Blackboard & Shibboleth support- now official

[George Kroner]

Hi Jose,

First, I invite anyone on the list to correct me if I'm mistaken - because we are working towards a solution on this. It is our understanding that the WebDAV protocol explicitly requires a username and password to work. Shibboleth would not be able to provide a password for this workflow. It would therefore be necessary to design a fallback to accommodate an authentication provider that could accept a password - for example LDAP, Basic/Digest authentication, etc. Our current thinking is to implement this style of fallback design, but we'd also be open to any other ways to support this, in particular if there is a generally-accepted or preferred way of implementing WebDAV with Shibboleth.

Jose - since I know that you are a Bb client, let's take the rest of this thread off-list, but I'd invite you to try out Bb Drive to see if it behaves the way that you want (http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Learn/Products/Blackboard-Learn/Teaching-and-Learning/Expanding-Learn/Content-Management/Blackboard-Drive.aspx). It's free for clients who use Content Management and - as an example - allows an instructor to click a PPT on their course web site, open it straight from the web into MS Office, and when File->Save is clicked the course is updated with the new version of the PPT file. Perhaps it's in a way "better than WebDAV?" :-)

Thank you,
-George

From: Jose Lopez Lujan [mailto:jm.lopez at utoronto.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 4:49 PM
To: Shib Users
Cc: EduGarage
Subject: Re: Blackboard & Shibboleth support- now official

Hi George,

Thanks! Great Job! I can confirm that. The basic functionality is working very well.

What about WebDAV integration? Is this coming in the next for weeks?

Sincerely,
-
Jose Manuel Lopez Lujan
Senior LMS  Coordinator
University of Toronto
(416) 946-5107

From: George Kroner <George.Kroner at blackboard.com<mailto:George.Kroner at blackboard.com>>
Reply-To: Shib Users <users at shibboleth.net<mailto:users at shibboleth.net>>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 16:30:31 -0500
To: "users at shibboleth.net<mailto:users at shibboleth.net>" <users at shibboleth.net<mailto:users at shibboleth.net>>
Cc: EduGarage <EduGarage at blackboard.com<mailto:EduGarage at blackboard.com>>
Subject: Blackboard & Shibboleth support- now official

Dear all,

At long last I am very happy to inform you that Blackboard Learn 9.1 SP8 (GA'd today) officially supports Shibboleth as a native and fully-supported authentication mechanism across all OS configurations. Thank you to all on (and off) this list who have helped us along the way. Here are some details:

Authentication Framework:
The Authentication Framework improves the authentication integration experience by moving configuration and management of authentication providers to a user interface eliminating the need for command line authentication management. Custom authentication implementations no longer require 'special' maintenance for upgrades because all the Authentication Framework uses Blackboard Building Blocks technology.

Support for CAS and Shibboleth Standards:
The Authentication Framework also provides support for both the CAS (Central Authentication Service) and Shibboleth (the most widely used open-source authentication provider) authentication standards.

Apache 2 Support:
Clients can now front Learn with a separate installation of Apache 2 meeting the needs of security minded clients and also providing the back-end support necessary for Shibboleth authentication on Linux based application servers. Delivery of this feature is via a supported 'cook-book' that details the steps an administrator must take to configure a separately installed Apache 2.  The installer respects the configuration and does not undo these settings.

The exact out-of-the-box setup can be configured to look for REMOTE_USER in either the environment variables or HTTP headers. Users can be associated either via username or institutional identifier (usually a student ID). The logout URL is customizable. A single logout notification URL is also included. Within the next 4 weeks we plan to provide source code for a reference authentication module implementation that can be customized to meet additional or institution-specific needs. Existing legacy authentication modules can be configured to continue to behave exactly as they previously did to provide ample time to transition to the new authentication framework.

More information on Blackboard Learn 9.1 SP8 can be found at this link http://www.blackboard.com/sites/sp8/index.html?utm_source=vanityurl&utm_medium=misc&utm_campaign=sp8lp or on Behind the Blackboard. Please feel free to contact either Blackboard Support or myself if you have any questions.

Thank you,
-George

George Kroner
Technical Lead, Developer Programs
Blackboard, Inc.
www.edugarage.com<http://www.edugarage.com>
Innovate. Integrate. Extend.

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