Federated Access to Microsoft's SharePoint Services
This space serves those interested in using federated SharePoint collaboration service. Of particular interest are methods for accepting authentication and attribute assertions from a variety of identity providers and using those to authorize access to collaboration resources managed by a SharePoint instance. Certainly an initial focus is on InCommon, Shibboleth (or other SAML-supporting software), and the web browser.
What is SharePoint?
SharePoint is Microsoft's collaboration environment, providing a place for teams to coordinate schedules, organize documents, and participate in discussions---within the organization and over the extranet. It allows for authoring and managing documents, use communications features, offers tools like blogs and wikis, and integrates with the Microsoft Office suite. You can read more about SharePoint on Microsoft's TechNet.
Use Cases and Plans
We are interested in how you are using SharePoint now, how you plan to use SharePoint in the future, and how you might use federated SharePoint. Please share your information by visiting (and editing) one of the informational pages linked below.
Go to the federated use case page to see basic descriptions of how various institutions plan to use SharePoint to support collaboration. Add your own use case by editing the use case page.
Go to the internal use page to see how IdPs and SPs use SharePoint now -- without federating. Please share your uses of SharePoint.
The Possibilities for Federation page is a place to share how you might use a federated SharePoint instance?
Recipes to Federation
We are interested in methods that IdPs and SPs are considering for implementation of federated SharePoint. Please share your thoughts/plans on the Recipes to Federation page. This page also includes information about authentication, ADFS, and support for forms authentication.
Licensing
Licensing: The full-fledged SharePoint Server (MOSS) requires per-seat licensing with per-device Client Access Licenses (CALs). So if one begins to provide federated access to a MOSS-based collaboration service, what does that mean for licensing?
Conference Calls
Future Conference Call Topics
- NIH SharePoint federation effort with various InCommon members
- University of Missouri work with ADFS and Shib and SharePoint
- CIC exploration of federating SharePoint (when we have something concrete to say) with ActiveShareFS
- How much work would it be to build a "forms authentication" plugin for SharePoint that provides the integration to a Shib SP and that can be distributed as a free extension to Shibboleth?
- Licensing, CALS, and federation?
- Determine requirements needed for federating with SharePoint
- Define attributes needed. How do these relate to SharePonit profiles?
- Recipes used/considered for SharePoint Federation
- Planned uses for a federated SharePoint
Conference Call Minutes