Visual Paradigm Online LDAP Authentication

Visual Paradigm Online ("VP Online") supports two ways of authentication - built-in authentication and directory server authentication. While the built-in authentication allows you to easily set up and manage member accounts completely inside VP Online, active server authentication allows users to login to VP Online with credentials stored in and managed by a directory server.

In order for directory server authentication to work, administrator has to install a utility called DS Connector, and have it configured to connect both VP Online and the directory server. DS Connector acts as bridge between VP Online and directory server. It's capable to synchronize user listing from directory server to VP Online, and to manage the authentication from Visual Paradigm to directory server, through VP Online.

In this page, you will learn how to work with LDAP authentication from creating users in Apache Directory Studio to installing and configuring DS Connector. If you are interested in working with user group instead of user, please read Visual Paradigm Online LDAP Authentication (Groups). If you are interested in Active Directory Authentication, please read Visual Paradigm Online Active Directory Authentication.

There are series of steps you need to take in order to make LDAP authentication works. Please read through all the steps below without skipping any of them, even if you are familiar with LDAP and Apache Directory Studio.

Step 1 - Creating user account in ApacheDS

In this section you will learn how to create user account in ApacheDS using Apache Directory Studio. It's mainly written for people who are not familiar with ApacheDS. However, even if you are familiar with ApacheDS, be sure to read through the steps as some of the settings will influence the authentication process.

1. In LDAP Browser, navigate to the ou=users node under DIT > Root DSE > ou=system.
2. Right click on the ou=users node in and select New Entry... from the popup menu.
   

   Adding a new entry via LDAP Browser

3. In the New Entry window, keep Create entry from scratch selected and click Next.
4. You are prompted to enter one structural object for creating the new user. Select inetOrgPerson as the object class
   

   Selected inetOrgPerson

5. Click Add to add inetOrgPerson to the list of selected object classes. You will see a list the object classes from the inetOrgPerson object hierarchy are being added automatically.
   

   inetOrgPerson added to the list of selected object classes

6. Click Next.
7. For RDN, enter uid=jdoe, where jdoe is a unique shortname of the user you want to add now.
   

   RDN entered

8. Click Next.
9. Fill in the attributes for jdoe. Enter John Doe as cn.
10. Enter Doe as sn.
    

    cn and sn specified

11. You can optionally add more attributes for this user. In particular, you may want to supply an email for this user. Doing so allows this user to login to VP Online by entering his/her email address. Without supplying an email, he/she will need to login by entering string like uid=jdoe,ou=users,ou=system as username. If you want to add the mail attribute, click New Attribute... on top of the table, on the right hand side. Then, add and fill in the mail attribute. (note: Make sure you've selected the mail attribute, not email/emailAddress)
12. Create a password for this user. Click on New Attribute... as shown in the image below. By the way, be sure to set password for users who will use Visual Paradigm. Users without password won't be able to access the VP Online.

    Create an attribute

13. In the New Attribute window, select userPassword as Attribute Type.
    

    Selected userPassword as attribute type

14. Click Finish.
15. Enter the password and click OK.
    

    Password entered

16. Click Finish.

Step 2 - Downloading DS Connector from VP Online

DS Connector acts as a bridge between VP Online and directory server. In this section you will see how to download DS Connector from VP Online.

1. Open a web browser.
2. Visit and login your cloud entry point.
3. Select System Tools from the menu on the left hand side.
4. Open the tab Single Sign-On.
5. Click on Configure under the section Directory Service Connector.
   

   To configure directory service connector

6. Choose the operating system for the machine where Active Directory is installed.
   

   Choosing the right operating system

7. Click Download. Keep the dialog box opened as you will need to copy the key presented in the dialog box when you configure DS Connector in the next section.

Step 3 - Installing and configuring DS Connector

In this section you will install DS Connector, and configure it to make it connect to both VP Online and ApacheDS.

