New security providers in version 10.6

Enterprise Edition of PHPRunner and ASPRunner.NET provides Active Directory authentication option. It is a useful feature but it has some restrictions, for instance, you cannot use a hybrid database/AD approach where some users will use Active Directory login and some others will have their usernames and passwords stored in the database.

This changes in version 10.6 where Active Directory is no longer a replacement for database-based login but a supplement. Active Directory is now considered a “security provider” and works the same way as “Login via Google” or “Login via Facebook”. We are also adding new security providers like OpenID, SAML, AzureAD and Okta.

This is how it works on the backend side. If you have used “Login via Google” or “Login via Facebook”, you should be already familiar with this concept. When user logs in via a third-party security provider we create a record in the users table with a unique id that for Facebook starts with fb, for Google it starts with go, and for Active Directory that prefix will be ad.

So, everyone who logged via AD will have a corresponding record in the login table. How is this useful? The question we get frequently is “will this work with Active Directory”, for instance, will the Chat template work if users are in the AD? The answer is no, YES! Since all users logged via AD now added to the login table they will be treated the same way as database users.