Federation Manager Guide › Federation Manager Introduction › Federation in Your Enterprise › User Identification Across the Partnership › Account Linking to Establish a Federated Identity

Account Linking to Establish a Federated Identity

When a customer at FinancePro accesses a resource at BankLtd, the NameID is always in the assertion. This identifier allows BankLtd to determine who the customer is and the level of access to allow for that customer.

The NameID can establish a federated identity when the user store at each partner identifies the users in the same way with the same ID.

The following figure shows the user store at each site with the same employee IDs.

Federation Manager lets you configure account linking as part of the partnership configuration process. You specify a NameID format and Name ID type, which determines the type of value that defines the Name. You associate the specific Name ID type, with a static, user, or DN attribute from a user directory. The NameID that Federation Manager includes in the assertion conforms to the configuration you define.

When the relying party receives the assertion, the user disambiguation process at BankLtd occurs. The process links the NameID value in the assertion to a record in its user store.