Auto-Connect leverages compliant SAML 2.0 in a new way, enabling extremely fast deployment of new partner connections. To enable a new connection to a partner, all that needs to be done is to have the administrator for each domain add the name of the other domain (e.g. pingidentity.com) to their Auto-Connect whitelist. For security, only partners within the white list have the ability to share information.
After adding one another to the whitelist, the Auto-Connect implementations will automatically fetch all relevant SAML 2.0 information (called metadata) periodically as needed.
The end user within an organization can now access a partner's services in the normal way. The service will either automatically determine the partner's domain or prompt the user for their email address in order to determine where authentication should take place. The messages between the services are all standards-compliant SAML 2.0.
