eduPersonPrincipalName

Owned by Stefan Halén
Last updated: Sept 08, 2022

This guide is intended to give you some ideas about how to generate an eduPersonPrincipal (ePPN) for users.

eduPerson

eduPersonPrincipalName is defined in eduPerson 1.0, OID:1.3.6.1.4.1.5923.1.1.1.6

A scoped identifier for a person. It should be represented in the form "user@scope" where 'user' is a name-based identifier for the person and where the "scope" portion MUST be the administrative domain of the identity system where the identifier was created and assigned. Each value of 'scope' defines a namespace within which the assigned identifiers MUST be unique. Given this rule, if two eduPersonPrincipalName (ePPN) values are the same at a given point in time, they refer to the same person. There must be one and only one "@" sign in valid values of eduPersonPrincipalName.

ePPN

In Skolfederation ePPN must be:

  • properly scoped with a domain name owned by the Member Organization

  • uniquely represents a single user

  • never reassigned

One way to achieve this is for example to use a Base36 number (alphanumeric) that is stored as a string, padding the string left with zeros for sorting. ePPN is incremented for every new user. If we use a length of 6 (36^6), that gives us 2176782336 ePPN's before overflow occurs. Either append the scope, a owned domain, before storing the ePPN or do it later e.g., in the IdP.

 

Exampel Scripts

The examples shows how you can add the attribute to users by utilizing scripts. The scripts are built so that it should be possible to run them with a scheduler.

ePPN for Google Workspace on Github

ePPN for Microsoft AD on Github