It is possible to create user and groups in and use them to control access to the system as well as create Workflows. It is also common that the list of users and groups is maintained externally in systems such as Active Directory or Open LDAP. can leverage your existing users repository and this section explains how to integrate with LDAP systems.

It is assumed that you already went through Live Form's installation instructions and have Live Forms running. LDAP Connectivity is available in the in-house only and not offered as part of our SaaS packages.

Safari browsers later than v5.1.7 running on Windows is no longer supported. Issues were found when using Safari with LDAP - SSO.

On This Page:

Integrating Live Forms with LDAP

Key Information to Collect

Configuration Steps

  1. Stop .
  2. In a text editor, open <frevvo-home>/tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/frevvo.xml.
  3. You can edit the LDAP Configuration Properties. Alternatively, you can start off from one of the sample configurations and provide only the key information listed above.
    1. Active Directory Sample 
    2. Open LDAP Sample
  4. Log into your LDAP Server and add a new group, frevvo.TenantAdmin
  5. Assign the frevvo.tenantadmin group to one or more users for tenant admin privilege.
  6. Start
  7. Login to  as a  administrator (user:admin and password:admin if you have not changed it)
  8. Click on Manage and then Manage Tenants
  9. 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
  10. Click on the plus sign (+) to add a new tenant.
  11. Configure the new tenant:
    1. In the drop down Security Manager Class choose LDAP/Active Directory Security Manager. If your version does not have a drop down, enter the following in the in the text box: com.frevvo.security.ldap.LDAPSecurityManager.
    2. Give it a tenant id. For the sake of this document lets assume you call it MYLDAP. Provide the tenant name and description.
    3. The Max Concurrent Users is the maximum allowed by your license or less.
    4. Specify the LDAP User ID that will have the tenant admin permission. 
    5. Click Submit. You will see your new tenant in the tenant list.  

 

There are four special roles in : frevvo.Designer, frevvo.Publisher, frevvo.ReadOnly . Groups for each role must be specified on your LDAP/AD Server if you have users that will be assigned these roles. The group names must be frevvo.Designer, frevvo.Publisher, frevvo.ReadOnly . Upper/lower case may be a factor for Open LDAP systems.

 

Check if the configuration is correct

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

  1. Login as the  admin or the tenant admin for the LDAP tenant.
  2. Click on the icon manage users/roles for the LDAP tenant you created.
  3. Click Manage Users.
  4. Click All. You should see a list of LDAP users.
  5. Now, click Back To Manage Tenant.
  6. Click Manage Roles. You should see a list of groups.
  7. Log out from  (you should be currently logged in as admin)
  8. Try to login 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 you should log in as john@MYLDAP. The password would be john's password in LDAP.

Since you are using LDAP to define 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

Live Forms and LDAP Use Cases

Single Sign On with Live Forms, IIS and Active Directory

In this scenario, a user authenticates to his windows account and tries to use . Since the user is already authenticated to the network,  will recognize his credentials and automatically forward the user to his  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  and the authentication is done against LDAP. For that to work you need:

  1. Install Live Forms 
  2. Configure Live Forms 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 . 
  5. Go though the LDAP configurations described in the beginning of this document.

Please also refer to the force auth property for forms and flows. 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  server and the Active Directory server are running on the same machine. 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 Active Directory is installed .

The user will automatically authenticate to . It is crucial that the LDAP user is known to , in other words, the user should be one of the entries retrieved by the LDAP expression configured in the property com.frevvo.security.ldap.allUsersFilter in frevvo.xml.

Signing in from outside the network

In this case, the  server and the Active Directory server are running on different machines. 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 Active Directory 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 . The user will be automatically redirected to his initial page without having to re-enter his credentials.

Configure frevvo.internal.baseurl in frevvo.xml for LDAP SSO

This parameter is needed in frevvo.xml for various activities like accessing 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 form to m1, IIS redirects to m2:8082.  The doc action is a frevvo:// URI which gets resolved to http://m1/frevvo/...  POSTs to this URI  but m1 rejects the POST since it is not authenticated.

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

  1. edit <frevvo-home>/tomcat/conf/catalina/localhost/frevvo.xml
  2. Add the parameter shown below with your information: Save the changes to the file.
Parameter name="frevvo.internal.baseurl" value="http:// <ip of the m/c where frevvo server is hosted>:<port>" override="false"/>

If your system is configured for LDAP SSO, the upload and video controls exhibit the following behaviors:

  1. Uploading an image to an upload control in a form, accessed from a space, on a mobile device will not work. The "uploading...." snake image displays continuously. This issue will be fixed in a future version of .
  2. The video control will ask for credentials again in use/design mode if you are using the FireFox browser. In IE9, you will see the message: " The Web-page wants to run the following add-on: 'Windows Media Player' from 'Microsoft Corporation'. What's the risk?" Enter your credentials or run the add-on to proceed.

