User information

Buyer and supplier role

To establish an authenticated user context, both user roles require some mandatory user information such as the username and email. Supplier Portal attempts to extract the information below from the IdP sign-on responses.

Username (required)

The username to log in to Supplier Portall.

Supplier Portal looks for this value by looking up the UserID attribute name in the IdP sign-on response XML nodes matching.

Response/Assertion/AttributeStatement/Attribute/AttributeValue

Display Name (optional)

Sets the user's display name in Supplier Portal, which is shown in place of the username. This is often a user-friendly version, such as "Barbara Jones" instead of "bjones."

Supplier Portal attempts to build a display name from the IdP sign-on response in the following way, using the IdP sign-on response attributes. The attributes are found in the matching IdP sign-on response XML nodes.

Response/Assertion/AttributeStatement/Attribute/AttributeValue

• The display name attribute value from the response XML attribute node, DisplayName, is used.

• The first and last name attribute values from the FirstName and LastName response XML attribute nodes are concatenated.

• The username is set as the display name.

Email Address (required)

Sets the user email associated with the authenticated SSO user.

This allows the portal to send notifications to users on important events. Supplier Portal attempts to find the email address by looking up the Email attribute name in the IdP sign-on response XML nodes matching.

Response/Assertion/AttributeStatement/Attribute/AttributeValue

Language (optional)

Sets the language for localizing the portal to the preferred language of the signed-on user.

Supplier Portal attempts to find the language by looking up the Language attribute name in the IdP sign-on response XML nodes matching.

Response/Assertion/AttributeStatement/Attribute/AttributeValue

Phone (optional):

Sets the phone number of the signed-on user.

Supplier Portal attempts to find the language by looking up the Phone attribute name in the matching IdP sign-on response XML nodes.

Response/Assertion/AttributeStatement/Attribute/AttributeValue

Additional attributes for the supplier role

For the supplier role, an extra set of attributes may be required that allows the portal to determine which group of suppliers an authenticated user belong to. These attributes are:

• A list of vendor numbers or

• A mapping of vendor numbers to the list of business units

Using these attributes, the portal can directly create a supplier user with other basic user information. This approach involves the customer’s IdP having to authenticate not only the users, but also resolving which suppliers they belong to.

If the IdP does not provide such information, the portal offers a set of optional solutions, where a customer IdP handles the authentication, and the vendor relationship is established in the portal via workflows and user validations, to collect the vendor information from the then authenticated users themselves.