Launch of Federation Manager

Over the past three years, the AAF tech team has been working on redeveloping Federation Registry to our new Federation Manager tooling. This has been a gradual approach to ensure a smooth transition to this modern technology.

We sat down and chatted with our Head of Technology, Russell Ianniello to find out more about this change and what it means for our subscribers. Russell said, "For the last 13 years, AAF has made improvements to the way subscribers connect. From day one, we've worked with SAML services. The first service to help make connecting to the Federation easier was Rapid Connect. It uses JWT tokens to connect services to the federation and made it easier for our users."

The next improvement made in this process was a product called Central (OIDC), which was the same as Rapid Connect, although it operated with the Open ID Connect protocol. This protocol is standards-based; meaning there is no custom code – most people could use a library to connect to the AAF. However, this product was developed without a user interface, making the process inconvenient for our subscribers and the team.

The latest development from the AAF is Federation Manager, which combines all these products into a single portal. This simplifies AAF's technical offerings in a single place allowing consolidated management of Services, Identity Providers, and connections to the AAF. Federation Manager also provides a user interface for the new OIDC portal. This new and improved technology has been redeveloped from user feedback and we hope it provides a great user experience for our subscribers. The team will continue to add enhancements and welcomes feedback from our community.

What does this mean?

As a user, you will be able to connect your Identity Provider (IdP) or Service Provider (SP) from one central location.

Federation Manager features

You will be able to connect by:

• Rapid Connect – New user interface and self-service
• SAML IdP & SP registration – New user interface
• OIDC – self-service portal

What's in it for you?

As a user, the new and improved tool will provide you with a number of benefits.

These include:

• new user interface
• fresh look and feel
• self-service features for OIDC and Rapid Connect
• simplified registration of SAML IdPs and SPs with the metadata ingest option
• one location to manage all your federation connections.

In time, the new tool will also enable you to turn on eduGAIN and other features that become available.

We hope you enjoy the new Federation Manager. If you have any feedback or questions please contact us at [email protected]