 

Live Forms login page authenticating against LDAP

This is the case where the user will authenticate through the 's login page but the user data is in LDAP. Once you complete the LDAP configuration you should have a tenant configured with the LDAP security manager. Lets assume that the tenant name you created is 'LDAP' and there is a user 'john' in LDAP. In that case, in 's login page:

Username: john@LDAP 
Password: *****      
Tenant: <blank>

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 com.frevvo.security.ldap.userIdDisplayAttribute. For instance, for Active Directory, the value of this property is normally sAMAccountName. That means  will try to find an entry in LDAP that has sAMAccountName=john. You can configure any attribute that uniquely identify the user and that the possible values don't have spaces.

Retrieving Custom Attributes from the LDAP server

Active directory attributes can be retrieved from the LDAP server using Business Rules. The rules use the  _data.getParameter('subject.attribute) feature to make the information available. There are many attributes available in Active Directory. Multi valued attributes are also supported. This feature works if you are using an LDAP or LDAP Container Security Manager configuration.

Configuring Active Directory Custom Attributes 

If you are using the tomcat bundle, First Name, Last Name and Employee Email are already configured in the LDAP sections of the <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf\catalina\localhost\frevvo.xml file. If you want to pull additional information, you must add the "com.frevvo.security.Idap.customAttributes" configuration parameter to the <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf\catalina\localhost\frevvo.xml file. The value of the parameter is a comma separated list of attribute names to be retrieved, Let's use the Employee ID, Type and Number as an example.

Follow these steps to modify the configuration:  

  1. Stop Live Forms if it is running.
  2. Navigate to <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf\catalina\localhost\frevvo.xml.
  3. Open the file with a text editor.
  4. Add the parameter shown below to the Active Directory or OpenLDAP sections of the file.  
 <Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.customAttributes" value="employeeNumber,employeeType,employeeID,middleName,carLicense" override="false"/>

 5. Save the file after all your changes are made. 

 6. Restart .  

LDAP Troubleshooting

If things are not working as you expected:

  1. The primary source of information is the  log file. In most cases, the LDAP connector will try to indicate what the problem is in the logs. In the log file, look for lines with LDAPSecurityManager or FrevvoJNDIRealm.
  2. It is useful to have an LDAP browser at hand, for instance, the Apache Directory Studio. With the browser you can:
    1.  Check if the connection parameters that you configured in  are correct.
    2.  Run queries against LDAP and make sure that the expressions you configured in   are correct and returning what you expect.
  3. If you can't spot the problem and need to contact frevvo support:
    1. Stop
    2. Go to <frevvo-home>/tomcat/logs/frevvo.log.
    3. Follow these steps to change the log level from INFO to DEBUG
    4. Restart
    5. Execute the steps that is causing problems.
    6. Send the log file (zip) to Live Forms support (support@frevvo.com) with a description of the problem.
    7. Restore the log level to INFO.

Below are some common cases to help with troubleshooting. All of them assume that the connectivity is working, meaning that you tested, from the same box where  is running that the connection parameters to the LDAP server you configured in  are correct. 

  1. As an admin I can't list the users or groups for the LDAP tenant

This is can be a problem with the expression you configured in com.frevvo.security.ldap.allUsersFilter (for users) and/or com.frevvo.security.ldap.allGroupsFilter (for groups). Also verify that the search bases are correct, properties com.frevvo.security.ldap.usersBase (users) and com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupsBase (groups). The LDAP Browser is useful here. Execute a search using the same expression and bases you configured in  and check if the result is correct.

  1. A user that should be a designer logs in but can't design forms

  2. Login to your LDAP/AD Server.
  3. Make sure you have a group defined for the designer role and it is named FrevvoDesigners.
  4. Make sure the user having the problem is a member of the FrevvoDesigners group.

Another potential issue is case sensitivity. Please refer to the topic Mixed or Upper case User Names below.

  1. A user that should be an administrator logs in but can't manage the tenant

  2. Login to your LDAP/AD Server.
  3. Make sure you have a group defined for the designer role and it is named FrevvoAdmins.
  4. Make sure the user having the problem is a member of the FrevvoAdmins group. 

Another potential issue is case sensitivity. Please refer to the topic Mixed or Upper case User Names below.