1. Copy the downloaded zip file to the machine where ApacheDS is installed.
2. Extract the zip file to a folder.
   

   DS Connector (zip) extracted

3. Open an elevated command prompt.
   
   For Windows Server 2008 users, click the Start button, type cmd, and then right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator from the popup menu.
   
   For Windows Server 2012 users, search cmd in the Apps screen, and then right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator at the bottom of the screen.
   

   Run elevated command prompt

4. Navigate to DS_Connector_12.1\service where DS_Connector_12.1 is the name of the folder extracted.
5. Type the following command to install DS Connector as service:
   install_service.bat
   

   Installing DS Connector as system service

6. Run DS_Connector_12.1\DSConnectorUI.exe. Please run it as administrator to avoid any potential issues caused by insufficient write permission.
7. When you run DS Connector the first time, you are prompted to configure the connection to VP Online/Teamwork Server. In the Configure Server window, keep VPository selected.
   

   Configure Server window

8. Fill in the cloud entry point.
9. Enter the key, which is the code you saw in the end of the previous section. If you have accidentally closed that dialog box, or if the key has expired, don't worry, just click Configure again (step 4 of the previous section) to obtain another key.
   

   Entering key for server configuration

10. Click Connect. If succeed, you should see the message Server configuration succeed.
11. DS Connector is now connected to VP Online. Now, you need to configure the connection to ApacheDS. On the left hand side of the DS Connector Console, click Add Directory Server.
    

    To add a directory server

12. Select ApacheDS as Directory Server.
    

    Selecting ApacheDS

13. Enter a name for this configuration.
14. Enter the host name and port of the ApacheDS. As we suggested you to install DS Connector on the machine where ApacheDS is installed, your host name is pretty likely to be localhost or 127.0.0.1. Regarding the port, while the default port of ApacheDS is 10389, you may need to confirm it with your administrator in case it has been changed.
15. Enter Bind DN or User. If you use Apache Directory Studio, you can obtain the required value by right clicking on the LDAP connection and selecting Properties from the popup menu. The Bind DN or user can be found under the Authentication tab.
    

    Obtaining the Bind DN or user from Apache Directory Studio

16. Enter the password for logging into ApacheDS.
    

    Configuring ApacheDS connection

17. Click Test Connection. If succeed, you should see the message Test connection succeed.
18. Click Save in the Configure Directory Server window.
19. The newly configured directory server is listed on the left hand side of the DS Connector Console. If necessary you can add more directory servers by repeating from step 11 until this step.
    

    Directory server added

Step 4 - Synchronizing users to VP Online

In this section you will add users into DS Connector Console to let it synchronize the users to VP Online. When you finished this section, the chosen users can login VP Online from Visual Paradigm, using the login details managed by ApacheDS.

1. Select the directory server in DS Connector Console.
   

   Selecting a directory server

2. On the right hand side, click Add.
3. In the Add users/group window, select the user(s) to be made available on VP Online. The selected users will become members of VP Online , and will have access to Visual Paradigm projects.
   

   Select users to add to DS Connector Console

4. Click Add.
5. That's it. You can see the selected users listed on the right hand side of the DS Connector Console.
   

   Users added to DS Connector Console

   
   The name and login ID of the selected users will be synchronized to VP Online shortly (~1 minute). Once the synchronization has been completed, you will see the users available in the Members page of the VP Online. Note that the synchronization will synchronize only the user name and login ID. It will not synchronize nor to process any password of any users in ApacheDS. Whenever a user tries to login to VP Online from Visual Paradigm, VP Online will communicate with ApacheDS for authentication.
   

   Users synchronized from ApacheDS

   So now, you assign the users to projects so that they can open the project from Visual Paradigm and start working. If necessary you can also grant them admin permissions.
   
   To login VP Online from Visual Paradigm, please enter the Email (Login ID) of member as Email (not the display name), and the password stored in ApacheDS as Password.
   

   Login from Visual Paradigm

Related Resources

The following resources may help you learn more about the topic discussed in this page.

• Visual Paradigm on YouTube
• Contact us if you need any help or have any suggestion