Setting up Trimble ID SSO


The Three Steps (Plus One) to SSO Joy

IMPORTANT NOTE

This article is intended for our North American Vista ERP Cloud customers ONLY.   Vista ERP Cloud customers located in Australia or New Zealand CANNOT use this method.  Please see the following link if you are located in ANZ:  

The Three Steps to ANZ SSO Joy - Setting up Viewpoint ID SSO 

Author: Eric Vasbinder

Overview

As mentioned in a previous FAQ article, Single Sign On (SSO) provides a powerful way to simplify user credential management, improve security, and allow end users to realize the full value of Trimble Viewpoint's solutions.  To that end, Trimble ID was created as the successor to Viewpoint ID and includes the ability for Single Sign On (SSO) authentication for Trimble solutions, in addition to the Viewpoint solutions supported by Viewpoint ID.   

Going forward, most new customers transforming into the Trimble Construction One (TC1) or Viewpoint One (VP1) cloud offerings will be set up to use Trimble ID SSO. 

CRITICAL WARNING FOR CUSTOMERS OF TRIMBLE PRODUCTS AND / OR VIEWPOINT LEGACY AD AUTHENTICATION (CASCADE / AVD)

PLEASE NOTE THAT MOVING TO TRIMBLE ID SSO, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE ALREADY USING TRIMBLE SOLUTIONS OR OUR LEGACY INTERNAL AD (E.G. CASCADE / AVD), IS A COMPLEX PROCESS WITH SEVERAL GOTCHAS THAT WILL BREAK EXISTING FUNCTIONALITY.

HOWEVER, SINCE TRIMBLE ID IS THE WAY OF THE FUTURE, THIS COMPLEX PROCESS FOR EXISTING TRIMBLE PRODUCT / LEGACY AUTHENTICATION CUSTOMERS MUST BE UNDERTAKEN AT SOME POINT.

In addition, futureproofing aside, after moving to Trimble ID SSO, there will be several advantages that you will encounter, including:

Fortunately, workarounds exist for most all items that will break when moving to Trimble ID SSO.

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS TO LEARN MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE FUNCTIONALITY THAT WILL BREAK WHEN MOVING TO TRIMBLE ID SSO AND HOW TO COMPENSATE - BEFORE PROCEEDING.

Trimble ID SSO High Level List of Warnings and Gotchas

The following is a high level list of the items that may break when moving to Trimble ID SSO.  Please note that the following sections will list out the specifics of each potential gotcha and available workarounds.

Trimble ID Issue and Conflict DETAILS

The following sections detail the specifics of when you may encounter each of the issues listed above, and how you might work around them on your journey to Trimble ID SSO

TRIMBLE ID ISSUE DETAILS:  Third Party Products Not Supported

Prior to beginning the process of moving to Trimble ID SSO, you should thoroughly understand the nature of Trimble ID.  Specifically, the way that it functions, it only supports Trimble solutions, such as SketchUp, ProjectSight, Accubid, Vista, Spectrum, Vista Web, Viewpoint Analytics, and Automated Invoicing, along with many others.

The unfortunate caveat is that Trimble ID does NOT support various third party solutions, many of which customers consider to be part of Vista itself or that integrate closely with other Trimble Viewpoint solutions.  

This holds especially true for customers who are already in our cloud and who are using our legacy internal Active Directory (i.e. Cascade / AVD) to authenticate to Vista, SSMS, SSRS, Spreadsheet Server, etc.

The following is a list, although not completely exhaustive, of the third party products that do NOT support Trimble ID and will thus require workarounds when moving to use Trimble ID:

Methods to Address Issue

Consider Replacement Tools

Various solutions listed above have equivalent tools that do not require authenticating directly to the Vista database.  As such they can leverage your normal authentication methods such as Entra ID / Azure AD or even a Trimble ID in some cases.

The following is a list of potential substitute solutions that should be considered:

Method to Address Issue - SQL Accounts

In the near term, if you cannot move from solutions that are incompatible with Trimble ID, there is another workaround that should be implemented.  To work around the fact that these third-party solutions do not support Trimble ID SSO, we need to set up a separate method of authentication for users who wish to use these tools.  As customers should not continue to use the legacy method of Cascade, which uses our internal active directory within viewpoints cloud and should really only be reserved for AVD logins, another method identified allow for login into these third-party products.

The proper method to use for authentication to these third-party products in our cloud, after moving to use Trimble ID SSO, is to use SQL authentication accounts.  The advantage to this method is that most legacy solutions, such as SSRS, that had been previously used with the Vista ERP, support this method of authentication.

Please note that there are a few disadvantages to using SQL accounts that must be accepted when using this method:

To create the SQL account as needed for third-party products, please use the instructions link that the following cloud FAQ article:  I need a dedicated SQL account for my integration to Vista in your cloud.  How do I set that up? 

