The delegated administrator logs on to Delegated Admin through the PingFederate Server, which is configured as the authentication server and OpenID Connect (OIDC) provider. PingFederate validates the user's credentials against PingDirectory Server, encapsulates information claims about the user's identity, and issues an access token to Delegated Admin, which presents the token to PingDirectory Server in the HTTP Authorization request header.

Interaction with PingDirectory Server

PingDirectory Server is configured to accept access tokens by using Access Token Validators. The values that PingFederate Server sets for the access token sub claim must be mappable to a distinguished name (DN) in PingDirectory Server. Setting up an access token validator for use with Delegated Admin requires some coordination with the server configuration. In the suggested default configuration, the access token contains the entryUUID of the administrator user entry in the sub claim. This value is mapped back to a PingDirectory Server entry by using an Exact Match Identity Mapper.

Authorization by PingDirectory Server

After validation, PingDirectory Server checks the Delegated Admin configuration for authorization of the delegated administrator. Users or groups of users are authorized as delegated administrators in the PingDirectory Server Administrator Console, or with the dsconfig tool.

Configure authentication

One of the prerequisites to installing Delegated Admin is to configure the following OAuth clients within PingFederate: