Technical Articles

July 24, 2017 3 minute read

SSO Setup for SAP Analytics Cloud using okta as an Identity Provider

This blog post is intended to help customers using okta as an IDP to configure SAML SSO between SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP HANA.

The setup of SSO between Sap Analytics Cloud(SAC) and HANA is divided into 2 parts :

Setup of SSO between the IDP and SAC using SAML
Setup of Live Connection between SAC and SAP HANA on-premise

Part 1. Setup of SSO between the IDP and SAC.

a. Login to the SAC application as an administrator and navigate to System -> Administration -> Security.

b. Click on Edit connection and choose SAML Single Sign-On

c. Download the service provider metadata.

This process would download a metadata file similar to this –

“

<ns3:EntityDescriptor

xmlns:ns2=”http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#”

xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#”

xmlns:ns4=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion”

xmlns:ns3=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:metadata” ID=”S9653fde0-4faa-4ab4-bf3b-08cf21cb7715″ entityID=”XXXX.XXXX.XXXX”>

<ns3:SPSSODescriptor AuthnRequestsSigned=”true” protocolSupportEnumeration=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:protocol”>

<ns3:KeyDescriptor use=”signing”>

<X509Certificate>MIIC9DCCAdygAwIBAgIIQUUHCtq7+SwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQELBQAwOjE4MDYGA1UEAxMvaHR0cHM6Ly9hY2NvdW50LnVzMS5oYW5hLm9uZGVtYW5kLmNvbS9iZThhMTM2YWYwHhcNMTYxMDIwMDA0ODE1WhcNMTcxMDIwMDA0ODE1WjA6MTgwNgYDVQQDEy9odHRwczovL2FjY291bnQudXMxLmhhbmEub25kZW1hbmQuY29tL2JlOGExMzZhZjCCASIwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADggEPADCCAQoCggEBAJj8+qGY4Y3ONYUpYOwMWyAG7t80DQnLh92ynfMtj8gZAvTijEdgZ896THWZxNg3P+xxxx.xxxx.xxxx+PECAwEAATANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQsFAAOCAQEALcIqrJ40yhqswKXsCnORSuQqmhwj7PKM0DBxSRq9JWMl31iEjsPc2J7Ywz4opgILQYiFgSb2HON0iyKD1QyZJaA9OR0apjOcc/XXX.XXPeO0OA/Db4vv+PV4EM3C0D+yFwnlKvTIT39jH2yxHGWKiQKcow==</X509Certificate>

</X509Data>

</KeyInfo>

</ns3:KeyDescriptor>

<ns3:SingleLogoutService Binding=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST” Location=”https://xxxx.xxxx.xxxx”/>

<ns3:SingleLogoutService Binding=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-Redirect” Location=”https:// xxxx.xxxx.xxxx “/>

<ns3:AssertionConsumerService index=”0″ isDefault=”true” Binding=”urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST” Location=”https:// xxxx.xxxx.xxxx “/>

</ns3:SPSSODescriptor>

</ns3:EntityDescriptor>

”

d. In your okta system, add a new application and enter the values as requested by the okta application.

Ensure that you fill the values based on the metadata.xml output from the SAC application.

e. Create a .der file eg. SAC.der and create a certificate like this –

—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—–

—–END CERTIFICATE—–

f. Upload the certificate in the SAML settings of the okta application

g. Click on Next and Finish to create an application in okta.

h. Map the application to either send email-id, user-id or Custom SAML user Mapping. Your okta administrator should be able to take care of this part.

i. You should now be able to download a Metadata file from okta.

j.Upload this metadata file into your SAC application under the SAML SSO configuration.

k. Choose a user attribute to map to your identity provider.

l. Verify your account with the identity provider.

m. Once the account is verified Save the settings.

n. You should now be able to do a SSO to SAC based on your okta credentials.

Part 2. Setup of Live Connection between SAC and SAP HANA on-premise

Follow the official SAP documentation to setup the live connection between SAC and SAP HANA using a direct connection- https://help.sap.com/viewer/00f68c2e08b941f081002fd3691d86a7/release/en-US/58c890e1c89d41e69b2cec31bac2d95f.html

You have now configured SSO between your SAC and HANA using Okta IDP.

You can go ahead and create models based on the newly created HANA connection as well as create stories and DiBO with this connection.

Additional helpful articles-

1. SAML authentication in SAP Analytics Cloud

https://blogs.sap.com/2017/07/13/saml-authentication-in-sap-analytics-cloud/

2. Multiple IDP’s for HANA XS Artifact – BusinessObjects Enterprise Platform Perspective

https://blogs.sap.com/2017/06/05/multiple-idps-for-hana-xs-artifact-businessobjects-enterprise-platform-perspective/

3. KBA 2487116 for AD FS configuration and KBA 2487567 with steps on troubleshooting SAML.

16 Comments

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Henry Banks

July 25, 2017 at 3:21 pm

Great stuff Jagdeesh, thank you! Regards, H

Jagdeesh Neelakantan

Blog Post Author

July 25, 2017 at 5:42 pm

Thanks Henry!

