KB-1059 Users are unable to log in to Appian using LDAP or SAML authentication

Symptoms

Users are unable to login to Appian using LDAP or SAML authentication.

Cause

This can occur for one of the following reasons:

• The password of the account used to establish a connection to the LDAP server has changed.
• There are some users in Appian that do not login using LDAP and the Restrict LDAP authentication to a specific group checkbox in the Admin Console under Authentication > LDAP Authentication is not enabled.
• There are some users in Appian that do not login using SAML and the Restrict SAML authentication to a specific group checkbox in the Admin Console under Authentication > SAML Authentication is not enabled.
• The connection information to the SAML IdP has changed.
• The connection information to the LDAP server has changed.

Action

Log into the system as a non-LDAP or non-SAML user that has access to the Admin Console to disable this setting. You can force the system to use Appian authentication by modifying your Appian URL to point to <SERVER_AND_PORT>/suite/portal/login.jsp.

If that does not resolve the issue, perform the following:

1. Shut down the affected Appian environment. Refer to Starting and Stopping Appian for more information.
2. Connect to the primary database using the vendor-specific SQL querying tool.
3. Go to the cfg table.
   • For LDAP, set the conf.ldap.enabled property to false
   • For SAML, set the conf.saml.enabled property to false
4. Start the Appian environment.
5. Log into Appian using a system administrator account.
6. Open the Admin Console and open the LDAP page (7.10 or later) or SAML page (7.11 or later), depending on the authentication method used.
7. Configure the necessary settings, such as Restrict LDAP authentication to a specific group, Restrict SAML authentication to a specific group, or the connection string information to the SAML IdP/LDAP server and reenable SAML/LDAP.

Affected Versions

This article applies to Appian 7.10 and later using LDAP authentication and Appian 7.11 and later using SAML authentication.