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Overview

To authenticate with SAP SuccessFactors, you need:

1. API Server - The base URL of the SAP SuccessFactors OData API.
2. Company ID - Your company’s unique identifier in SAP SuccessFactors.
3. API Key - The API Key generated during the OAuth client application registration process in SAP SuccessFactors.
4. SAML Assertion - A Base64-encoded XML document generated using the private key of the X.509 certificate.

This guide will walk you through obtaining these credentials within SAP SuccessFactors.

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Prerequisites:

• You must have an account with SAP SuccessFactors.

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Instructions:

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Step 1: Finding your API Server

1. Please visit the following API Server URLs
2. In the listed API Server URLs, search for the environment that matches your subdomain.

• For example, if your domain was https://salesdemo4.successfactors.com, search for salesdemo4.

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Step 2: Finding your Company ID

1. Login to your SAP SuccessFactors account. Go to the upper right hand side and click on your profile image to view your username.

2. To find your SAP SuccessFactors Company ID, in the same dropdown menu, click Show version information. Locate Company ID in the modal that pops up:

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Step 3: Generating your API Key

1. In your Admin Center, go to Tools, and search Manage OAuth2 Client Applications (If your page looks different, search for Manage OAuth2Client Applications in the search tool on your homepage).

2. Click Register Client Application.

3. Fill out Application Name & Application URL (what actually goes in these fields is not important, except that the URL has to begin with https://). You can also have a look at this guide on how to fill this form.
4. Click Register to save your registration.
5. You’ve successfully registered your client application for OAuth2 authentication. An API key is generated and assigned to your application. You can view the API key by clicking View on the registered application list.

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Step 4: Generating your SAML Assertion

• You can use a corporate IdP, for example, SAP Identity Authentication Services, or a third-party IdP.
• You can also use the example code attached to 3031657 to generate SAML assertions for your application. This sample code provides a SAML generator tool that processes the input information offline and generates a SAML assertion without having to expose your private key to the Internet. For this example we will use a Windows setup to generate the SAML assertion.

1. Download the file from Downloading Apache Maven and unzip it to your local drive. In the example below, the folder has been extracted to the C drive:
2. At your computer: Click on File Explorer > This PC (right button) > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables.
3. At System Variables, ensure JAVA_HOME variable is set and points to the path of your JDK installation.

4. At User Variables, click on new and set the path of the bin folder (from your JDK installation folders) to the variable PATH as shown below:
5. Go to Command Prompt and execute the command below:echo %JAVA_HOME%

• If it prints the folder path of the JDK installation, it means the installation was successful.

6. Open the Command Prompt and execute the command below:mvn -v

• This means Maven installation is successful. Now we are good to proceed with generating SAML assertion using SAP provided offline tool.

7. Go to attachment section of this KBA and download the zip file.
8. Extract folder from zip file to your local drive.
9. Go to the folder and open SAMLAssertion.properties file.

10. Fill the data there;

• tokenUrl: your API server endpoint from guide page List of SAP SuccessFactors API Servers followed by /oauth/token.
• clientId: API Key which you received while registering the client in SF.
• userId: the userId of the API user. If you use this field, you shouldn’t use the userName field, leaving it blank.
• userName: the username of the API user. If you use this field, you shouldn’t use the userId field, leaving it blank.
• privateKey: X.509 private key.
• expireInMinutes: SAML assertions usually expires in 5-10 minutes. Anyway, here you should set it according your business requirements.

11. Save the file and close.
12. Open a new Command Prompt window and go to the directory where folder was extracted.
13. Execute the command below: mvn compile exec:java -Dexec.args=“SAMLAssertion.properties”.

14. Once completed, it would generate SAML Assertion. Copy this and store it securely in your local drive.

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Step 5: Enter credentials in the Connect UI

Once you have both the above keys:

1. Open the form where you need to authenticate with SAP SuccessFactors.
2. Enter the API Server, Company ID, API Key and SAML Assertion in their designated fields.
3. Submit the form, and you should be successfully authenticated.

You are now connected to SAP SuccessFactors.