  1. I can authenticate against LDAP via the Live Forms login page but SSO is not working

  2. # In IIS:
    1. Make sure Windows Authentication is set in the Default Web App (or the web app used to send requests to )
    2. Verify that Anonymous Authentication is NOT set in the default Web App  (or the web used to send requests to )
  3. In :
    1. Open FREVVO_HOME/tomcat/conf/server.xml
    2. Look at the AJP connector configuration.
    3. Verify that it has the attribute tomcatAuthentication="false"

  4. Can't login via the Live Forms login page

A common cause is that the distinguished name attribute is incorrect. That attribute is defined by the property com.frevvo.security.ldap.distinguishedNameAttribute. If you can't determine the distinguished name attribute for your system you can try the fall back strategy described here. Some common distinguished name attributes can be found here

  1. Problems with Mixed or Uppercase User Names

 user names are case sensitive; the user name johndoe'' is not the same as JohnDoe. Several LDAP systems are case insensitive. Thus the two user names would resolve to the same LDAP account but to different  user accounts.

To avoid case issues follow these three steps described in more detail below:

  1. Set com.frevvo.security.ldap.ignoreCase to true.
  2. Set frevvo.login.userid.case to lower.
  3. Convert control values to lower case if they are used in workflow routing to a specific user.

The first issue is cased by the user login 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 . To solve this, set the property com.frevvo.security.ldap.ignoreCase to true.

To prevent issues you could always login to  using lower case jstevens. LDAP will grant access as it is case insensitive and  will know that you may have the designer or admin special permission. However users can forget to do this. To force this configure 's web.xml parameter frevvo.login.userid.case by adding the <context-param> lines you see below. You can specify a value of either lower or upper.

<context-param>     
    <param-name>frevvo.login.userid.case</param-name>     
    <param-value>lower</param-value>     
    <description>Force all login user ids to upper or lower case</description> 
</context-param>

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. 

 Changing the case of LDAP userids in Active Directory can cause undesired results. Use caution.

 

  1. Configure frevvo.internal.baseurl in frevvo.xml for LDAP SSO

This parameter is needed in frevvo.xml for various activities like accessing 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.   Browser submits form to m1, IIS redirects to m2:8082.  The doc action is a frevvo:// URI which gets resolved to http://m1/frevvo/...  POSTs to this URI  but m1 rejects the POST since it is not authenticated.

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

  1. edit <frevvo-home>/tomcat/conf/cstalina/localhost/frevvo.xml
  2. Add the parameter shown below with your information: Save the changes to the file.
Parameter name="frevvo.internal.baseurl" value="http://<ip of the m/c where frevvo server is hosted>:<port>" override="false"/>

If your system is configured for LDAP SSO and the upload and video controls may exhibit the following behaviors:

  1. Uploading an image to an upload control in a form that is accessed via a Space on an iPad will not work. The "uploading...." snake image is seen continuously. This issue will be addressed in a future version of .
  2. The video control will ask for credentials again when the form is loaded, if you are using the FireFox browser. In IE9, you will see the message "This web-page wants to run the following add-on: 'Windows Media Player' from 'Microsoft Corporation'. What's the risk?" Enter your credentials or run the add-on to proceed. A potential solution is to setup IIS so that it does not require re-authentication for every single request.

 

  1. Active Directory Sample Configuration

<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.connection.url" value="ldap://[your server]:[port, typically the default is 389 ]" override="false"/>   
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.connection.name" value="[user name]" override="false"/>  
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.connection.password" value="[user password]" override="false"/>  
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.usersBase" value="CN=Users,DC=test,DC=windows,DC=frevvo,DC=com" override="false"/>   
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupsBase" value="CN=Users,DC=test,DC=windows,DC=frevvo,DC=com" override="false"/>  
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.userIdDisplayAttribute" value="sAMAccountName" override="false"/>  
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupIdDisplayAttribute" value="sAMAccountName" override="false"/>   
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.notifications" value="true" override="false"/>     
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.allGroupsFilter" value="(objectClass=group)" override="false"/>  
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.allUsersFilter" value="(objectClass=user)" override="false"/>         
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.distinguishedNameAttribute" value="distinguishedName" override="false"/>  
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.userMemberOfAttribute" value="memberOf" override="false"/>    
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupMemberAttribute" value="member" override="false"/>   
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.firstNameAttribute" value="givenName" override="false"/>  
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.lastNameAttribute" value="sn" override="false"/>  
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.emailAttribute" value="mail" override="false"/>

