Issue

If your organization is using Single Sign-On (SSO) to authenticate and log in to BI application, you will notice that the default Web Login template for the BI Connection will not let you past the login screen and hence will not allow you to run the test plan. The reason is that every SSO setup has a custom login screen that differs from one organization to another and a standard Datagaps’ out-of-the-box Web login template does not work for everyone. In this knowledge base article, we will walk you through the steps that will allow you to create a BI Connection for any SSO setup.

Example

Let’s say your organization has enabled SSO and you try to log in to BI application, you will see your corporate’s sign in form.  In this form, you fill in your corporate username and password and upon successful login you will be redirected directly to the BI connection main page. Please note that if SSO is not enabled, you will see the default login form of your BI connection.

Solution

Step 1: Note the Ids of each item in the SSO Signin web form 

Find the Ids of the Signin form items that you want to automate. To do this, open  Google Chrome, go to More -> More tools -> Developer tools. Ensure that the inspector mode is turned on. If required, right-click the item and select Inspect. 


For example, if your form has Username, Password, and Sigin In buttons, the Ids for each will look like the below:

  • Email address: email
  • Password: password
  • Sign In: login-submit

The following example video walks you through the procedure to get Ids for the items in your SSO sigin form, where a user is trying to connect to Tableau Online using the following URL: https://10ax.online.tableau.com/ and is automatically redirected to the organization's SSO form.


The following example video walks you through the procedure to get Ids for the items in your SSO sigin form, where a user is trying to connect to OBIEE using the following URL: http://192.168.6.187:9502/analytics and is automatically redirected to the organization's SSO form.

Notes:

  1. In the above video, you will see SAML specific Ids. You will get different Ids if you are using a different SSO method. The procedure to find Ids remains the same irrespective of the BI application.
  2. Instead of Ids, you can also use CLASSNAME,CLASS,CSS,CSSSELECTOR,LINK,ID,NAME,TAGNAME,TAG, and XPATH as Targets in your BI Connection Web login template.

Step 2: Add Ids to the commands in the Web Login template of BI Connection

Identify which steps you want to automate in the browser and assemble the corresponding commands. For example, you may automate the following steps: 1) open the SSO site 2) Wait until the SSO form appears, 3)Fill in the items and click signin/login, and 4) Wait until the browser signs into BI application and the landing page is loaded.

For information about Selenium commands that can be used in a BI connection, please visit the BI Validator Online Help

  1. Open the BI connection in BI Validator.
  2. Navigate to the Web login page.
  3. Enter Id for each command as shown in the example image below.
  4. Save the changes.

Step 3: Test if the connection is working as expected

After the Ids are entered for the commands/steps you want to automate, you need to check if the connection is successful and the SSO form gets filled automatically and you are logged into BI application.

  1. Open the BI connection in BI Validator.
  2. Click Test at the right-hand side. The browser opens and performs the signin procedure automatically.
  3. Click Close to exit the connection.

Notes

Always use a user created in the BI application. If you are trying to run your test plans in BI Validator with a user that was not created in the BI application, you will experience issues when attempting to establish the connection.