Srikanth Madhunantuni

July 30, 2020 at 10:30 am

Hi Jagdeesh,

I have done SAML configuration for SAP HANA 2.0 But i am getting 403 forbidden error Can you please help which URL should i mention in single sign on URL field and audience URI field in okta and to which package in XS administration should i enable the SAML authentication.

Katy Carrillo

August 20, 2020 at 8:17 pm

Do you have more details on which sections in the XML are used in each field in the OKTA side?

that would be very helpul! thank you !

Koushik Maiti

October 23, 2020 at 4:23 pm

Few notes for mapping AD groups to Team/ Roles, when OKTA as IDP, is used.

We need to have Groups=sac as static User attribute, not under Group Attribute Statement
The attributes ‘custom1’, ‘custom2’ etc. needs to be under Group Attribute Statement, with the AD groups comparison.

Ivelina Kirilova

January 29, 2021 at 4:51 pm

Thank you for the nice article! It helped me a lot!

I have few things to add:

First of all it was a bit difficult to understand in what tag of the SAC XML file is the information needed in the specific Okta field. In the beginning we mixed up some of the fields.
I don't know how was it when this article was written, but now Okta has Classic View and Developer console and you can only create apps like this in the Classic view
I needed to set up SSO with SAP BW and I used the tutorials provided in SAC. I configured SAML 2.0 Local and trusted providers but the SAML 2.0 activation changed the SOAP default way of communication and our POS server stopped communicating with the BW PIPE. To fix the problem I changed the SOAP service setting to use SAML 1.1. Otherwise, BW always connects to Okta and pops up an error, because the sales server's user in not in the Okta users list and the machine isn't added as an app there.

Jagdeesh Neelakantan

Blog Post Author

May 17, 2021 at 12:12 pm

Thanks for your points, Ivelina. Yes, the blog was written nearly 4 years ago and I am sure that there are certain changes expected in the configuration mechanism.

Regards,

Jagdeesh

Abdus-Samad Peera

April 12, 2021 at 2:03 pm

Hi Jagdeesh

Just a little clarification on SSO. It sounds like the users have to be manually created/uploaded to SAC beside being created in Okta. My previous experience with BOBJ, you didn't have to do that once the user was defined in Active Directory and SSO was setup. New users got imported into BOBJ whenever there were new users were added in AD (thru BOBJ background process). Could you please clarify that for me? Is there a way to automate this process (without manually creating users in SAC) once the SSO is setup?

Thanks

Abdul

Jagdeesh Neelakantan

Blog Post Author

May 17, 2021 at 12:10 pm

Hi Abdus-Samad,

Kindly see the best practice section of this article where Matthew explains the Dynamic User Creation for automatic user creation in SAC - https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOC/SAP+Analytics+Cloud+-+Managing+Licenses+with+Roles+and+Teams

Cheers,

Jagdeesh

Vi Tran

June 4, 2021 at 10:34 am

As Jagdeesh Neelakantan stated Matthews article helps understand the process for setup up automatically created via Okta. One option you need to make sure that's set is in Step 3 you have "Custom SAML user mapping" and check the "Dynamic User Creation" option to have users automatically created within SAC.

Karthick Balakrishnan

July 16, 2021 at 8:02 am

Hi Jagdeesh,

I am trying to refer the steps for , but the link is not currently available. Could you please help me to provide me the document link for OKTA IDP?

Part 2. Setup of SSO between the IDP and HANA.

a. Refer to the documentation available here to set up SAML SSO between IDP and HANA https://help.sap.com/http.svc/rc/00f68c2e08b941f081002fd3691d86a7/release/en-US/780842e11ee44dd6b5e7bd23cf393aff.html

Jagdeesh Neelakantan

Blog Post Author

September 22, 2021 at 6:11 pm

Hi Karthick,

I have updated the blog to reflect the current official documentation and removed the link that wasn't working.

-Jagdeesh

Joseph yeruva

September 21, 2021 at 9:37 pm

Hi Jagdeesh,

I am trying to refer the steps for , but the link is not currently available. Could you please help me to provide me the document link for OKTA IDP to HANA?

Part 2. Setup of SSO between the IDP and HANA.

Regards,

Joseph

Jagdeesh Neelakantan

Blog Post Author

September 22, 2021 at 1:40 pm

Hi Joseph,

Let me check with my HANA team for the updated link and edit the blog to include the new link.

Regards,

Jagdeesh

Jagdeesh Neelakantan

Blog Post Author

September 22, 2021 at 6:11 pm

New link updated in the blog.

Former Member

October 27, 2022 at 7:02 am

Great post!

I am trying to setup SAC OKTA but I cannot derive the URLs required for OKTA application

Can we get an example of

Sign on URL

Entity ID

Sign out URL

required from OKTA application?

How do we get them from SAC metadata?

Thanks

Technical Articles

SSO Setup for SAP Analytics Cloud using okta as an Identity Provider

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