Authentication providers

User authentication in IBM® Cognos® Analytics is managed through authentication providers. Authentication providers define users, groups, and roles that are used for authentication. User names, IDs, passwords, regional settings, personal preferences are some examples of information stored in the providers.

In the Cognos Analytics user interface, authentication providers are represented by namespaces namespace icon.

Cognos Analytics supports the following types of authentication providers:

  • Active Directory
  • OpenID Connect
  • Custom Java Provider
  • OpenID Connect Authentication Proxy
  • IBM Cognos Series 7
  • LDAP
  • SAP
  • SiteMinder

Authentication providers are configured in IBM Cognos Configuration, under the Security > Authentication category. After the provider namespace is added there, and the IBM Cognos service is restarted, the namespace name is displayed in Manage > People > Accounts, and users can log on to Cognos Analytics using that namespace. For more information about configuring authentication providers, see the IBM Cognos Analytics Installation and Configuration Guide.

You cannot create users, groups, or roles in authentication providers' namespaces from Cognos Analytics. However, you can add users, groups, and roles from these namespaces to groups and roles in the Cognos namespace.

Multiple namespaces

If multiple namespaces are configured for Cognos Analytics, at the start of a session you must select one namespace. However, this does not prevent you from logging on to other namespaces later in the session. For example, if you set access permissions, you may want to reference entries from different namespaces. To log on to a different namespace, you do not have to log out of the namespace that you are currently using. You can be logged on to multiple namespaces simultaneously.

Your primary logon is the namespace and the credentials that you use to log on at the beginning of the session. The namespaces that you log on to later in the session, and the credentials that you use to do that, become your secondary logons.

When you delete one of the namespaces, you can log on using another namespace. If you delete all namespaces except for the Cognos namespace, you are not prompted to log on. If anonymous access is enabled, you are automatically logged on as an anonymous user. If anonymous access is not enabled, you cannot access the logon page. In this situation, use Cognos Configuration to enable anonymous access.