Authentication

Prerequisites

• Make sure to have a licensed copy of WorkflowGen installed and running on a server. You must be a WorkflowGen administrator.

• Make sure to have Auth0 administrator access.

• Make sure to have provisioned an existing Auth0 user that you can authenticate with to WorkflowGen and that the user has administrator privileges. This is important because once you activate the delegation, you'll need to still be able to manage the application. (The Auth0 user is in fact a user of an identity provider that's linked to Auth0, such as GitHub or Google. You have to have provisioned at least one user.)

• AES encryption mode and its key are required for the authentication to work.

• To test your configuration after you complete the steps below, you can add an Auth0 user in the Users section of the Auth0 portal.

• When importing users into WorkflowGen from the Auth0 database, make sure to set the username as the email (e.g. [e-mail]).

Auth0 configuration

The configuration of Auth0 is done in several steps. First, you have to register the WorkflowGen web application and link it to your instance of WorkflowGen; then, you have to register the WorkflowGen GraphQL API to be able to register custom applications to access it.

Step 1: Create a new regular web application

1. Go to the Auth0 portal Applications section.

2. Click Create Application, and fill in the form:

   • Name: WorkflowGen Web App

   • Type: Regular Web Application

3. Click Create. You should now see the application's Quick Start page:

   

4. On the Settings tab, scroll down to the Allowed Callback URLs section and add https://<workflowgen url>/auth/callback to it.

5. Scroll down to the Allowed Logout URLs section and add https://<workflowgen url>/auth/logout/return to it.

Your WorkflowGen Regular Web App is now configured.

Step 2: Register the GraphQL API

Now, you need to register the WorkflowGen GraphQL API module so that applications external to WorkflowGen can use the API by authentication through Auth0 using the OpenID Connect protocol.

Classic usage:

1. Go to the Auth0 portal APIs section.

2. Click Create API, and fill in the form:

   • Name: WorkflowGen GraphQL API

   • Identifier: https://<workflowgen url>/graphql

   • Signing algorithm: RS256

     Your form should look like this:

     
3. Click Create.

With multi-audience support:

1. Go to the Auth0 portal APIs section.

2. Click Create API, and fill in the form:

   • Name: My APIs

   • Identifier: my-apis

   • Signing algorithm: RS256

3. Click Create.

4. Click Permissions.

5. In the Define all the permissions (scopes) that this API uses section, enter the following information:

   • Permission: wfgen-graphql-full-access

   • Description: Full access to the WorkflowGen GraphQL API

6. Click ADD.

The GraphQL API is now registered in Auth0.

Step 3: Add an Auth0 action

In order to get a proper username from the access token when receiving one in the GraphQL API, you need to use a special feature of Auth0 called an action. Actions act as middleware between the linked cloud provider and Auth0 in order to get the correct values when needed.

1. Go to the Auth0 portal and select Actions in the left menu, then select Library in the sub-menu.

2. Click Create Action, then choose the Build from scratch template.

3. Give the action a name (e.g. WorkflowGen (Action)). Trigger should be set to Login / Post Login and Runtime set to Node 18 (Recommended).
4. Replace the code with the following:

   exports.onExecutePostLogin = async (event, api) => {
       const username = event.user.username || event.user.email || event.user.nickname;
              
       api.accessToken.setCustomClaim('https://api.workflowgen.com/username', username);
       api.idToken.setCustomClaim('https://api.workflowgen.com/username', username);
   
       return;
   }

5. Click Deploy.

6. Go to the Auth0 portal and select Actions in the left menu, then select Flows in the sub-menu.

7. On the Flows page, click the Login icon.

8. In the right panel of the graphical view, select the Custom tab, where your custom action should appear.

   

9. Drag and drop your action between the Start and Complete actions.

   

10. Click the Apply button in the top right.

This step will ensure that WorkflowGen and the GraphQL API always get a username through the same claim instead of having to make a lot of conditional statements. However, this doesn't apply to machine-to-machine authentication since there's no human user involved.

If you use a different claim from the Auth0 mapping than the one specified in the function above (e.g. user.username, user.email, user.nickname), just modify this rule or add your own. Make sure to populate https://api.workflowgen.com/username with the value or to configure the ApplicationSecurityAuthUsernameClaim option in your web.config with the correct claim to take. Note that this option is used both in the authentication application and the GraphQL API.

WorkflowGen configuration

Now, you have to configure WorkflowGen to delegate its authentication to Auth0.

