Log in with Azure Active Directory

Question

Our client needs to pre-authenticate with AD before common Sitecore built-in authentication (they don't need the AD users in Sitecore). We switched on "Log in with Azure Active Directory" at our CM App Service instance's Authentication / Authorization setting. It works well at the begining - redirects to AD login screen and after successful AD login, redirects back to Sitecore login (/sitecore/login). But after a successful Sitecore login, we get a strange redirect to /sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=%2fsitecore%2fclient%2fApplications%2fLaunchpad+(route%3a+%7b*pathInfo%7d)&user={ADUSER}&site=shell

Please help, how is it possible to make it work?

Why "overrides" the AD authentication the Sitecore one?

Answer 1

I got the same issue, with Sitecore 9 as a PAAS on Azure. There seems to be some conflict between webforms authentication/authorization in Sitecore and what Azure uses. I did'nt find a direct solution, but as a work around i used an HTTP auth module to intercept and challenge using "Basic" or "Digest" authentication/authorization. Link Here

Now this comes with it's own risks,i.e having credentials in clear text in the web.config and also using "Basic" authentication/authorisation sends clear text over the wire (use "Digest" option for encrypted transmission). But as I mentioned, this is a work around which gets things going, until a more elegant solution is found, or Sitecore fixes how they do forms authentication within an Azure context.