Federation Manager Guide › Federation Entity Configuration › How to Create an Entity by Importing Metadata

How to Create an Entity by Importing Metadata

Federation Manager lets you import data from a metadata file to create a federation entity. Importing SAML metadata lets you efficiently exchange configuration data between federated partners, reducing the amount of configuration that you have to do to create a partnership.

Federation Manager lets you use metadata in the following ways:

• Import data from a remote partner to create a new remote entity
• Import data from a remote partner to update an existing remote entity
• Import data from a local entity to create a new local entity.

  This option can be useful to facilitate a migration to Federation Manager from another federation product.

  Note: Federation Manager does not support metadata imports to update or restore an existing partnership and local entity. To update an existing local entity, edit the entity and modify the settings you want to change. You can import metadata only to create a new local entity.

The process for creating a metadata-based entity is as follows:

1. Select a metadata file to serve as the basis for configuring a new entity.
2. Select an entity entry from the metadata file. The file may include several entities, but one entity per file is recommended.
3. (Optional) To configure an entity, select certificates to import into the key database if included in the metadata file.

   These certificates can be used for authentication request verification, single logout response verification (SAML 2.0) and encryption (SAML 2.0).

4. Confirm the entity configuration.

Details about these steps are described in the next sections.