Documentation
    {{docApp.userSession.userId}}
    {{docApp.userSession.userName}}
    {{docApp.userSession.email}}
    Issuer : {{docApp.userSession.issuerInstance}}
    Expires : {{new Date(docApp.userSession.validUntil).toLocaleDateString()}}

{{docApp.title}}

{{docApp.description}}

INDEX

Documentation Library

Search for information on Hornbill Documentation.

{{docApp.searchError}}

{{docApp.searchResultFilteredItems.length}} results for "{{docApp.currentResultsSearchText}}" in {{docApp.searchFilterBySpecificBookTitle}}

Have questions about this site?

What is this site?

  • This website is Hornbill's new product documentation website and is currently under development.
  • It is intended that all existing and future public-facing documentation we produce will be available to search, browse and share.
  • Hornbill's current documentation is available at Hornbill Wiki but over time this content will be migrated to this documentation site.
  • Please feel free to have a look around at any time.

Why has Hornbill created this site?

  • Hornbill's products have moved on considerably since we introduced it almost 10 years ago. At the time, the MediaWiki tool was sufficient, but we have outgrown it.
  • Our customers are more enterprise focused and more self-sufficient than ever before, so for 2023 and beyond we have established a new documentation platform and team to drive our documentation initiative forwards.
  • We are aiming to deprecate the use of Hornbill Wiki for most Hornbill related documentation.
  • We want to enable our growing partner network with product resources and information, documentation beyond our Wiki approach is required.
  • We could definitely do with some help, and may even pay for some! If you have domain knowledge and would like to help, please check out our Hornbill Docs Contributor Guide and contact the Hornbill docs team at docs@hornbill.com.

What will this site be good for?

  • Community contribution will be facilitated, encouraged, and most welcome.
  • High quality documentation, will be kept up to date as rapidly as our products evolve.
  • Real-time content search and discovery.
  • Articles organized into books, books into libraries, creating a more natural and logical structure to our documentation.
  • Legacy API documentation and various other documentation sources will all be consolidated into a single unified documentation system.
  • Documentation available in browser as well as printable/viewable as PDF on demand.
  • Personalized documentation experience, allowing dark/light mode, article subscriptions, social media sharing and other useful features.
  • Almost all publicly available documentation on docs.hornbill.com will be open-source and available to fork on GitHub, allowing customers to derive their own custom documentation around Hornbill products should they wish to.

What is the timeline for this site?

  • We have taken the decision to publish and make available early, there is very little content at this time.
  • As and when we have completed/usable documentation, it will be published here.
  • We have a host of additional features we wish to add over time, so please watch this space.
  • We expect most of our existing documentation should be reviewed/migrated to docs.hornbill.com over the coming months.
  • The documentation project will be ongoing, will continue to expand, evolve and improve day-by-day.

{{docApp.libraryHomeViewProduct.title || docApp.libraryHomeViewProduct.id}}

{{docApp.libraryHomeViewProduct.description}}

  1. {{book.title}}

{{group.title || group.id}}

{{group.description}}

  1. {{book.title}}

{{group.title}}

{{book.title}}
More...

Single Sign-On with SAML 2.0

Topics covered

  • Learn about SAML and how it is used by Hornbill

What is SAML

Security Assertion Markup Language ('SAML, pronounced “sam-el”) is an open standard XML-based framework developed by the Security Services Technical Committee of OASIS and is designed for communicating user authentication, entitlement, and attribute information between parties, in particular between an Identity Provider (IdP) and a Service Provider i.e. Hornbill.

Note

Useful External References: Oasis-Open.org, Wikipedia

SAML and Hornbill

Hornbill makes use of the SAML framework to facilitate two things:

  • Single Sign On (SSO)
    This is the method of access control that enables a user to log in to their organizations network one time, but then have transparent authorization to access resources of multiple software systems without being prompted to log in to each system separately. In the context of Hornbill, once configured, users may access their Hornbill instance pre-authenticated based on their enterprise desktop or browser login.
  • Auto-provision Hornbill User Accounts
    Along with the authorization information needed for SSO, SAML has the ability to transport additional directory attributes of a user. Hornbill is capable of processing this additional information contained in the SAML payload and use it to automatically create a user account on your instance. This mechanism can remove a significant overhead in terms of system administration.

Note

While SSO must be set up to utilize auto-provisioning, the auto-provisioning of user accounts in Hornbill is an optional mechanism that can be disabled independently of SSO. Hornbill provides a range of user import utilities that can be used instead of auto-provisioning. More information on the available user imports can be found via the following wiki page: Open Integration Tools

How it Works

There are three key actors in any SAML implementation, these are the “user” trying to access the Hornbill Cloud Application (via their Web Browser), the “Identity Provider (idP)” which knows and has identified the user, and the Service Provider (Hornbill Cloud Service) which provides the application and/or resources that the user wishes to access. Your Hornbill instance is the service provider, and typically your enterprise directory system, very often Microsoft Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS) acts as your identity provider.

SAML Flow

Once SSO is configured, when an unauthenticated user navigates to your Hornbill instance via one of the Hornbill URLs, the browser will be re-directed to the identity provider with the information needed to request access to the service, this is known as a SAML AuthnRequest. The idP will look at the AuthnRequest and if the user is authorized will return an Assertion back to the browser with a redirect to the service provider (in this case the Hornbill Instance). The Hornbill instance will validate the Assertion checking its authenticity against a known Hornbill SSO profile and if valid will create a session and allow the user to access Hornbill as required.

  • Version {{docApp.book.version}}
  • Node {{docApp.node}} / {{docApp.build}}
In This Document