Shibboleth Developers

["Michael A. Grady" <>]

For Shibboleth to become a heavily used authentication/authorization system,
it probably is time for a lot more thought to be given to the user 
support/help desk sort of questions that will arise. Generic messages like
the below are fine for pre-version 1 and/or not widespread deployment,
but eventually such messages need to include real email address/help
contacts that the user can contact. Just like our WebISO systems do.

As suggested above, one way to handle this is to have a help url registered 
for each domain, and a standard url the target side can construct to direct
the user to a service that provides that url for each registered domain.
(Or maybe the help url is encoded in the certificate(s) used for a domain
with Shibboleth? Is that possible?)

> Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2003 18:38:13 -0500
> From: Scott Cantor 
> <>
> Subject: Vetting an error message
> To: 
> 
> Importance: Normal
> X-MSMail-priority: Normal
> X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS 0.3.12pre8
> X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.2.09/990901/11:28 -- ListProc(tm) by CREN
> X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS 0.3.12pre8
> 
> We've been fixing a bug and establishing a default error message for any 
time the AA returns a non-XML response, which usually
> happens when the AA is broken for some reason.
> 
> Walter and I settled on this:
> 
> We were unable to contact your identity provider and cannot grant access 
at this time. Please contact your provider's help desk or
> administrator so that the appropriate steps can be taken. Be sure to 
describe what you're trying to access and useful context like
> the current time.
> 
> We both like identity provider as the least objectionable term, but 
express any concerns now before we ship.
> 
> -- Scott
> 
> 

--
Michael A. Grady                               217.244.1253 
Principal Research Programmer                  217.265.5635 fax
Manager, Integration and Software Engineering
Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Rm. 105, 2212 Fox Drive, Suite C, Champaign, IL 61820

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