Deep Linking To My BackPack Functionality

For a simple single sign on implementation, you will only need to link a user to his/her My BackPack landing page. For more complex applications, you may be providing all navigation and interspersing My BackPack functions with other features, or you may just be linking directly to specific pages.

In all cases, you will need to add the user’s authentication token as a parameter (GET or POST) to the URL. The parameter name for the authentication token is authToken. To embed the MyBackPack page into a frame, use the noLayout parameter. The possible values are true and false. The noLayout parameter is preserved for the entire session so use it only if you embed all the MBP pages into your site. Otherwise use the noLayoutTemp parameter.

Keep in mind that authentication tokens expire after 5 minutes (a default which can be changed), but you can renew a token at any time up to 2 hours by using the renewToken method of UserManagementService. The timeout threshold is reset each time a call is made using the authentication token. You can check whether a token is still valid at any time using the checkAuthorizationKey method of UserManagementService.

Examples for Single Sign On

In the examples below, the user is linked to his/her My BackPack landing page (the authentication token is represented by abcdefg):

https://mybackpack.senior-systems.com/SeniorApps/communities/seniorHome.faces?selectedMenuId=true&authToken=abcdefg

To embed this page into another one, use the noLayout (or noLayoutTemp) parameter:

https://mybackpack.senior-systems.com/SeniorApps/communities/seniorHome.faces?selectedMenuId=true&authToken=abcdefg&noLayout=true

Security Groups

In a complex application where you are linking to specific My BackPack pages as part of your own functionality, you may also need to implement controls so that users can only access pages for which they have security privileges. You can use the getUserGroups method of UserManagementService to obtain a list of the security groups to which a user has access, and you can use the getGroups method of UserManagementService to obtain a list of all security groups that have been set up by the school.

Deeper Links

If you link to pages beyond the user’s My BackPack landing page, there are two ways that you can designate the URL for the link:

Method 1 - You can use the page URL for the desired page in My BackPack, appending the appropriate parameters for authorization and (optionally) layout as noted above. However, if the page URL changes at some point in the future, you will need to update your code with the new URL.

Method 2 - (Preferred Method) You can link to the URL for the My BackPack redirect page, appending a key parameter to select the correct page, and also appending the appropriate parameters for authorization and (optionally) layout as noted above. The advantage to this method is that if the page URL changes at some point in the future, the redirect page and key combination will still point to the correct location, and no code changes on your part will be necessary. Note that the key parameter value is not case-sensitive.

Examples for Deeper Links

In the examples below, the user is linked to the Student Schedule page (the authentication token is represented by abcdefg):

Method 1 - https://mybackpack.senior-systems.com/SeniorApps/studentParent/schedule.faces?selectedMenuId=true&authToken=abcdefg

Method 2 - https://mybackpack.senior-systems.com/SeniorApps/redirect.servlet?key=ACADEMIC.STUDENTSCHEDULE&selectedMenuId=true&authToken=abcdefg

See My BackPack Deep Link Key Values for a list of My BackPack pages and their corresponding keys.