Sitecore Content Hub - Set up SAML-based SSO in Azure AD using an App Registration

Background

In this post, I will show you how to create and configure an Azure Application Registration in your tenant to allow Sitecore Content Hub users to successfully authenticate against your Azure Active Directory.

Options

The Content Hub team's preferred set up option is to create an Enterprise application within your Azure AD, but unfortunately for us, our DevOps would not allow this due to very strict security constraints that we had to abide by. This is the main reason that we had to go the App Registration route.

We initially tried to get the App Registration working using Microsoft Provider SSO, but could not get the proper Group claims working correctly.

As a result, we focused on configuring SAML Auth within our App Registration, and were able to get all the claims needed to successfully get SSO authentication working with this approach.

Set up within Azure

Within your Azure Portal, find App registrations and click on the New Registration button. Give it a name, and leave the default options selected, and click Register.

Within the newly created registration, go to the Authentication menu option within the Manage section.

Click "Add a platform", and then select "Web".

Set your Redirect URIs to be the Content Hub portal url. You will be able to add additional URIs after the initial set up. For now, I will use a default one.

Make sure you check the Access tokens and ID tokens boxes within the Implicit grant and hybrid flows section.

After this, click the Configure button.

Next, go to the Token configuration menu option within the Manage section.

Click Add group claim, and check the Security group box. Confirm that the Group ID radio option is selected within the ID, Access and SAML options.

Click the Add button.

Next, click Add optional claim.

Within Token type, select SAML, and check the email Claim box. Click Add.

When prompted, check the "Turn on the Microsoft Graph email permission" box to allow the claims to appear in the token. Click Add.

Next, go to the Expose an API menu option within the Manage section. Click Add a scope, and it will generate an Application ID URI for you. 

Make note of this, as you will need it for the Content Hub side.

Click Save and continue.

After is has been created, you can click the Cancel button.

Go to the Overview menu option, and click Endpoints. Go to the Federation metadata document XML url and make note of it. 

Then, copy and past it into a new browser tab.

Make note of the entityID.

Your set of notes should look similar to this:

Set up within Content Hub

Log into your Content Hub portal. Click on Manage, and then go to Settings.

Within Settings, go to PortalConfiguration, and select the Authentication menu option. Change the view to Text as it's easier to work with.

Within the ExternalAuthenticationProviders, saml XML config, set the key values to what you saved in your notes. Make sure you set the provider_name and add some basic messages.

Example:

 ExternalAuthenticationProviders": {  
   "global_username_claim_type": "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/name",  
   "global_email_claim_type": "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/emailaddress",  
   "google": [],  
   "Microsoft": [],  
   "saml": [  
    {  
     "metadata_location": "https://login.microsoftonline.com/8ac76c91-e7f1-41ff-a89c-3553b2da2c17/federationmetadata/2007-06/federationmetadata.xml",  
     "sp_entity_id": "api://c8696890-1d5f-479b-9df1-154e8f315165",  
     "idp_entity_id": "https://sts.windows.net/8ac76c91-e7f1-41ff-a89c-3553b2da2c17/",  
     "password": null,  
     "certificate": null,  
     "binding": "HttpRedirect",  
     "authn_request_protocol_binding": null,  
     "is_enabled": true,  
     "provider_name": "martinSamlNewLocal",  
     "messages": {  
      "signIn": "Martin SAML SSO Test"  
     },  
     "authentication_mode": "Passive"  
    }  
   ],  
   "sitecore": [],  
   "ws_federation": [],  
   "yandex": []  
  }  

Click Save, and you are done!

You are now ready to test out your authentication using your shiny, new authentication button.

Users with more than 200 groups

We found a limitation with SSO authentication group claims in Azure AD https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/hybrid/how-to-connect-fed-group-claims wherein if there are more than 200 groups associated to a user, then the SSO authentication will provide a graph link instead of passing in the group claims. 

There is currently no solution for this problem. We are handling these handful of users via manual security set up.