TRIMBLE ID ISSUE DETAILS:  Customers Using Trimble Viewpoint's Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) OR Who Mount the Vista Pickup Folder Using SMB Over IPSEC VPNs Will Need THREE Sets of Credentials

If a customers and users are making use of Viewpoint's Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), or if they area using SMB to mount the Vista pickup folder over the IPSEC VPN, it is likely that those end-users will need to make use of three sets of credentials once they have been migrated to Trimble ID SSO.  The reason for this is that the authentication into our AVD environment (Microsoft terminal services housed within our Active Directory infrastructure) cannot be done through either a customer's own Active Directory, or through Trimble ID.

The key thing to remember, especially for existing customers in our cloud, is that you may be using our Viewpoint internal Active Directory, managed by the Cascade portal, to authenticate to these resources.  These usernames are in the format of VIEWPOINT\username.companyCode.  These "legacy Viewpoint AD" usernames are used for customers who, for the most part, have two major use cases:  a need to use Trimble Viewpoint's own AVD instance in the cloud AND/OR who use SMB to mount the Vista pickup folder over an ISPEC VPN.

The following are the three sets of credentials that will be needed and the reason for their need:

Methods to Address Issue

By installing the Vista rich client on your local workstations and using the Vista Remote Link (VRL) method to connect to Vista in the cloud, there is no need to have access to our Trimble AVD instance.  As such, there would be no need for your users to manage Cascade credentials.

As a more modern method of connecting to the Vista solution to push data into Vista, wherever possible, we recommend the use of our AppXchange and DataXchange solutions.  AppXchange (formerly Ryvit) (Cloud and Data Connectors) 

In the event that VRL is not possible for you, usually due to a desire for a thin client consumption model or due to concerns around network latency and performance, it is highly recommended that a customer managed AVD instance be set up in the same datacenter as where Vista is hosted.  The significant benefit to this solution is twofold:

Performance could be much more acceptable to your end-users as the network latency between the Vista rich client and the Vista server will be kept small; they're both running in the same datacenter.

The AVD instance that will be used by your end-users will be managed within the same Active Directory (Entra ID) infrastructure as your standard computing systems.  This means that your end-users will be able to authenticate into the AVD portion without needing to use Viewpoint-specific Cascade logins, but rather would use their own, already familiar, Active Directory logins.

To read more details on the use of a customer managed AVD solution to host the Vista Rich client please see Option A in the following cloud FAQ article.  Please note that even though it references consultants, the details in this option are applicable to a customer managed AVD environment as well:  Cloud Access for Third Party Consultants 

TRIMBLE ID ISSUE DETAILS:  ENTRA ID / AZURE AD FEDERATION - UPNs and Primary Email Mismatches

Prior to beginning the Federation process to Entra ID (Azure AD), you should understand the impact of enabling federation to Entra ID.  Specifically, the way Microsoft Entra ID handles authentication can cause issues with licensing with certain Trimble products if your users have User Principal Names (UPNs) that do not exactly match the primary email address specified for the user in Office Microsoft 365.  If you are using, or plan to use Trimble products such as SketchUp, Connect, ProjectSight, Accubid, etc., please read on for more details and considerations.

Circumstances to Manifest Issue

If the following circumstances are in place, after federation of your Trimble ID instance to Entra ID, you will likely encounter login and licensing issues with various non-Viewpoint Trimble products:

Impact of Issue

Once you have federated Entra ID to Trimble ID, you will see the following impacts if you use the products listed above and if your end users have UPNs that do not match their primary email addresses in Office 365:

Methods to Address Issue

There are several methods available to address this Entra ID conflict.  However, they may involve changes in how your end users operate:

High Level Steps to Implement:

Three Steps (Plus One) to Enable Trimble ID SSO

There are three major steps to properly enable your environment for Trimble ID SSO.  

See below for detailed steps and responsibilities.

Step 1 (Optional):  Set Up Trimble ID Federation with Preferred Authentication Provider

If you have a need to associate your Trimble ID domain with an external authentication provider, such as Azure AD, OKTA, etc., you will need to first prove that you own the domain name in question.  This requirement is for our own legal and compliance purposes.  Once that is complete, you will need to work with our team to finalize the Federation process.

Proving Domain Ownership

Figure 1:  Using MXToolbox to find the authoritative DNS server

3.  CUSTOMERWork with your DNS Administrator (usually your IT admin or domain registrar) to add the following text as a TXT record in your domain's DNS settings - Choose based on whether you are a customer transforming into the cloud, or an existing cloud customer who had the Federation Google form submitted to start the process:

NOTE:  If you are unfamiliar with DNS record editing, please reach out to your IT or network admin before proceeding.

4.  CUSTOMERONLY IF YOU ARE AN EXISTING CUSTOMER IN THE CLOUD - Proceed to the following Google form and fill it out to notify the Trimble ID team that you are ready for federation to commence:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScoUBor2SdTEfYcoM0Sev6dKyusO1OB9LkDKx_MAK3z0XQKtQ/viewform?usp=sf_link 

REMINDER:  For Transformation customers, the Google form is NOT required as the transformation team will handle TID Federations through the standard transformation process.

