Integrating with CommunityServer

Elmar

Hi there.

I am currently in the process of integration communityserver with AwareIM would like to ask some architectural questions. Both systems share the same Backend DB (SQL Server 2005).

The question is how to make these seperate systems look consistent to an end user. Currently I figured out two ways to get there:

a. CS is about to release a new version which promises to decouple from standard ASP.NET Membership and could potentially point to an Aware IM generated User/Role mechanism.

b. Discover CS Membership data and with AwareIM and use it as a basis for developing the AwareIm Application. I think a is probably more sufficient. Correct?

The next logical step is to have a way for users to not only register once but also to sign-in once and not in both systems. A "simple" solution would be to make a redirect once the user that is on CS2007 wants to open the AwareIM app and include user and password as post variables in the redirect. Does AwareIM Logon take GET and POST parameters?

Are there any best practises on this?

Thanks in advance,
Elmar

aware_support

Aware IM login mechanism is fairly flexible - there is a lot of parameters that you can specify as part of the login URL (see the "Login" section in the User Guide).

If you can pull the membership data out of CS system you can use this data as URL parameters for the Aware IM login. If you can somehow transfer CS users and passwords into the Aware IM system then you will have a single sign-on: users will login in CS and then you will use Aware IM login URL with the parameters that you pull out of CS. Aware IM will not even display its form and login the user straight away. Besides, if you use the "dynamic" parameter then the subsequent call to this URL will not even attempt to login the user if he is already logged in. If you use the "firstCommand" parameter Aware IM will launch the specified command straight away after the login. So from the user's point of view it's a transparent experience - he logs in once in CS and then the Aware IM system gets called when necessary (the login happens on the background without the user seeing it).

As I said the only pre-requisite for this is to transfer the data about CS users (user names and passwords) into Aware IM. This can even be done manually by the system administrator or imported via CSV.

Elmar

Sounds good. I will give it a try. Thanks a lot!