Custom Component UserId/Password

[#1]

Hello All - I'm developing a set of custom components in which I need to call a back end system. In order to do this I need to authenticate to the back end system and I want to give the user the option to use either a functional account or the "process context" i.e. the user who is running the task (similar to what you see in the Documentum/FileNet components).



Is there a way to query LiveCycle to get the userid and password of the user who is running the process that contains the component?



Thanks.

Bryan

[HowardTreisman]

Hi Bryan

LiveCycle processes don't really run on behalf of a particular user. This is obvious when you think that many different users could participate in a single process. You can find out the user-id of the person who participated in a process:

You can use our lookupUser component to do this:

http://avoka.dnsalias.com/confluence/display/Public/Lookup+DSC

http://avoka.dnsalias.com/confluence/display/Public/Find+Out+Details+About+the+Last+Form+User



Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), you can never find out the password of a user - security systems are designed specifically to disallow this. This would be a security breach. AFAIK the only way to get a password from a user is to get them to provide it. You may be able to bypass the requirement to use a password by using some sort of Single Signon product, or some other technique - please contact info@avoka.com if you want to discuss this further.



Regards,

Howard

[#3]

Howard - Thanks for the reply. Each task in a LiveCycle process could be run by a different user however every call to the LiveCycle server must be authenticated..hence you have to log in to workspace before performing an action..or when making API calls via webservices or the java api you must supply a credential.



If you look at the way the FileNet and Documentum connectors are built Adobe has used a custom authenticator to actually store the credentials of the user who is logged into the service in a credential cache. Then on their components they allow you to check "run as process context" or something to that effect which will basically look in that cahce to find the username and password.



Before I went down this route (as I know it will work) I was trying to find out if Adobe had any other place that they store the credentials that came into the service call (after all a task in an orchestration is simply a service call). That way I could retrieve it and build the connection to my backend system with that userid/password.



Thanks,

Bryan