NPrinting On Demand reports in Cloud AWS

[rasmusnielsen]

Hi guys,

We are testing on demand reports in Qlik Sense and NPrinting. It is working for our locally hosted setup.

But we are concerned about moving it to AWS, since one of the requirements for On Demand is that the user is authorised as a windows domain account. In our AWS setup, the servers that access the Qlik Sense reports are not running Windows (Qlik Sense and NPrinting will be running on windows servers) and even if they were Windows servers, they would not be on the same domain as where our users come from. They have their own hosted windows domains and are accessing our cloud solution.

Is it possible to make on demand work in such a cloud scenario?

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

I cannot see this working. but before I will say last definite word can you take me through the journey your users will take?

Lets start with opening the hub by user A:

• how do you want to authenticate user A using Qlik Sense where your Qlik Sense is in AWS?
• Are you going to use NTLM authentication or some other authentication (SAML)?

The reason I cannot see it working is that the user who is trying to run on demand  report will need to have an access also to NPrinting. The same user will need to be authenticated in NPrinting and for that it will use windows authentication. Now user domain account record needs to be configured at that time so the windows authentication can proceed.

side comments:

you got me lost with " ...the servers that access the Qlik Sense reports are not running Windows (Qlik Sense and NPrinting will be running on windows servers)..."

[rasmusnielsen]

Thanks for your reply. Let me try to clarify.

Our current setup is not using AWS and the servers are installed on premise at customer site.

But we are considering moving to AWS: Our web application is run on linux in AWS. We integrate Qlik Sense apps in a iFrame inside the web application. We have been using header authentication for a long time, but are considering switching to Windows auth since we need NPrinting OnDemand.

Our customers are logged into their laptops with a corporate windows domain account and in our current local tests we have been able to use Windows auth/IWA to authenticate them, but this only works since Qlik Sense and NPrinting are installed on premise within the same windows domain (as you also mention).

I am not too familiar with NTML/SAML auth and if it can be used in our setup. As I see it, the challenge is to authenticate the windows domain user on Qlik/Nprinting on AWS outside of their domain. With my limited knowledge of Windows and AWS, this does not seem to be possible.

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

I guess you should first tackle windows authentication in AWS and then worry about the OnDemand NPrinting functionality.

Requirements from Qlik NPrinting are clear - windows authentication is required to implement it. 

[rasmusnielsen]

It is a requirement that the user is a member of the same domain as the NPrinting/Qlik servers?

Would it be possible to authenticate the user via his own on premise AD?

[rasmusnielsen]

Hmm, guess this page answers my question:

https://help.qlik.com/en-US/nprinting/February2019/Content/NPrinting/DeployingQVNprinting/Supported-...

"Domain trusts, multiple domains, and cross-domain implementations are not supported. For example, where Qlik NPrinting Server is deployed on one domain, the Windows user accounts mapped to Qlik NPrinting users cannot be domain accounts from a different domain that Qlik NPrinting Server is not a member of."