on a designated day.

The entire process is managed by IT personnel in Melbourne, AUS.

Self-Registration

To self-register, have the user login via https://jr.chemwatch.net/chemwatch.web/sso/login?domain="xxxxx". The system will connect to their identity provider and the user will have to provide login user/password. If this is the first time they have logged in a user will be created in CW using their credentials. An Administrator will need to assign them products and permissions before their account is active and ready for use.

Once SSO is enabled in a Chemwatch account, manual logins will no longer be allowed. Outside of SSO, only the domain administrator user will be allowed to login via an auto login link.

The following describes what login looks like when a user logs into their Chemwatch account via SSO:

Service provider redirects call for authentication to Identity Provider (Federation Service). Federation server does not receive any information from Chemwatch. This is just a redirect.
User authenticates into Identity Provider (IDP) with generic login and password. It happens outside of Chemwatch system completely.
IDP redirects call back to Chemwatch with a message containing user name, Assertion of user login, and security token to be used for future calls to IDP. Chemwatch only knows SSO users by login names. No additional information is ever sent back by IDP.
Chemwatch authenticates user only if successfully validated by the IDP. Chemwatch can be configured to enable self-registration and assign a default role for self-registered users. This removes the need to import users before SSO is enabled on an account. It happens automatically on a new user login.
The token will stay valid for a specific time, as configured per the IDP.
If token is invalidated, the user will need to authenticate with the IDP anew.

The following protocols are supported:

SAML
WS-Federation

The following are the possible assertions/claims expected by the Chemwatch application during login:

For example, Chemwatch system will use one of the name claims, i.e., Name, Given Name or Windows account name as a first preference during SSO login, and will populate the User Login and Person Name fields (during self-registration on first user login) on the Chemwatch user record if this claim is available.

If both of Name and one of the other name claims are available then Name maps to User Login and the other one maps to Person Name fields on the Chemwatch user record.

One of either Name, Given Name or Windows account name claims must be made in order to successfully log in to Chemwatch via SSO. The E-mail Address claim will be used to populate the Email field of the Chemwatch user record if available.

Below is an example from Microsoft Active Directory attribute/Outgoing Claim Type mappings that can be used for logging into Chemwatch via SSO.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

If you set your IDP as above, then inside Chemwatch application: your SAM-Account-Name will get mapped to our User Login field, your Display-Name will get mapped to our Person Name and your E-Mail-Adresses will get mapped to our Email fields respectively.

The metadata.xml from the Chemwatch side that will be used to configure your IDP looks like the following:

<EntityDescriptor xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:metadata" ID="_b5284f77-1b41-466a-bca1-5f10169e8e64" entityID="https://jr.chemwatch.net/chemwatch.web">
<SPSSODescriptor protocolSupportEnumeration="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:protocol">
<KeyDescriptor use="signing">
  <KeyInfo xmlns="<http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#">>
    <X509Data>
      <X509Certificate>"Place holder certificate"</X509Certificate>
    </X509Data>
  </KeyInfo>
</KeyDescriptor>

<NameIDFormat>urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:emailAddress</NameIDFormat>
<NameIDFormat>urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistent</NameIDFormat>
<NameIDFormat>urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:transient</NameIDFormat>

<AssertionConsumerService Binding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST" Location="<https://jr.chemwatch.net/chemwatch.web/sso/login/"xxxxx""> index="0" isDefault="true" />

<Attribute xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion" Name="<http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/emailaddress"> NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri" FriendlyName="E-Mail Address"/>
<Attribute xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion" Name="<http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/name"> NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri" FriendlyName="Name"/>
<Attribute xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion" Name="<http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/nameidentifier"> NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri" FriendlyName="Name ID"/>
<Attribute xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion" Name="<http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/givenname"> NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri" FriendlyName="Given Name"/>
<Attribute xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion" Name="<http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/windowsaccountname"> NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri" FriendlyName="Windows account name"/>

</SPSSODescriptor>
</EntityDescriptor>

A similar guide for MS Azure is available from SSO (Single Sign On) Guide for Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure AD)