Finalizing the Federation Process

Once you have completed the above verification steps in DNS and filled out the form, our Trimble ID team can proceed with the following major steps:

Step 2:  Set up Portal Administrator(s) in TC1

Formerly known as a Viewpoint Team Enterprise Admin, the TC1 Portal administrator is a critical user who must be setup prior to being able to "promote" or migration users into Trimble ID.

Please note that a CRITICAL requirement of any TC Portal admin is that their email address must fit the following three requirements:

Please note that Trimble highly recommends setting up a minimum of TWO portal admin accounts, both for redundancy as well as to allow for a smoother initial pushing of users into Trimble ID.

To verify that you have appropriate access, please log in to your TC1 portal at https://team.viewpoint.com and look to see if you have user management rights.  If you do, then you are a portal admin.

Detailed Steps

Finalizing Azure AD (Entra ID) Federation to Trimble ID Through TC1

NOTE:  To proceed with this step, you MUST be using a FULL Microsoft Azure AD admin account that is capable of receiving email messages.

Even though we have already set up Trimble ID to Azure AD federation by this point in the process, we still need to "link" the Vista, Vista Web, and Team platform environments to Azure AD.  

If you are NOT setting up Azure AD federation in step 1, you will then proceed to set up a standalone Viewpoint ID account with a new password.  However, if you are finishing the set up of Azure AD Federation, please proceed with this next few steps:

Figure 2:  Consent on behalf of your organization and click "Accept".

Step 3:  CUSTOMER - Push Existing Vista Users into Trimble ID

Once you have assigned a TC1 Portal account to be a portal admin, you will need to log in to Vista with that account to push existing Vista users into Trimble ID SSO.  That's always the first thing, right?  Logging in so that things can be done - I know, master of the obvious, here.

Well, in the Viewpoint Vista Cloud, logging into Vista for this step will be done using SSO itself.  "How does that work?", you might ask. 

First, you will need to ensure that you are able to log in to Trimble ID overall.  The next section of this article will walk you through that process.

a.  CUSTOMER - Validating Your Trimble ID is Working

If you are unsure whether your Trimble ID account has been set up, or if you have concerns that it may not be working, please use the following steps to validate if your Trimble ID account is up and running:

CRITICAL NOTE - SSO MIGRATION PORTAL FOR HUMAN END USERS ONLY - NOT SERVICE ACCOUNTS

The portal mentioned in the following section should only be used for migrating Vista human end user into SSO.  It should never be used to migrate service accounts, such as Keystyle.svc, Ryvit, etc.  Migrating Service accounts into SSO will break their functionality.

b.  CUSTOMER - Promoting Users to Trimble ID

Once you have set up a TC1 portal admin account using the same email address as a Vista admin, you can then begin the process of promoting Vista users into Trimble ID SSO.

NOTE:  Prior to beginning this process, please ensure your HQMA table is purged down to a reasonable size of no more than 1M records.  Extremely large HQMA tables can extend the SSO migration process by days and dramatically impact system responsiveness.  Please see this FAQ on Vista performance for more details:  Optimizing Vista Cloud Performance 

This method involves going to a specific website, clicking on the users that you would like to migrate to Trimble ID SSO, and then clicking the "migrate users" button.

Figure 3:  Screen to Select Users to Migrate

4. CUSTOMER:  Click on the checkbox for the user(s) you wish to migrate, or push, into Trimble ID.

5. CUSTOMER:  Then click Migrate users.

The users will then receive invitations into Trimble ID and can create their new Trimble ID accounts.  See step 4 below for more details.

NOTE:  It is required for your end user to click on those emails from Viewpoint / Trimble ID and complete their account setup prior to any transformation go-live.

CRITICAL NOTE

DO NOT PERFORM USER MIGRATIONS TO SSO ONE USER AT A TIME.  

If you do so, each SQL job to rename the user's name and audit trail entries will block the other SQL jobs, causing significant system slowness and potential many hours of downtime.  

BEST PRACTICE FOR SELECTING USERS

Step 4:  CUSTOMER - End Users Finalize Trimble ID SSO Set up

The next step of the move to Trimble ID SSO authentication is for each end user to set up their own Trimble ID.  If you have already set up Trimble ID SSO Federation to an external authentication system, this process will be as simple as receiving an email message, following the steps in the email message, clicking "next" a few times and then you will be done.

If you have not set up a federated authentication provider, the end user will need to set up their password for their Trimble ID account, ensure that the correct email address that corresponds to the address in Vista is set up in Trimble ID, and enable any multifactor authentication that your security processes and policies require.

Please see the following article for detailed, step by step guidance on setting up your Trimble ID account, once you have received your email invite:  

Subsequent Logins - Trimble ID SSO

Admin logins to Vista that occur after the Vista admin account has been pushed into Trimble ID take place through the normal Trimble ID Vista login process.  Please see this article for more details:  Logging In - Via Trimble ID SSO 

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tags:

consent, Azure AD, Federation, SSO Setup, North America