Metacoda Plug-ins – Page 3 – platformadmin.com

Metacoda Identity Sync and Microsoft Security Advisory ADV190023

Those of you who use Metacoda Identity Sync may have already heard about Microsoft Security Advisory ADV190023. You may have heard about it from Stuart Rogers’ post on SAS Communities: SAS Viya The Importance of LDAP Encryption. Stuart’s article is about SAS Viya, but the Microsoft changes may have an impact on those sites that do LDAP-based identity synchronization with their SAS 9 platforms too. This includes Metacoda customers that use Metacoda Identity Sync. Naturally, this is something we have been getting some questions about recently – “How will it impact on the identity sync process?”

I think a good place to start would be to read the linked articles above, then discuss with your domain admins. They will be able to tell you if they plan on making the recommended changes and, if so, when they plan to make them. This might require you to change the way you configure your LDAP connection.

There has been some confusion about what changes Microsoft will make and when. It also looks like the extent and timing of those changes has evolved over time too. Quoting some of the sections of the advisory, as of today: Continue reading “Metacoda Identity Sync and Microsoft Security Advisory ADV190023”

Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: hasPermissionCondition

This post continues a series of examples on Advanced Expression-Based Filters for Metacoda Plug-ins. The recent Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1 R2 release added support for a new hasPermissionCondition boolean attribute that can be used in any filter bar on a table of Access Control Entries (ACEs), such as the ACE Reviewer.

You can copy and paste the following into the filter bar of the Metacoda ACE Reviewer to only show ACEs that include permissions conditions, such as those used for SAS OLAP Member-Level Permissions, BI Row-Level Permissions, or Visual Analytics Conditional Grants:

#@ hasPermissionCondition

Here is an example of it in action:

ACE Reviewer hasPermissionCondition

Of course, if required, you can also negate it to filter out those rows with permission conditions:

#@ !hasPermissionCondition

If you have any questions about Metacoda Plug-ins, Advanced Expression-Based Filters, or hasPermissionCondition please leave a comment below.

Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Compare Metadata Objects

One of the new additions in the recently released Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1 R2 is a Compare Metadata Objects feature. This is a something that several customers have requested, particularly for the comparison of SAS metadata security objects like ACTs, Users, Groups, and Roles. One of the most common requests was to be able to compare users, who are supposed to be almost identical, but are found to have different access. Being able to compare the two users to see which groups they have, or don’t have, in common helps to speed up troubleshooting.

With the new Compare Metadata Objects dialog, you can compare any two metadata objects to show similarities and differences. Whilst it can be used to do a basic comparison of any 2 metadata objects, specific attention has been given to aid in the comparison of security objects, including ACT Permission Patterns, ACT and ACE participation, applied ACTs and ACEs, user/group membership of groups and roles, and members of groups and roles.

There are several ways to access this feature. The first is to use SAS Management Console Tools menu:

… this opens the comparison dialog where you can proceed to search for, and select, the two objects you want to compare. Continue reading “Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Compare Metadata Objects”

Metacoda Auth Domain Reviewer Libraries Tab

Last year I posted some information about a new Metacoda Auth Domain Reviewer plug-in that was planned for Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1. That Auth Domain Reviewer is now available with the recent Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1 R1 release and you may notice that it looks a little different to the screenshots I posted back then … it now has a Libraries tab.

The Libraries tab as was added based on feedback we got during early access testing by customers. They told us they would like to be able to see, for a selected authentication domain, all of the SAS® software libraries registered in metadata that are associated with that auth domain. That sounded like a great idea so we added it!

Thanks to those customers that suggested it and please keep those suggestions coming!

If you’d like to try out the new Auth Domain Reviewer plug-in you can login and download Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1 R1 from the Metacoda Customer Portal. If you don’t yet have a Metacoda login you can register for a free 30 day evaluation license to try the plug-ins in your own SAS platform installation.

Metacoda Plug-ins Batch Interface Setup Utility

This is a short post to let those readers who run or schedule Metacoda Plug-ins in batch know that, with the recent Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1 R1 release, we have published a GitHub repository to help with setup of the Metacoda Plug-ins Batch Interface. You can find this new repository, together with setup instructions, at https://github.com/Metacoda/metacoda-plugins-batch-setup

Metacoda Plug-in 6.1 HTML Export

The main benefit of this Metacoda Plug-ins Batch Interface Setup Utility is the automation of much of the previous manual work involved in setting up and site-specific tailoring of the batch interface samples. It also includes additional batch exports for Authentication Domains and External Identities (from the new Auth Domain Reviewer and External Identity Manager plug-ins). The Metacoda recommended practice starter tests for SAS metadata security have also been updated.

If you have any questions or comments please let me know by posting below. You can also contact us via the Metacoda contact form or send us an email at Metacoda support.