Linking directly to a Brightidea Initiative or to a User Homepage that requires SSO login can experience and issue in which the user is taken to the Enterprise Homepage when these links are shared within Microsoft Office files, including:
- Word
- Excel
- Powerpoint
When links behind SSO are included in MS Office files like these, some customers report that clicking on the link doesn't take them to the correct target page. Instead, they might be navigated to:
- Their Enterprise base homepage
- Their SSO login page--logging in just sends them to the Enterprise homepage
Note: These exact same links will work properly when clicked in PDFs and Microsoft Outlook.
This is not an issue with Brightidea. It is a question of Microsoft Office not playing nicely with Single Sign-On. Your internal IT department may be able to get it resolved. There is no one-size-fits-all solution (even Microsoft doesn't officially offer one).
The Cause:
Microsoft Office, by design, does some pre-fetching of links to try to prevent errors when clicking links. In most cases, this happens faultlessly behind the scenes, but when SSO is involved, it can strip out URL parameters or redirects, which can shorten the URL that's actually requested from Office to the Briaghtidea system to get stripped down to a login or Enterprise homepage screen. You don't see this behavior in Outlook because Outlook, unlike the rest of the Office suite, doesn't do that pre-fetching; it just tries to open the URL you clicked on.
Microsoft discusses the issue here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/office/click-hyperlink-to-sso-website
The Solution:
The easiest solution is to use Outlook or PDF files to share the links with your users instead of Word, Excel, or Powerpoint.
If you do need to share the links using these Microsoft Office products users can copy the links and paste them into the browser address bar, rather than click the links. When copied and pasted into the browser the links will direct to the correct destination page.
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