Configure Salesforce for Delegated Authentication
Set up delegated authentication for your Salesforce org so users can log in with credentials managed by an external authentication service. To configure Salesforce for delegated authentication, wrap your authentication method in a web service that Salesforce can consume. Then, use permissions to determine whether users log in with delegated authentication or with a Salesforce-managed password.
Required Editions
| Available in: both Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience |
| Available in: Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, Developer, and Database.com Editions |
| User Permissions Needed | |
|---|---|
| To view the settings: | View Setup and Configuration |
| To edit the settings: | Customize Application AND Modify All Data |
Here’s the general process you use to set up delegated authentication:
- Enable delegated authentication for your org.
- Build your web service.
- Specify your delegated authentication gateway URL.
- Enable permissions.
- (Optional) Record login attempts.
Enable Delegated Authentication for Your Org
- From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter Single Sign-On Settings, then select Single Sign-On Settings.
- Select Disable login with Salesforce credentials.
Build Your Web Service
- In Salesforce, download the Delegated Authentication Web Services
Description Language (WSDL) file.
- From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter API, then select API.
- Click Download Delegated Authentication WSDL.
The WSDL file describes the delegated authentication web service. Use the WSDL file to generate a server-side stub to which to add your delegated authentication implementation. For example, in the WSDL2Java tool from Apache Axis, use the
--server-sideswitch. With the .NET wsdl.exe tool, use the/serverswitch. - Add a link to your corporate intranet or other internal site. This link
takes the user’s credentials after they’re validated and passes them through
an HTTP POST to the Salesforce login page.
Salesforce only uses the password field to pass it back to your company. To avoid passing your corporate passwords to or from Salesforce, pass another authentication token instead, such as a Kerberos ticket.
When the Salesforce server passes the credentials back to you in the
Authenticatemessage, verify them. Then the user can access your org.
Specify Your Delegated Authentication Gateway URL
- From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter Single Sign-On, then select Single Sign-On Settings.
- Click Edit.
- Enter the URL for the Delegated Gateway URL.
For security reasons, Salesforce restricts outbound posts to any of the following.
- 80, which accepts only HTTP connections
- 443, which accepts only HTTPS connections
- 1024–66535, which accepts HTTP or HTTPS connections
Enable Permissions
(Optional) Force Callouts to the Delegated Authentication Endpoint
- From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter Single Sign-On, then select Single Sign-On Settings.
- Click Edit.
- Select Force Delegated Authentication
Callout.
This setting forces a callout to the delegated authentication endpoint with all login attempts, even attempts that fail within Salesforce due to restrictions.

