MicroStrategy ONE

Changing the Default Settings for CA SiteMinder

MicroStrategy Web provides out-of-the-box support, with pre-configured properties, for CA SiteMinder. To use SiteMinder as your single sign-on provider for MicroStrategy authentication, you don't need to do anything other than meet the prerequisites for using trusted authentication. SiteMinder is the default Trusted Authentication Provider for MicroStrategy Web.

You can customize SiteMinder so that MicroStrategy Web reads different header variables to retrieve the user ID and/or the Distinguished Name (DN) of the user, instead of using the pre-configured properties for single sign-on. This customization can be accomplished using the Web Customization Editor.

Using the Web Customization Editor to create a plug-in

MicroStrategy SDK provides a Web Customization Editor that can be used to create a customization plug-in. The following steps guide you in creating the plug-in and deploying it. 

  1. Launch the Web Customization Editor. 

  2. Click on MicroStrategy Web Configuration inside the Application Settings view to expand the hierarchical tree. The expanded list comprises the different settings that can be modified to perform customizations. 

  3. Click on Property Files to gain access to the property files used in MicroStrategy Web. 

  4. Under Property Files, navigate to WEB-INF -> classes -> resources and double-click on siteminder_security.properties to launch the Web Properties Editor. 

  5. On the Web Properties Editor, the existing SiteMinder security properties are listed with their current values (that is, their default values if these values have never been changed). 

  6. Right-click either of the properties and choose Edit from the context menu. The Edit dialog displays. 

  7. On the Edit dialog, do the following: 

    • If you are editing the DistinguishedName property, enter the name of the new header variable that should be read by MicroStrategy to retrieve the Distinguished Name (DN) of the user—instead of reading the SM_USERDN header variable. 

    • If you are editing the LoginParam property, enter the name of the new header variable that should be read by MicroStrategy to retrieve the user name—instead of reading the SM_USER header variable.  

  8. Click OK to close the Edit dialog. 

  9. Save your changes. 

  10. Launch MicroStrategy Web to confirm that the new header variable that you specified is now used for single sign-on.

For specific settings that affect whether customization changes are applied automatically or require a restart of the Web server, see Applying customization changes to the application.