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SAML

How to use SAML identity provider with Kimai

Kimai 1.30.0 Kimai 1.14 2.15.0 (latest version)

Kimai supports authentication via a SAML provider of your choice (for now it was tested with G Suite and MS Azure accounts). SAML users will be imported during the first login with their attributes and groups.

Installation

In order to use the SAML authentication, you have to add configurations changes to your local.yaml (this example is for G Suite accounts):

security:
    firewalls:
        secured_area:
            kimai_saml: ~

kimai:
    saml:
        activate: true
        title: Login with Google
        mapping:
            - { saml: $Email, kimai: email }
            - { saml: $FirstName $LastName, kimai: alias }
        roles:
            attribute: Roles
            mapping:
                - { saml: Admins, kimai: ROLE_ADMIN }
                - { saml: Management, kimai: ROLE_TEAMLEAD }
        connection:
            # You SAML provider, here an example for Google
            idp:
                entityId: 'https://accounts.google.com/o/saml2?idpid=your-google-id'
                singleSignOnService:
                    url: 'https://accounts.google.com/o/saml2/idp?idpid=your-google-id'
                    binding: 'urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-Redirect'
                # google does not support single logout, so it needs to be commented
                # the "single logout" feature was not yet tested, if you want to help, please let me know!
                #singleLogoutService:
                #    url: 'https://127.0.0.1:8010/logout'
                #    binding: 'urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-Redirect'
                x509cert: 'ADD YOUR MULTI-LINE CERTIFICATE CONTENT HERE
                           ADD YOUR MULTI-LINE CERTIFICATE CONTENT HERE
                           ADD YOUR MULTI-LINE CERTIFICATE CONTENT HERE
                           ADD YOUR MULTI-LINE CERTIFICATE CONTENT HERE
                           ADD YOUR MULTI-LINE CERTIFICATE CONTENT HERE'
            # Your Kimai instance, replace https://127.0.0.1:8010 with your base URL
            sp:
                entityId: 'https://127.0.0.1:8010/auth/saml/metadata'
                assertionConsumerService:
                    url: 'https://127.0.0.1:8010/auth/saml/acs'
                    binding: 'urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST'
                singleLogoutService:
                    url: 'https://127.0.0.1:8010/auth/saml/logout'
                    binding: 'urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-Redirect'
                #privateKey: ''
            # only set baseurl, if auto-detection doesn't work
            #baseurl: ''
            strict: true
            debug: true
            security:
                nameIdEncrypted:       false
                authnRequestsSigned:   false
                logoutRequestSigned:   false
                logoutResponseSigned:  false
                wantMessagesSigned:    false
                wantAssertionsSigned:  false
                wantNameIdEncrypted:   false
                requestedAuthnContext: true
                signMetadata: false
                wantXMLValidation: true
                signatureAlgorithm: 'http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmldsig-more#rsa-sha256'
                digestAlgorithm: 'http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#sha256'
            contactPerson:
                technical:
                    givenName: 'Kimai Admin'
                    emailAddress: 'kimai-tech@example.com'
                support:
                    givenName: 'Kimai Support'
                    emailAddress: 'kimai-support@example.com'
            organization:
                en:
                    name: 'Kimai'
                    displayname: 'Kimai'
                    url: 'https://www.kimai.org'

After changing the configuration you need to re-build the cache.

Configuration details

kimai:
    saml:
        activate: true
        title: Login with Google
        mapping:
            - { saml: $Email, kimai: email }
            - { saml: $FirstName $LastName, kimai: alias }
        roles:
            attribute: Roles
            mapping:
                - { saml: Admins, kimai: ROLE_ADMIN }
                - { saml: Management, kimai: ROLE_TEAMLEAD }

A brief description of the available fields:

  • activate (bool) activates the SAML authentication flow
  • title (string) the name of the red Login button in the authentication screen
  • mapping (array) an array of attributes that will be synced with Kimai. The kimai value (email and alias) are the names in Kimai, the saml key ($Email and $FirstName $LastName) are the attributes from the SAML response. You can assign static values to every user (like title = SAML User) or you fetch one or more values from the SAML message ($Email refers to the SAML attribute Email and $FirstName $LastName refers to the two SAML attributes $FirstName and $LastName).
  • roles (array) settings related to the user roles syncing
    • attribute (string) the SAML attribute whose values are used for syncing the groups
    • mapping (array) an array of role name mappings. The saml key is your SAML role name (here Admins and Management) and the key kimai (here ROLE_ADMIN and ROLE_TEAMLEAD) is the role name in Kimai. Unmapped roles from the SAML message will be IGNORED(!) even if they are existing in Kimai.

If you have troubles with your certificate you could try to use this SAML online tool to find the correct formatting (whether you trust this tool is up to you!). You could use it with fake data, check the result format and then apply it to your certificate manually.

Connection details

You can find more information about the connection configs in the onelogin/php-saml library that is used for the SAML connections.

G Suite and roles (or groups)

If you want to sync user-roles as well, you have to know that Google doesn’t support that out-of-the-box. You need to setup additional user attributes and add those to the SAML attributes of your application.

Links:

Azure

For Azure, please check the Azure SAML documentation

Keycloak

For Keycloak, please check the Keycloak SAML documentation

Known limitations

A manually registered user can login via SAML, but his account is then migrated to SAML only, so he can’t login via password any longer. Additional all configured SAML attributes will be applied. To change such an account back to “password login”, you need to update the auth column in the kimai2_users table and set the value from saml to kimai.

Using SAML only

Kimai does not support SAML only out of the box, but you can disable the normal login flow yb redirecting the URLs to the SAML login.

This is an example for Apache:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule  /(..)/login /auth/saml/login [L,R=301]

Troubleshooting

Proxy and http vs https

Error:
The response was received at http://kimai-test.example.com/auth/saml/acs instead of https://kimai-test.example.com/auth/saml/acs

Solution:
Use the baseurl configuration and set it to https://kimai-test.example.com/auth/saml/ (and flush the cache!)

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