IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager, Version 6.2.2

Developing a custom point of contact server

The point of contact server in your Tivoli® Federated Identity Manager environment is the first entity to process a request for access to a resource. You can choose one of the provided options for a point of contact server or you can create a custom point of contact server.

About this task

A custom point of contact server is made up of several customized callback modules that define sign in, sign out, local ID, and authentication.

A custom point of contact server might be appropriate in your environment if you want to integrate an existing authentication or Web access management application with Tivoli Federated Identity Manager.

For example, a custom point of contact server would be useful in the following scenarios:

If you have an existing single sign-on cookie token that is used throughout your existing enterprise, you could implement a custom point of contact server that uses a SignIn callback that sets that custom single sign-on domain cookie that conforms to your existing single sign-on strategy.
If you have an existing Web access management product that exposes a custom API for asserting a user identity to the environment or retrieving the current user for the request.
You could implement a point of contact server that uses a local identity callback (to retrieve the user for the transaction) or implement a custom point of contact server that uses a SignIn callback to assert the user identity to the environment, or implement a point of contact server that uses both types of callbacks.

Developing a custom point of contact server requires programming experience with developing callback modules and knowledge of Tivoli Federated Identity Manager programming concepts. See the developerWorks® links in the information center at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v2r1/topic/com.ibm.tivoli.fim.doc_6.2.2/ic/ic-homepage.html.

When you have completed the development work, integrate the solution with your Tivoli Federated Identity Manager environment as specified in this procedure:

Procedure

Publish the callback plug-ins to the Tivoli Federated Identity Manager runtime module. See Publishing callback plug-ins.
Gather the parameter information that you will need for configuring each of the callback modules.
Create a new point of contact server profile. You have the option of creating a new profile or using an existing profile as the basis for your new point of contact server profile. See either of the following topics:
- Creating a new point of contact server
- Creating a point of contact server like an existing server
Activate the point of contact server. See Activating a point of contact server.

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