Authentication and Authorization

Authentication verifies who a user is. Authorization determines what that user can do in Trusted Answer Search and which search spaces the user can access.

Authentication

The Admin application supports Database Accounts authentication and Social Sign-In through an external identity provider.

Admin Application Authentication

The guided installation configures the Admin application to use Database Accounts authentication, with TASADMIN as the initial Search Administrator.

Use this default configuration to follow Create Your First Search Space.

Database Accounts

Sign in to the Admin application as TASADMIN, using the password you set during installation. The guided installer configures this authentication scheme automatically.

Description of the illustration authentication-scheme-database-accounts.png

Social Sign-In

Social Sign-In authenticates users through an external identity provider. It requires separate configuration in Oracle APEX and the identity provider. See Social Sign-In in the Oracle APEX App Builder User’s Guide.

Users also require Trusted Answer Search roles and search space access. See Managing User Access.

Description of the illustration authentication-scheme-social-sign-in.png

Authorization

Grant Trusted Answer Search roles and search space access through Users in the Admin application. See Personas and Access for the Search Administrator, Search Space Expert, and Search Space User roles.

Users who sign in through SSO must also be explicitly granted access to private search spaces by a Search Administrator. SSO authentication alone does not grant that access. See Configure Search Space Visibility.

Managing User Access

Trusted Answer Search user access depends on the Admin application’s authentication scheme. For Database Accounts deployments, each user must exist as a database account before you authorize that user to access the Trusted Answer Search application. For Social Sign-In deployments, users authenticate through your SSO provider, and you grant the appropriate Trusted Answer Search roles and search space access in the admin app.

The following steps add a Search Space User called tasuser for a Database Accounts deployment. Ask your database administrator (DBA) to provision the database account with a strong password, or create it if you have the required privileges. Replace the password placeholder before running this example:

CREATE USER tasuser IDENTIFIED BY "<strong-password>";

1. Sign in to the admin app as tasadmin, select Users in the left navigation, and confirm that you are managing access for the Wikimedia search space. The report lists existing administrators, experts, and search-only users.

2. Select Add User to open the drawer. Enter tasuser, select only the User role, and select wikimedia from the Search Space list so the new account is scoped to the intended search space. Finish by selecting Add.

3. The Users table immediately shows TASUSER. Select the username to review the access drawer. The Search Space Access region confirms that the account has User access to wikimedia; add or revoke other spaces here as needed.

After adding the search space user, configure the host application to authenticate that user and embed the widget as described in Search Widgets. Search italian page views and review the returned Wikimedia targets and resolved inputs against the version you published.