Attributes

The core attributes used in the UK Federation are taken from the eduPerson specifications:

Both the old (200312) and new (200604) forms of eduPersonTargetedID are allowed within the federation and should be supported by service providers.

Attribute Sets

The attributes used within the federation have been categorised into Core Attributes, Subsidiary Attributes and Additional and Custom Attributes, as described in Attribute Sets.

We have a general introduction to the use of attributes for authorisation (with a more detailed discussion of attribute usage in Section 7 of Technical Recommendations for Participants) but the core attributes are:

Attribute Usage

The table below shows the attributes recognised by a selection of services. This list is illustrative of attribute usage rather than comprehensive. It is intended to give new participants examples of how attributes are used in practice within the federation. It is not intended to list up-to-date attribute requirements for every service provider. (Identity providers should confirm the requirements directly with the service providers which their end users will access.)

Nevertheless, service providers can assist the community (and reduce their own support load) by asking the federation operator to list their attribute requirements here. To do so, email the federation helpdesk requesting an entry in this table and providing the following information:

• the name of the service;
• a brief description of the type of service offered, and who it is intended for;
• the URL of the log-in page for the service;
• the attributes used by the service;
• (where appropriate) the version number of the Shibboleth software used;
• any specific notes (such as whether additional attributes will give enhanced service).

All information not explicitly displayed in the table will be visible at the service's info page - follow the "more info" link in the rightmost column. This will take you to a service page which also contains the relevant attribute usage notes for accessing that service.

(Blank entries, or entries in {...} brackets in the table below indicate that the information has not yet been provided.)

Please see your IdP's documentation or our Attribute Usage Notes page for information on how to release the correct attributes to each SP.

Note to SP operators

Under certain circumstances you may receive an attribute value consisting of a semi-colon delimited list of values. Should some of these be duplicates, then the best approach is to flatten them down to just the non-unique values. That means that if and when the IdP stops sending the information in multiple ways then the SP will still see it as the same person.