  1. OpenLDAP Sample Configuration

<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.connection.url" value="ldap://[your server]:[port, typically the default is 389 ]" override="false"/>  
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.connection.name" value="cn=admin,dc=test,dc=frevvo,dc=com" override="false"/> 
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.connection.password" value="[user password]" override="false"/> 
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.usersBase" value="DC=test,DC=frevvo,DC=com" override="false"/>  
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupsBase" value="DC=test,DC=frevvo,DC=com" override="false"/> 
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.userIdDisplayAttribute" value="uid" override="false"/> 
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupIdDislayAttribute" value="entryDN" override="false"/> 
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.notifications" value="true" override="false"/>  
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.allGroupsFilter" value="(|(objectClass=groupOfUniqueNames)(objectClass=organizationalRole))" override="false"/> 
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.allUsersFilter" value="(objectClass=person)" override="false"/>        
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.distinguishedNameAttribute" value="entryDN" override="false"/>    
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupMemberAttribute" value="uniqueMember" override="false"/> 
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.userMemberOfAttribute" value="" override="false"/>    
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.firstNameAttribute" value="cn" override="false"/> 
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.lastNameAttribute" value="sn" override="false"/> 
<Parameter name="com.frevvo.security.ldap.emailAttribute" value="mail" override="false"/>

 

  1. LDAP Configuration Properties

These are the properties used to configure the LDAP connector. The properties in bold are required.

Property Description
com.frevvo.security.ldap.connection.urlldap server url
com.frevvo.security.ldap.connection.nameUser to connect to LDAP. This user must have the proper permissions to read and run queries in the ldap server. If using Active Directory, it is common to specify the domain. For instance, TEST\Administrator refers to the user Administrator in the TEST domain.
com.frevvo.security.ldap.connection.passwordPassword for the user defined in com.frevvo.security.ldap.connection.name.
com.frevvo.security.ldap.usersBaseSearches for users will start from the ldap node specified by this property.If the value is empty the searches will start from the root domain.
com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupsBaseSearches for the groups will start from the ldap node specified by this property. If the value is empty, searches will start from the root domain
com.frevvo.security.ldap.userIdDisplayAttributeUser attribute that will be visible in frevvo. This is what will be displayed in the list of users a tenant admin sees and has to be unique in the server. Another restriction is that the values for the attribute configured here cannot have spaces. For instance, don't configure CN as the value since it can contain spaces in most systems.
 com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupIdDisplayAttributeGroup attribute that will be visible in frevvo. This is, for instance, what will be displayed in the list of groups a tenant admin sees or the groups used in workflows. This attribute has to be unique in the server.
com.frevvo.security.ldap.notificationsNotifications are emails sent by frevvo to workflows participants. If ''true'', notifications will be sent. (default=true)
com.frevvo.security.ldap.allGroupsFilterThe expected value is an LDAP filter expression. The expression should return the groups that will be available to be used in frevvo workflows. com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupIdDisplayAttribute
com.frevvo.security.ldap.allUsersFilterThe expected value is an LDAP filter expression. The expression should return the users that will be available to be used in frevvo work flows and authentication. com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupIdDisplayAttribute

com.frevvo.security.ldap.frevvoDesignersFilter Deprecated in 4.5

The expected value is an LDAP filter expression. This expression needs to return a list of users (not groups) that will be considered frevvo designers. Microsoft Active directory Default groups (Domain Users etc.) are not supported.

com.frevvo.security.ldap.frevvoTenantAdminFilter Deprecated in 4.5The expected value is an LDAP filter expression. This expression needs to return a list of users (not groups) that will be considered frevvo tenant admins. Microsoft Active directory Default groups (Domain Users etc.) are not supported.

com.frevvo.security.ldap.distinguishedNameAttribute Deprecated in 4.1.3

Deprecated in 4.1.3. Name of the ''distinguished name'' attribute.
 com.frevvo.security.ldap.userMemberOfAttribute 
 com.frevvo.security.ldap.groupMemberAttribute 
 com.frevvo.security.ldap.firstNameAttribute

Name of the user ''first name'' attribute

 com.frevvo.security.ldap.lastNameAttributeName of the user ''last name'' attribute.
 com.frevvo.security.ldap.emailAttributeName of the user ''email'' attribute in the LDAP server. This is used in email notifications
 com.frevvo.security.ldap.managerAttribute 
 com.frevvo.security.ldap.cacheEnable or disable the caching of users and groups. The default value is 'true'. This property is no longer needed and can be removed. It has been deprecated.
 com.frevvo.security.ldap.ignoreCaseThis makes frevvo ignore the case stored in LDAP systems, primarily for the purpose of determining roles.
com.frevvo.security.ldap.customAttributesThis is a a comma separated list of attribute names to be retrieved from the LDAP Server.