Step 1: Add Auth0 values to the WorkflowGen web.config

1. Open the WorkflowGen web.config file and add the following properties under <appSettings>:

   Classic usage:

    <!-- Auth0 auth -->
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthProvider" value="auth0"/>
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthClientId" value="<CLIENT ID>" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthClientSecret" value="<CLIENT SECRET>" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthMetadataUrl" value="<METADATA URL>" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthUsernameClaim" value="https://api.workflowgen.com/username" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthAppIdClaim" value="azp" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthClockTolerance" value="60" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthSessionRefreshEnableIFrame" value="Y"/>

   With multi-audience support:

    <!-- Auth0 auth -->
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthProvider" value="auth0"/>
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthClientId" value="<CLIENT ID>" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthClientSecret" value="<CLIENT SECRET>" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthMetadataUrl" value="<METADATA URL>" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthUsernameClaim" value="https://api.workflowgen.com/username" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthAppIdClaim" value="azp" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthClockTolerance" value="60" />
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthSessionRefreshEnableIFrame" value="Y"/>
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthAudience" value="my-apis"/>
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthAdditionalScopes" value="wfgen-graphql-full-access"/>
    <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthGraphQLScope" value="wfgen-graphql-full-access"/>

2. Replace <CLIENT ID> with the client ID of the WorkflowGen Regular Web App in Auth0.

3. Replace <CLIENT SECRET> with the client secret of the WorkflowGen Regular Web App in Auth0.

4. Replace <METADATA URL> with the URL that you built earlier from your domain name in Auth0. The METADATA URL is https://[YOUR_AUTH0_DOMAIN].auth0.com/.well-known/openid-configuration.

Note that the ApplicationSecurityAuthUsernameClaim key is set to the value entered in the rule earlier. Therefore, you can use any value here as long as you also modify the rule.

For information about available configuration options to use with your instance, see the Web and Application Configuration Parameters appendix.

WorkflowGen is now linked to Auth0 and back. The last thing left to do is configure a few more options in order to finish the internal wiring of WorkflowGen so that it can delegate its authentication.

Step 2: Add security values for session generation

In order to generate a session token, you need to add a few more settings to the web.config.

1. Open the WorkflowGen web.config file and add the following properties under <appSettings>:

   <!-- Auth -->
   <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthLogoutUrl" value="https://<your auth0 domain>.auth0.com/v2/logout"/>
   <add key="ApplicationSecurityAuthSessionTokenSigningSecret" value="<SECRET>" />

2. Replace <SECRET> with a value that can't be guessed, such as a UUID.

The secret will be only accessible inside your instance of WorkflowGen, so when generating a session token, WorkflowGen will sign it with this secret in order to check the validity of all session tokens passed to it.

Step 3: Activate the authentication delegation

You now need to activate the delegation by replacing the authentication system in IIS and pointing WorkflowGen's modules to the correct authentication module.

Configure IIS

1. In IIS Manager, click on the WorkflowGen application in the tree view.

2. Click the Authentication button.

   
3. Enable Anonymous Authentication, and disable all other authentications.

4. Perform these steps for all sub-applications as well.

Add properties to the web.config files of certain modules

Certain modules need to have their authentication checked by the special Advantys.Security.JWTAuthenticationModule WorkflowGen authentication module, but certain other modules should not because they are either public or aren't part of the global authentication system.

1. In the WorkflowGen web.config, add the following property:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <configuration>
       <system.webServer>
           <modules>
               <add name="ApplicationSecurityAuthenticationModule" type="Advantys.Security.Http.JWTAuthenticationModule" />
           </modules>
       </system.webServer>
   </configuration>

2. In the auth module's web.config, add the following property:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <configuration>
        <system.webServer>
            <modules>
                <remove name="ApplicationSecurityAuthenticationModule"/>
            </modules>
        </system.webServer>
    </configuration>

   This line removes the authentication Node.js module from the global authentication system, because this Node.js application encapsulates the OpenID Connect authentication mechanisms.

3. Repeat the above two steps for the hooks and scim modules as well.

4. Copy the following .NET assemblies and dependency libraries from \wfgen\bin to each custom webform's \bin folder (\wfgen\wfapps\webforms\<custom webform>\bin):

   • Advantys.My.dll

   • Advantys.Security.dll

   • Newtonsoft.Json.dll

   • jose-jwt.dll

You should now have a working WorkflowGen instance with the authentication delegated to Auth0 through the OpenID Connect protocol. Make sure to have provisioned your users to WorkflowGen in order for them to successfully access WorkflowGen.

Configuring the authentication without the GraphQL API

This feature is not supported for Auth0. It is necessary to configure the GraphQL API on the provider.