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Advanced Options for Federated Authentication

On this page

  • Required Access
  • Federation Management Console
  • Assign a Default User Role for an Organization
  • Restrict Access to an Organization by Domain
  • Bypass SAML Mode
  • Sign in After Enabling Bypass SAML Mode
  • Restrict User Membership to the Federation

You can configure advanced options in your Federated Authentication instance for greater control over your federated users and authentication flow.

To manage federated authentication, you must have Organization Owner access to one or more organizations that are delegating federation settings to the instance.

You can manage federated authentication from the Federation Management Console.

To open the Federation Management Console:

  1. Log in to Atlas.

  2. Use the dropdown at the top-left of Atlas to select the organization for which you want to manage federation settings.

  3. Click Settings in the left navigation pane.

  4. In Manage Federation Settings, click Visit Federation Management App.

You can configure Atlas to automatically provision each user who authenticates through the IdP with a default role in a mapped organization. You can select different roles for different organizations.

Note

The selected role only applies to users who authenticate through the IdP if they do not already have a role in the organization.

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To remove a default user role, click the next to the dropdown.

You can specify a list of approved domains to prevent users outside of those domains from accessing your organization. Use this list to define a list of approved domains for your organization without needing to directly map those domains to your IdP.

Important

Considerations

Once you enable the Restrict Access by Domain option:

  • You can only invite new users to join your organization whose email addresses are in the approved list of domains.

  • Users who are already in your organization whose usernames do not contain a domain in the approved list are not restricted access to your organization.

  • Any domains which are mapped to your IdP are automatically added to the approved list.

From the Federation Management Console:

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When you enable this setting, Atlas automatically adds all domains which are mapped to an IdP to the list of Approved Domains.

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To add domains to the approved list, you can either:

  1. Click Add Domains from Existing Members. Atlas opens a modal containing domains from existing user email addresses in your organization. Use this list to easily enable access for users who are already part of your organization.

    Use the checkboxes to select the desired domains, then click Add to add them to the approved list.

  2. Click Add Domains. Atlas opens a modal where you can manually add domains the approved list.

    Enter the domain you want approve in the input box, then click Add. Repeat this process for each domain you want to approve.

Note

If you have restricted user membership to your federation, Atlas warns you if you add a domain which is being used to access organizations outside of your federation.

Once you have added all desired domains, click Submit.

Bypass SAML Mode provides a login URL which bypasses your federated authentication, and instead allows you to authenticate with your Atlas credentials.

If your Federated Authentication settings are not properly configured, you may not be able to log in to Atlas through your IdP. The Bypass SAML Mode URL helps prevent you from being locked out of your Atlas organization. While configuring and testing your IdP, we recommend that you make note of the Bypass SAML Mode URL to ensure you can log in to Atlas and properly configure your Federated Authentication settings.

Each Bypass SAML Mode URL is associated with an individual IdP, and corresponds to the IdP's Login URL.

Bypass SAML Mode is enabled by default, however you may want to disable it as a security measure once you are confident that you have properly configured your Federated Authentication.

To set Bypass SAML Mode, from the Federation Management Console:

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After you enable Bypass SAML Mode, you must sign in to Atlas using:

  • The Bypass SAML Mode URL for your IdP.

  • A username that:

    • Contains the domain you mapped to your IdP.

    • You have used to sign in to Atlas or Cloud Manager before you configured Federated Authentication.

You can prevent users in your Federated Authentication instance from creating new organizations or using their credentials to access organizations outside of the federation. Configure this setting for full control of your federated users and to help ensure that federated users only have access to desired Atlas organizations.

Important

This setting applies to the entire federation, including all Identity Providers and Organizations within the federation.

Once you enable this setting:

  • No users in your Federated Authentication instance can gain access to organizations outside of your federation.

    • Similarly, no federated users can accept or receive invitations to join organizations outside of your federation.

  • Users in your federation with the Organization Owner role can still create new organizations. These new organizations are automatically connected to your federation.

  • Users in your federation without the Organization Owner role cannot create any new organizations.

  • Users in your federation retain access to any organizations they had access to prior to the membership restriction.

From the Federation Management Console:

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If your federation contains users who belong to organizations outside of your federation, Atlas displays a warning banner. To review the conflicting users, click View User Conflicts.

Atlas displays a modal with a list of users that conflict with the federation restriction. Consider contacting these users to make them aware of the restriction.

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