Authentication Designs for P4S 2010

The user experiences that you can deliver using Business Analytics Add-On for SharePoint (P4S) 2010 depend on your SharePoint environment and how SharePoint and Business Analytics Servers are deployed. The factors that determine an authentication architecture include:

With the Secure Store Service to provide a true single sign-on experience for P4S users. Other factors in your environment also play a part in supporting single sign-on.

The Secure Store Service stores user credentials for additional applications, such as the Business Analytics Business Analytics Server, accessed from SharePoint. User credentials are organized by target application, also known as an SSO Application Name, allowing the Secure Store service to handle credentials for different applications. You can store user credentials under one SSO Application name to provide credentials that several Business Analytics Servers share, allowing users to access mashups and apps from those Business Analytics Servers seamlessly, or keep credentials for some Business Analytics Servers separate using different SSO Application Names.

WithoutSecure Store Service: this prevents a full single sign-on experience, but can still support SSO with an initial challenge experience depending on other factors in your SharePoint environment.

Note:

P4S is not currently compatible with third-party single sign-on solutions, such as Netegrity SiteMiner, that are agent-based. If your SharePoint environment uses a third-party SSO solution, users may work in Business Analytics Hub with SharePoint to create mashables, mashups and apps. However, users cannot use P4S actions in SharePoint and cannot publish mashups or apps to SharePoint.

SharePoint and Business Analytics Business Analytics Server Domains: how you deploy Business Analytics Servers in your SharePoint environments affects the choices for authentication. If single sign-on is not possible, deploying SharePoint servers and Business Analytics Servers in the same domains enables the use of cookies to simplify authentication.

User Repository: sharing the same user repository, such as an Active Directory or LDAP Directory, for both SharePoint servers and Business Analytics Business Analytics Servers supports a true single sign-on experience. This enables Business Analytics Servers to use the same credentials as SharePoint.

Note:

Currently there is a known issue for authentication challenges for mashups published in Mashup Web Parts when the user repository is shared. For mashups users will be challenged initially for mashups.

The combination of these factors produce three authentication architectures that you can use. The following table summarizes which architectures can be applied to specific environments and the resulting user experience:

Authentication Architecture	MSS + Secure Store	MSS + No Secure Store	SharePoint / Business Analytics Server in Same Domains	SharePoint / Business Analytics Server in Different Domains	SharePoint / Business Analytics Server Share User Repository	User Experience
SSO + Token Authentication						Full SSO
SSO + Token Authentication						Initial challenge
SSO + Cookie Authentication						Initial challenge
SSO + Cookie Authentication						Initial challenge
No SSO, Manual Authentication						All challenges
No SSO, Manual Authentication						All challenges