Creating and Managing Vista Trimble ID SSO Users

Author: Eric Vasbinder

Overview

Once you have completed the initial setup of your Trimble ID SSO components, including your Trimble Construction One (TC1) Portal Admin, Pushing Vista Users into Trimble ID, and then setting up the Trimble ID accounts themselves, you will be ready to begin using Trimble ID.  The initial setup is documented in this FAQ article:  The Three Steps to SSO Joy - Setting up Trimble ID SSO.

On an ongoing basis, the process for setting up Trimble ID authentication for new users is a simple one that merely involves either adding the user to Vista and then pushing them into Trimble ID or creating their account in your TC1 Portal first, then manually creating their account in Vista and the pushing the account to Trimble ID to create the link between Vista and Trimble ID.

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

This portal should only be used for migrating Vista human end users 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.

Creating Trimble ID Users in Vista

Overview

If a user will be accessing Vista either now, or at any point in the near future, it is much easier to set up the user's account in Vista first.  This will allow you to configure the user's Vista security and management group membership ahead of time, while giving you a means to easily push that user into Trimble ID.  Then, once that is completed, you'll need to "push" the new user(s) into SSO by going to VA User Profile->Tools->Migrate to Viewpoint ID.  On the following web page, you will need to click the name(s) of the new user(s) you would like to push into Trimble ID SSO.  Then, once complete, the users will receive an invitation to create their own Trimble ID account.  Once complete, they can then log into Vista using SSO.

NOTE:  The first stage of the process, Creating the User In Vista, are exactly the same as what you'd do to create a pure SQL account in Vista to help third party integrations speak to Vista.  Those steps are also documented here:  https://sites.google.com/trimble.com/vista-cloud-faq/home/integration-technology/creating-sql-accounts 

Stage 1 - Creating the Account in Vista - Step by Step

The first step in the process overall is to create the user account, if it does not already exist, in Vista.  Please use the following steps to create the account:

1.  Log into Vista. On the left go to Viewpoint Administration -> Programs and on the right open the VA User Profile form.

2.  In the User Name: field at the top fill in anything you want.  FirstName.LastName or FirstInitial.LastName for the username is recommended.  Anything works except for the SSO format username with an @ and _ in it.

CRITICAL NOTE:  ONLY our internal systems should rename the username to be in the SSO username format of "email@Address_EnterpriseID".  If you use the "@" sign and/or underscore "_" in your username when you create it, you will break SSO for your user account, taking additional time and a support case to fix the issues.

3.  Click on another field like Full Name and the form will refresh.

4.  Fill in the Full Name field with the user’s name.

5.  Fill in an Email Address.  The email needs to be unique as it will be used to generate the SSO username.

6.  Click on the save/disk icon at the top to save your changes.

7.  You should get a message about the user doesn’t exist. If so, click on close.  If you get a message saying the SQL Login already exists.  Then you can click on Yes and the new user will be associated to the existing SQL Login.  If you click on No then you will need to choose a different User Name and try again.

8.  You’ll be prompted for a password. Since you’ll be migrating the user to SSO the password doesn’t matter and can be anything you want or simply click cancel.

You have now created your user in Vista.  The final stage of the process is to "Promote" or "Migrate" the user to Trimble ID SSO.

Stage 2 - Migrate the New User to Trimble / Viewpoint ID - Step by Step

1. Open the Vista rich client

2. Open VA User Profile form

3. Click Tools->Migrate to Viewpoint ID

4. On the resulting web page, click the users that you would like to migrate to Trimble ID SSO

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

6.  Then click Migrate users.

a.  IMPORTANT - Try to select multiple users to be migrated to Trimble ID simultaneously, rather than clicking "Migrate User" after selecting each individual user.  See below note for important details.

The users will then receive invitations into Trimble ID and can create their new Trimble ID accounts.

IMPORTANT - USE SINGLE, LARGER BATCHES

Part of the migration process of users from Vista into Trimble ID SSO for modern Vista versions is to rename those user accounts that are being pushed into Trimble ID.  This rename process touches multiple tables within Vista and can be time and CPU intensive.  The amount of time and CPU effort needed increases exponentially when multiple simultaneous migrations to Trimble ID are attempted.

As such, we do not recommend selecting each user and then clicking "Migrate Users" for each user independently.  Instead, we recommend selecting a batch of users, then selecting Migrate Users to push all of those users in the same batch process. 

Please do not attempt to create additional, simultaneous migration batches until the existing one has been completed; only do one batch of users at a time.  To do otherwise could cause the Vista server to become unusably slow for all operations, not just user migration into Trimble ID.

Creating Trimble ID Users in the TC1 Portal

If you do not believe this user will need Vista access, the simplest way to create the account for your user is to do so through the TC1 Portal.