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Alert
titleIntro SURFconext & hackathon
typeInfo

On May 13th 2020 we'll host an event at our office in Utrecht where we  start with an introduction of SURFconext, followed by a hackathon where the people from the SURFconext team will help connecting your service in a hands-on way. Interested? Visit https://www.surf.nl/agenda/introductie-surfconext-gevolgd-door-hackathon to register.

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You have landed on the introduction page of SURFconext. From here on you can learn what SURFconext can do for you and how to get connected, for both Identity Providers as well as Service Providers. Read on and find out more about the following:

Table of Contents


Tip
titleEnd user documentation

If you are a student, a teacher or an end-user of any kind and you are looking for support on how to use SURFconext you can read our end-user documentation here.

What can you do with SURFconext?

SURFconext offers 'Single Sign On'-access to a large and increasing number of online services.

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About 200 Dutch

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organizations in the area of secondary vocational-, higher education and research are

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using

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SURFconext for this.

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Among the most used services are

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Brightspace, SURFspot, Blackboard, Google Apps for Education

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and several library services. Check out the video below to get an introduction to SURFconext in less than 3 minutes.


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urlhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JWLNieOszM

Go directly to documentation

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titleIdentity Providers

An Identity Provider (IdP) is an organization which provides information about the identity of a user that makes authentication of a user possible. Examples of Identity Providers are Universities and research institutions. These organizations deliver the identities for their students and employees.

Documentation for Identity Providers (Dutch)

                

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titleService Providers

A Service Provider (SP) is an organization which delivers content and services that are available via the internet. For example: Web shops, video services and publishers but also educational institutions which offer online courses for students from other institutions. Examples are SURFspot, Google Apps for Education, Edugroepen, Blackboard, etc.

Documentation for Service Providers (English)

What advantages does SURFconext offer for my

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organization?

The group of

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organizations (check out our connected IdP's) in The Netherlands who use SURFconext,

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consist of universities, university

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hospitals and tertiary medical teaching hospitals, universities of applied sciences, research institutions and senior secondary vocational education institutions. Together they represent a group of about 1

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.5 million users. These users

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...

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SURFconext allows users to have access to services offered by multiple Service Providers using only 1 account. Besides this, SURFconext facilitates online collaboration in the cloud

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. This can be done between users

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of the same

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organization as well as users between

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different

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organizations.

For IdP's

If you connect your

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organization to SURFconext, you will enjoy the following advantages:

  • By connecting to SURFconext only once,

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  • you can easily provide users access to any of the connected services.
  • You

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  • don't have to implement and maintain a custom made connection to each service or Service Provider

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  • separately.

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  • You can regulate authorization for entire groups of students and employees easily.
  • The number of available services is

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  • growing by the day, since more and more

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  • Integrates perfectly with SURFsecureID for strong authentication.
  • Easy integration of services thanks to open standards.
  • Also available on mobile devices.

For SP's

For end users

  • Simple, secure access to cloud services with the institution's account. In other words, no need for separate user accounts with the hassle of passwords for individual services 
  • Single sign-on: authenticate once, and as long as your session is valid (often a day), you can access other SURFconext connected services without signing in again.
  • We try to minimize what data the Service Provider receives in order to protect your privacy. We can even replace identifiers with pseudonyms for extra privacy.
  • It is always clear with which services your data is being shared, on your SURFconext profile page.
  • Access to services from the international education and research community.
  • Easily prove your relation to (an) institution(s)

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  • .

Why should I connect to SURFconext?

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With the above mentioned advantages and the fast growing number of available cloud services

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, the advantages to connect to SURFconext are obvious. Most

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organizations consider

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to use these services

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combined with internally hosted services. Besides this,

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organizations want to offer a secure environment where both internal and external services can be used side by side. Important elements for this are Single Sign-On, trusted identity and collaboration in groups and teams.

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Organizations are looking for possibilities to integrate these different kinds of applications. SURFconext offers a starting points to

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How does SURFconext work?

For more information, have a look at Schema en uitleg (only available in Dutch).

We've also included a list of used terms together with their definitions at the page Woordenlijst (NL) (only available in Dutch).

Get started with SURFconext

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{clickable:SURFconext for Identity Providers|Documentatie voor Identity Providers}
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*[Documentatie voor Identity Providers|Documentatie voor Identity Providers]*
SURFconext can be used Organisations with a SURFnet connection. To connect to SURFconext, a number of technical, organisational and legal steps need to be performed. [Click here|surfconextdev:Documentatie voor Identity Providers] for a step by step manual (only available in Dutch).
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{clickable:SURFconext for Service Providers|Documentation for Service Providers}
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*[Documentation for Service providers|surfconextdev:Documentation for Service Providers]*
If you want to offer services through SURFconext, you will have to perform certain steps. [Click here|surfconextdev:Documentation for Service Providers] for an overview.
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{clickable:Collaborating through SURFconext|Samenwerken via SURFconext}
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*[Collaborating through SURFconext|surfconextdev:Samenwerken via SURFconext]*
The SURFconext-infrastructure can help collaboration organisations with verification, authorization and group management. [Click here|surfconextdev:Samenwerken via SURFconext] to see the possibilities (only available in Dutch).
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{clickable:Documentation for the migration from SURFfederatie to SURFconext|Migration SURFfederatie - SURFconext}
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*[Information about the migration from SURFfederatie to SURFconext|surfconextdev:Migration SURFfederatie - SURFconext]*
SURFfederatie merged to SURFconext. [Click here|surfconextdev:Migration SURFfederatie - SURFconext] for more information about this trajectory.
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do so.

Contact us!

Connecting to SURFconext is not that hard and easier than you might think. However, if you have any questions you can get in touch with us for answers to all of your questions about SURFconext. We prefer to be contacted by mail at support@surfconext.nl. Support by mail allows us to send and receive links, screenshots, metadata and lot's more, helping us answer to answer your questions more efficiently. If you think this doesn't work for you or you are having trouble formulating your question and prefer to talk to us directly, we will give you a call. Send us a mail with your contact information, including your phone number of course, and we will get back to you.