AD links

NEW AD INFORMATION (Version 6.776+)

Please see link : NEW AD LINK INFOSHEET

Introduction

AD links allows you to create accounts for your pupils using your Active Directory. Once accounts are created, pupils can log in to Insight and have all the same Role Options as a standard parental account - which can be configured to suit your needs.

AD Links is an optional add-on for Insight.

The AD Links Page

The AD links page is provided to allow the configuration of Insight to work with your Active Directory.

For student accounts, you can use existing Active Directory principals and Insight accounts will automatically be created for them on first use. The account principals in Active Directory will need to have a field set within them uniquely identifying the student in SIMS. The uniquely identifying field used by default is the EmployeeID field, but you can specify an alternate field if, for example, the EmployeeID is already used, or it is not practical to make it visible. The contents of this field will need to be either the SIMS database id (MISID), their Admission Number (ADNO) or their UPN.

For parents and staff, Insight accounts must be created beforehand using the Synchronisation process, and the uniquely identifying field in the Active Directory principal must be populated with the SIMS database id.

Additionally, Active Directory Security groups should be created for the purpose of allowing and denying access to Insight.

You will need to have licensed the AD Links option to access the page. You can check for this in Reports – Licenses, and re-license from here if necessary.

The AD Links menu allows you to configure the link to your Active Directory database, by providing details of your domain and an account which can read it. The most difficult part of configuring this is in getting the format of the options correct. Firstly, make sure the Check in AD when logging in is turned ON! The domain field should be in the form

   mydomain.local

The User Container should be in the form

   CN=Users,DC=mydomain,DC=local

The Domain reading user should be in the form

   mydomain\user

The ...require membership of this Security Group should be the name of the Security Group alone and is sensitive to capitals. If you want to allow a selection of different Security Groups (year based perhaps) separate them with ; (semi-colon) characters.

If all Students are to have identical Roles in Insight, enter the name. The alternative is to use * (asterix) to tell Insight to use the first matching Security Group name from the list that the user belongs to is to be used as the Insight Role

If you want to allow staff to use Active Directory based login you will need to turn the Allow staff role users to use delegated login on.

For student users, you will have to tell Insight if the EmployeeID field represents something different than the SIMS database id, either Admission Number or UPN.

If you intend or need to use a different AD Field than EmployeeID, for example the 'Pager' field or 'extensionAttribute4' in place of the, turn the Use alternative AD field in place of EmployeeID' switch, and enter the name of the alternate field.

Insight can also check the given name and last name AD fields against the associated SIMS record to check that the AD record correctly links to the SIMS record - turn on the Check AD names against student names when logging in to perform this check.

Important

After updating the AD links details you will also need to set

  Manage – Preferences – Login – Trust this host as an authentication provider 

to the short name of your domain.

Troubleshooting

If you have problems implementing single sign on using Active Directory, use the Reports - Activity to filter as follows.

the Date filtered to the date of the failed login

the Activity filtered to "Login"

the Type set to an exclamation mark (!)

Now switch on the Detailed view using the toggle button on the tool bar; it looks like a cylinder with a cog.

Failed AD logins will have an *empty* username field.

The whole process undertaken for that login will be displayed in the Detail column.

It will make for easier viewing to highlight and copy the contents of the detail field into notepad or similar.

On the AD Links page, the "Test as" link can be used to test AD Logins. Log into Windows as an AD student and then into Insight as Admin and click this button to test.

Seamless login

An additional benefit of using this method to log in is that it supports Integrated Windows Authentication in supported browsers. This means that if the user is logged onto a computer within the domain, their account information can be used to log seamlessly into Insight, without requesting them to enter their account details by hand. To enable this, all of the previous settings must be working correctly.

To implement seamless login, direct those users who you expect to be able to login to the ADSSO.aspx page initially. If the user is not already logged into the domain, they will be redirected to the normal login page, where they can still enter their Active Directory username and password. Otherwise, depending on their Security Group membership, they will be passed straight through to Insight. If you do not expect a user to be able to log in this way, they should be directed to the normal login URL.