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Creating direct links to page

Motivation

Sometimes, you want to create a direct link to a specific openBIS page for users to easily access a feature. Normally, if the users click on that link, they would be first directed to the login page, which could prove confusing for beginners.

In this step-by-step guide, we show how to generate a link to a specific page which directly sends users to the AAI SSO page and doesn't display the initial login screen.

Steps

The steps to follow are documented here:

To generate the correct link with redirection to the SSO page, you can use this tool from Switch.

Find the correct URLs

The tool requires three inputs:

  1. Service Provider Session Initiator Handler URL: this is the link to the login page of the openBIS instance you want to connect to. For the test server, this is https://openbis-empa-test.ethz.ch/Shibboleth.sso/Login. For another instance, replace <placeholder> in https://<placeholder>.ethz.ch/Shibboleth.sso/Login with your instance URL.

  2. Service Provider Target URL: this is the URL of the page you want to be displayed to the users. In our case, we want the users to go to https://openbis-empa-test.ethz.ch/openbis/webapp/eln-lims/?menuUniqueId={%22type%22:%22SPACE%22,%22id%22:%22PUBLICATIONS%22}&viewName=showSpacePage&viewData=%22PUBLICATIONS%22 which is the openBIS ELN-LIMS page for the PUBLICATIONS space.

  3. Identity Provider entityID: the URL to the identity provider used to authenticate users into openbis. For empa, this is always: https://aai.empa.ch/idp/shibboleth

Once you entered all three inputs, you can press the Compose login link button. This will generate the link in the form underneath the button.

By pressing on the access link under Test link you can try the link in your browser.

Last update: June 20, 2025