Adding external authentication
The VIF application stores the information of all members participating in the forum discussions in a database table set up during application installation. This table is used for member authentication too, i.e. the members' passwords are stored in this table.
If an organisation uses VIF for internal discussion, this setup might lead to information duplication. Moreover, the members of this organisation might have to administer two passwords, one for participating a VIF discussion and a second for other services the organisation offers.
To overcome this problem, the VIF application offers the possibility to authenticate against an existing infrastructure.
User management with external authentication
Having set up the VIF forum (according to the installation instructions) with external authentication, the first thing you have to do (with a 'virgin' database) is to create a super user. You do that with the createSU task, e.g. http://localhost:8080/vifapp/admin?requestType=createSU. With this super user, you can log into the forum's administration part and search for members (in the external store) and assign them administration and/or group administration roles (see Forum Roles). Thereafter, the forum administration is ready for productive work, i.e. forum and group administrators car create groups and set up the group's starting questions.