ADP integration

[Mark K. Miller]

It may look like I'm "picking on" Steven here; I'm already sure he knows 
I'm not.  It's just an irresistible soapbox that I have to jump on for a 
moment!

On Mon, 12 Nov 2012, Steven Carmody wrote:

> On 11/12/12 9:03 AM, Michael R. Gettes wrote:
>> We tried to use ADP.  They want $5K for initial setup.  You pay by
>> the user each month for federated access.
>
> I don't remember that being the case for Brown. When we started doing
> this there were already several schools that were not IC members that
> were already using SAML with ADP.

Just because previous InCommon members were not able to correctly lead a 
vendor down "the InCommon path" is not justification for also ignoring the 
right thing to do.

>> They refused to join
>> InCommon.
>
> that was also our experience. we couldn't get them to join.

What did you try?  You'd be amazed what a vendor will do when you refuse 
to do business with them.

> In addition.. ahhhh, how to say this in a non-pejorative fashion --
> there seemed to be a lot of staff turnover on their side. As a result,
> it took considerable effort on our part to find THE person at ADP with
> SAML clue.

Well, we certainly can't hold that against them!  Even without staff 
turnover, I've heard similar complaints within my institution.  ;-)

Even if they have no person with a SAML clue, our community should be 
ready to help develop that cluefullness with a business partner.  If I can 
do it, anyone can do it!  (Ok, so what if they're still clueless even 
after I 'help' them!)

> Note that following our move to Workday we no longer use ADP.

Note that ADP just happens to be the example in this discussion; there are 
a ton of vendors that can be substituted with no different wording.

>> Their legal agreement took significant work on the part of
>> CMU to help them understand liability as they wanted to use federated
>> access as a reason to push ALL liability for their service onto us -
>> yes, this is true.  We believe we got them to understand where
>> liability sits in a federated world but we are unsure if they learned
>> this lesson just for CMU or more broadly.  In the end, after 1 year
>> of trying to make it work with them we decided to skip the continued
>> level of effort given our impending move to WorkDay.  IMHO, for an
>> org as small as UCAID, I wouldn't recommend the cost (money as well
>> as effort).

And, there you go; Gettes took their business elsewhere.  Good for you!

It only works if we all do it.  Thanks,

Max