If you haven’t seen it on GitHub yet, we are always taking feedback and suggestions on what our clients need from FusionAuth. This week we are releasing Version 1.6 and are stoked to deliver it to you. We’ve added a few new features and made some minor fixes for issues discovered by our community of users on Stack Overflow and GitHub. Get the brief overview below, and visit our release notes for the full details.
New - SAML v2
We have hesitated to support SAML for a while because better solutions exist. However, SAML has been at the top of the list of most requested features on GitHub. When discussing if FusionAuth should add SAML support, one of our FusionAuth users summed it up well in this quote:
Isn’t this skating to where the puck has already been?
— Scott Barden
We tend to agree with Scott. SAML can be difficult to implement correctly, and many still use SHA-1 hashing which is broken to say the least. So while we don’t condone the use of SAML and strongly encourage devs to use OpenID Connect instead, we accept SAML isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. G Suite uses it for custom apps, and there are many IT groups that have older Active Directory instances that either don’t support OIDC yet, or the team only knows SAML and they aren’t changing. No problem, we understand.
Our SAML support in this release allows FusionAuth to act as both the SAML Identity Provider and the SAML Service Provider.
- Configure FusionAuth to act as the IdP
- Configure FusionAuth Service Provider connecting to a third party SAML IdP
To summarize, while we would prefer you do not use SAML, if you must, we have made it available. If you don’t, ignore it and learn about our other updates below. NOTE: The SAML specification is complex and we have found that many SAML v2 Service Providers are not specification compliant. This is to say that you should test your implementation thoroughly and if you run into problems open a GitHub issue and we will try to help.
More New Hotness
The following features don’t headline this release, but they play a large supporting role.
Lambdas
Lambdas are user defined JavaScript functions executed at runtime to perform various functions. We had several requests for this feature on GitHub, and have worked through the most common use cases. In this release, Lambdas can be used to customize the claims returned in a JWT or SAML response, reconcile a SAML v2 response or an OpenID Connect response when using these Identity Providers. See the Lambda API and the new Lambda settings in the UI Settings > Lambdas, and let us know if you identify additional use cases.
Event Log
We’ve added a new event log designed to assist developers while debugging integrations. You’ll find it in the UI under System > Event Log. It includes SMTP Transport errors, Lambda execution exceptions, Lambda debug output, SAML IdP integration errors and more! Check it out and let us know how we can make it better for you.
We think this will really reduce the pain of integrating with third party identity providers and coding Lambdas.
Duplicate Email Templates
This feature might seem small, but the time savings could be quite large. @Davidmw was the first to ask if we could make it easy to duplicate existing email templates as the basis for a new template, so he gets the credit. Version 1.6 adds the ability to duplicate any existing template with a click so you can customize it further as needed. No more starting from scratch on each new email! You’ll see a duplicate button in the action column the next time you view email templates. Thanks for the suggestion!
Fixes & Updates
The FusionAuth 1.6 release has additional updates and fixes that you should know about. The details are in the release notes but here are a few.
- There is a database schema change and an upgrade is required. You will be prompted to upgrade the database by maintenance mode.
- We fixed an issue with Passwordless login if no email template is configured or if Passwordless login is disabled.
- If you are using the Implicit Grant and you have Self Service Registration enabled for the same application, the redirect after the registration check will assume you are using the Authorization Code grant. Thanks to @Whiskerch for reporting this issue in GitHub Issue #102.
- Fixed an issue with OpenID Connect federated login.
- GitHub Issue #110 - OIDC and Refresh Tokens is fixed. Thanks to @Fabiosimeoni for reporting this issue
- We fixed an issue with the URLs in self-service registration causing a 400 error. Thanks to @Botnyx for opening this issue. #118
- Thanks again to @Botnyx for finding an “invalid_origin” error when using implicit grants. #119 is fixed.
- Fixed an issue when using Sparkpost and TLS/SSL. Thanks to @Plunkettscott for catching this one.
FusionAuth Is Always Improving
We test and update FusionAuth constantly to ensure that we are providing you with the most flexible and powerful identity and access management solution. If you find a bug or have any questions, let us know either at GitHub or StackOverflow and we’ll take a look.
Learn More About FusionAuth
FusionAuth is designed to be the most flexible and secure Customer Identity and Access Management solution available at the best price. We provide registration, login, passwordless login, SSO, MFA, data search, social login, user management and more, 100% free for unlimited users.
