Cannot Initiate SP-initiated Flow through Excel

Products

• CA Single Sign On Secure Proxy Server (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign On SOA Security Manager (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign-On

Issue/Introduction

Unauthenticated users are submitting an SP-initiated federation request via Excel.  The SSO/Siteminder login page is presented as expected, but upon submitting credentials, the form seems to hang forever, never closing or updating.

Environment

Release: MSPSSO99000-12.8-Single Sign-On-for Business Users-MSP
Component:

Cause

Siteminder html forms authentication requires a full http client.  Although Excel is able to perform some http client tasks, it is unable to authenticate via SSO/Siteminder's html forms authentication. Tasks that the client is required to perform include following 302 redirects, posting data to forms, and accepting transient and persistent cookies.

Resolution

This is not a supported use case as html forms authentication requires a full http client.